Chapter Nineteen
“Would you look at that?”I lean back against the sleek body of my motorcycle, smirking ever so slightly. “He’s on time.”
Freddie, distinctly disgruntled, scowls back at me as he emerges from the deep shadows of the alley’s mouth. “I’m never late for this shit, man. You know that.”
I sure do. If there’s one thing that’ll guarantee punctuality on his part, it’s the promise of fresh blood.
“Thought maybe you were slipping. After the coffee.”
“Aw, forget about the fucking coffee, would you?” He rakes a hand through his already messy hair.
“Do a good job tonight, and maybe I will.”
“Whatever.”
It’s a fine night for killing. Dark, drizzling rain. The alleyway where we agreed to meet is scattered with puddles and potholes. One of the more treacherous back streets of Carnadon City, which is why I chose it. Nobody’s going to bother us here.
“When are the guys getting here?” Freddie fiddles with a battered Zippo, cussing under his breath when the rain extinguishes its dancing whisper of a flame.
“Soon.”
“Oh, good. That tells me everything I need to know.” He manages to get it to light again, and keeps a hand hovering over it for protection. Close enough to hurt most anyone else, but he doesn’t seem to feel the burn. “You taken a look at that shortlist yet?”
I have. Briefly. The thought of rush week brings a twinge to my temple. I’ve barely gotten the chance to attend any of the little mixer events, which would be fine if it were just a matter of choosing new frat members. But there’s a lot more weight to the decision than that.
The people I pick need to be trustworthy. Because they’ll be here in two years. And that’s when everything is gonna go down. The more people Freddie and I have on our side, the safer we are. Right now, our options are pretty scant—Shane Dixon’s a good one, and TJ Jimenez seems promising. But the fucking excess of legacy brothers is bad news. Their daddies are a country mile up my father’s ass, which means that they aren’t far behind. They’ll need to be taken down just like every other scumbag loyalist.
“Ryker. Shortlist. Yes or no?”
“No,” I lie, just because it’s easier. “I’ll check it tomorrow.”
“You’re distracted. Don’t pretend that you aren’t.”
“Distracted?” I shoot him a sharp glare, but he seems entirely preoccupied with his lighter, which he’s now bobbing up and down beneath his hand, letting the edge of the flame just barely kiss the skin before pulling it away again.
“Yeah, distracted. You wanna tell me what’s up?”
“New assignment from my dad. There’s some girl he wants.”
Really wants. After less than a week, he’s getting impatient as hell. He confirmed that for me last night—as soon as I let Lia go, my phone buzzed with a summons to the tunnels. I answered all of his questions honestly, and have the splitting pain of bruised ribs to show for it.
Useless, sniveling brat. What good are you to me if you can’t even find one little girl? One sweet single Rose? After all the skills I’ve given you? All the work I’ve done to make you into a halfway useful human being?
Freddie’s voice jolts me back to the present. “Uh-huh. Some girl he wants? And where were you last night, again?”
“How about you fuck right off?”
He chuckles. “All right, all right. Easy. Hell, I’m happy if you’re getting some pussy. So long as it’s not that one OP cunt. I’m sick of seeing her around, not gonna lie.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
I’m spared from any further interrogation when a silhouette stirs at the end of the alleyway, immediately catching my attention. Freddie sees it, too—he caps his lighter and stows it away in a jacket pocket before he and I step towards one another, standing shoulder to shoulder as we stare down the pair of newcomers.
“What is that which cannot die,” Freddie calls out, tone lilting with sarcasm, “yadda, yadda, yadda?”
The voice that responds is lower, far less confident. “Even stone may shatter.”
My shoulders relax, and I can feel Freddie’s doing the same beside me.
“Well said, brother.” Out comes the lighter again, flickering on and off, on and off. “You know, I voted to do away with the corny-ass code words entirely, but?—”
I elbow him in the side. He knows to shut up when I do that, at least.
“No more fucking around,” I murmur. “Let’s get this over with.”
The exchange of clothing is a quick one. We haven’t worked with these two before, but I trust them—as much as I can trust any of the men who have signed their loyalty over to my father. It takes a lot of balls to double-cross a man like Draven Pendragon, and it’s more or less a death sentence once you do.
“Remember,” Freddie says as he bundles his mask and robe under his arm, “you’re gonna want to make yourselves scarce. Got an exit plan? Don’t answer that; don’t tell anyone. Just keep your heads down, and remember—you squeal on us, you squeal on yourselves. You don’t need me to tell you what the big boss’ll do once he gets his hands on you.”
As soon as the ex-enforcers have scuttled off, I give him another hard elbow to the side, wincing past the lance of pain in my own ribs. “You talk too much.”
“Wow, really? Never heard that one before. Okay!” He claps his gloved hands together. Despite the darkness, I can tell that he’s grinning like a wolf. “Where to first?”
“Evac. Guy by the name of Bannion.”
“Evac?” The disappointment in his voice is palpable. “C’mon, really?”
“Think of it as saving the best for last.”
The man called Bannion lives on the west side of town, about a thirty minute walk from our meeting place. We aren’t the only ones out and about tonight, but Lombardi’s rats don’t bother us. They’ve got enough to worry about without picking random fights.
Still, we stay quiet and keep our heads down. No time for distractions. Even Freddie, erratic as he may be, understands that much.
“This is it.” We approach a street marked KERRIGAN LANE. The rain has lessened, and crickets are beginning to trill from the bushes clustered around the iron-gated houses. “Number eight-seventeen.”
“Shitty place,” Freddie notes. “What sort of Order member can’t even manage three floors? This looks like something you’d find in fuckin’ Chicago.”
The dark-painted bungalow labeled 817 is perfectly serviceable, but he’s right. This isn’t the residence of a proud Order of the Crimson Stone Baron. Looks more like a place to settle down and start a little family. Wife, dog, pair of kids. “Well, it’s our job to evict him. Ready?”
We hop the fence one after another, duck behind the bushes, and pull on our borrowed robes and masks. Freddie pulls out his weapon as we ascend the front steps. Tonight, he’s chosen a box cutter, its blade glinting under the porch light. Seems to be a favorite of his for some reason—I’ve always imagined it must be a bit clumsy, but Freddie does love a challenge.
I don’t get the chance to knock on the door before it’s pulled open. The man standing there is rail-thin, balding, with only a couple of clusters of bushy gray hair atop his ears. A not-quite-sane expression stretches his already huge brown eyes into perfect circles. His shaking hands are wrapped around a sawed-off shotgun, angled straight for my chest.
“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter.
“Mr. Bannion.” Freddie keeps his tone cordial. “You can lower that gun now.”
“Like hell I will.” Spittle flecks Bannion’s lips, white against deep brown skin. “Get the fuck off my property.”
“You’re lucky,” Freddie remarks. “Real enforcers wouldn’t let that shit fly.”
Bannion hesitates for a split second, and it’s all I need. Our movements are perfectly synchronized—I hook a boot around to the back of the old man’s knees, while Freddie slams his wrist aside, disarming him with ease. Bannion sinks to the ground, gasping, and we let ourselves inside. A quick glance over my shoulder before I close the door ensures that nobody’s watching, but even if they were, we’d be in the clear. As far as any observer would be able to tell, we’ve come to finish the poor bastard off.
“Nice gun you’ve got there,” Freddie says, kicking it a ways down the dimly lit hall. “Got to work on your grip, though.”
“Whatever you’ve heard about me,” Bannion pants, “you’ve got it wrong. My allegiance has never wavered.”
“Well, I hope that’s not true,” Freddie drawls. “Because then we’d have to kill you.”
Confusion cuts through the terror on the old man’s face. “What?—?”
“Upsy-daisy.” Freddie waves the box cutter in a playful arc. “Go on and pack your bags, Mr. Bannion. We’ve booked you a one-way ticket to Austria.”
“Austria?”
Freddie continues as though he hadn’t been interrupted. “Your new name is Christoph Fuchs. We’ve got your ID and passport all ready to go; thank us later. Actually, don’t thank us later, because your time with the Order is finished.”
Jesus Christ. Enough with the crypticism, already. “The Count knows that you’ve been disloyal,” I tell him. His face grows waxy, but I don’t give him time to process it. “He knows that you fucked up that shipment of Amsterdam girls on purpose. His plan is to get their real location out of you by whatever means necessary.”
“Amsterdam? I never… I don’t…”
“And you’re a terrible liar,” I add, “so you’re lucky we got to you first.”
“I don’t understand,” Bannion insists, tears brimming in his reddened eyes. “Who the hell are you? Why are you doing this?”
Freddie flicks his box cutter idly. “Not for you to worry about, Gramps. Just call us your guardian angels.”
It takes upwards of an hour to get Bannion’s ass into action. Pretty standard for evacs—I can’t blame Freddie for hating the tedium. We get the man’s bags packed, his new identity in order, and voila—he’s speeding off in a taxi, headed to catch a red-eye to Vienna at the nearest airport.
“Son of a bitch looked like he was falling apart,” Freddie says as we exit through the back door. “Draven won’t be taking care of him, but a heart attack certainly might.”
“Doesn’t matter to me if he lives or dies, so long as the Order doesn’t get that information out of him.”
“Aw, c’mon. We could’ve just killed him, if it’s that unimportant. Imagine the trouble it would’ve saved.”
I say nothing. Because Freddie is right. If we’d slit the bastard’s throat, my father’s plans would be just as thoroughly foiled.
But I don’t want him dead. Even if it would make things easier for us. His interference saved a good fifty girls from a lifetime in the sex dungeons of the Amethyst Court. Someone like that deserves a second chance, if any of us do.
Freddie won’t settle for an answer like that, so I give him an easier one.
“Sure. But imagine how pissed my dad’ll be when the guy vanishes from right under his nose.”
“Oh, he’ll be pissed, all right. Bad news for his favorite punching bag.”
“I can take a few hits.”
I won’t think about that right now, though. With the evac done, it’s time for tonight’s main event—and I intend to enjoy it.
“Luke McConnors,” I tell Freddie several minutes later as we approach our second target, swift on our feet. This neighborhood is much more appropriate for an Order member, all grassy front lawns and elegantly sculpted villas that may as well have been transplanted straight out of Italy. “Lucky Lukey.”
“Lucky Lukey?” He snorts with laughter. “You gotta be kidding me.”
I shrug. “Guess when you’re rich enough, you can get away with the most idiotic of nicknames—people are scared of you all the same.”
“What is this guy, eleven?”
“Thirty-three, and he’ll never age a day again.”
“Music to my ears. You do the talkin’, I’ll do the handiwork?”
“Naturally.”
A small brick walkway leads to the door of the McConnors house, forcing us into single file. I take the lead instinctively. The crickets are louder now, and an automatic sprinkler tickles my ankles with a scatter of cold water. Fucking quasi-suburban bullshit. Might look peaceful out here, but I know this is the home of one sick motherfucker. Got his nickname back when he spent all his time in the Diamond Court, gobbling up wads of cash via every illegal betting venue the Order offered to him. Eventually my father took a personal interest in him, and the rest is history.
Just like Lucky Lukey himself will be in a matter of minutes.
I try the door. Locked.
“Fucker.” I weigh my options, then line myself up and heave my body into the door like a battering ram—once, twice, three times before it collapses beneath my weight, bellowing a sound like a gunshot that can probably be heard from several blocks away.
That’s the nice thing about doing business in Carnadon City. Nobody’s gonna come running to investigate a noise like that. Anyone who knows what’s good for them will be staying as far away as possible.
McConnors’s entryway is about as tasteful as I imagine the man himself to be. Black-and-white photographs line the walls, all of them blown up larger than life, featuring a vast number of women in an even vaster array of compromising positions, all illuminated by no less than three extravagant crystal chandeliers. The floor is suffocated in a sea of high-pile white carpeting. As if all of that isn’t bad enough, I can hear a ridiculous trill of Italian falsetto blasting somewhere deeper within the manor.
“Opera, really?” Freddie groans.
I toss a pointed glance towards the hallway’s choice decor. “That’s your biggest concern?”
“What, as opposed to this stuff?” He waves his box cutter at the army of nude portraits. “I won’t yuck his yum. Takes some real cajones to put this shit out in the open.”
“Yeah, whatever. Ready to get this done?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
We follow the piercing vibrato down the hall, up a staircase, and through a series of opulent rooms—a sitting area, an office, a bedroom—before finally finding ourselves on the other side of a door that, based on the steam wafting beneath it, can only be a bathroom.
Freddie nudges me. Though his expression is still concealed behind the blank scarlet features of the mask, I know what he’s asking: Are we being set up?
Normally, I would think so. The door was fucking deafening when we kicked it down, after all—but this shrill opera music may just have been enough to drown it out. Between that and the acoustics of an appropriately fancy bathroom, we just might be in luck.
I don’t bother with trying the door handle. I signal Freddie, he nods, and a silent three-count later, both of our left boots are colliding with the white wood, ripping the thing straight from its hinges and sending it thundering to the ground.
A parrot-like squawk of terror emerges from the bathroom, an unpleasant underscore to the already revolting music. Within a few quick glances, I have my bearings straight—sure enough, we’re in a white-tiled bathroom, easily three times bigger than it has any justifiable reason to be. Mirrors cover two of the walls, a gold-plated toilet gleams in one corner—and there, in a jacuzzi tub the size of a modest swimming pool, sits Lucky Lukey McConnors.
He’s chubby, ginger, and completely naked, with a mustache wispy enough to make him look like a teenage boy. He’s also quite obviously terrified, face colorless aside from two blotches of dark red shading his barely existent cheekbones.
Freddie whistles tunelessly as he strides over. His cheerful notes clash with the dramatic cacophony of the opera. When he flicks out his box cutter, McConnors swallows hard, and a touch of green sours his flabby face.
“I would say I’m sorry for barging in,” I tell him, “but I’m not.”
The stereo—the source of the infernal warbling—sits perched on the side of the tub. I grip the volume knob between my gloved finger and thumb and spin it almost all the way down, until the loudest sound in the room is our target’s sobbing, sloppy breaths.
“Fuck,” I mutter, my lip curling as I stare him down. “I knew you were disgusting, but this…”
“Whatever the Count wants,” he blubbers, “I’ll give it—money, anything?”
“This isn’t about what the Count wants anymore.”
“Please tell me I can cut off his stubby little cock,” Freddie begs.
“Not yet. I’d say to start smaller, but there isn’t really anything smaller, is there?” I contemplate our options for a moment, then shrug. “Little finger ought to do the trick.”
Freddie pounces like a viper. In a matter of seconds, he has one of McConnors’s arms pinned back against the edge of the porcelain tub. Ignoring the older man’s fervent whimpers, he expertly edges the tip of his box cutter blade under the nail of the pinky finger, angles it carefully, and jabs it forward.
McConnors shrieks, the sound bouncing off the bathroom walls, sounding more like a tortured army than a single man. Freddie, steady as ever, plucks the tiny, bloody nail from the mangled finger and wiggles it in my direction.
“That’s disgusting,” I mutter—but he slips it in his pocket. A trophy for later, I assume.
Tears are rolling down McConnors’s patchy cheeks now. “Come on,” he begs, “come on, whatever you want?—”
“I want you dead, you fucking scumbag,” I tell him calmly. “Behave yourself, and I might even make it fast.”
“Another nail, boss?” Freddie asks.
I wave him down. “Not yet. Let’s see if Lucky Lukey has anything he wants to disclose.”
“Like—like what?” the bastard whimpers.
“The Count. We know you’re rubbing elbows with him. Who else is in your little friend group? Go on; we won’t tell.”
“I don’t know the names?—”
“Go for the knuckles.”
Freddie doesn’t need to be told twice. He twists McConnors’s hand back across the rim of the tub, ignoring the wail of protest, until a series of clean pops signal the shattering of joints. McConnors shrieks with each one, then slumps sideways in the tub, his chest heaving, face white as porridge.
“Dumbass is passing out,” Freddie snickers. “C’mon, Lukey! Up and at ’em, we ain’t done yet!”
He slashes the blade across one cheek, not too deep, just enough to startle McConnors back into alertness.
“Well?” I prompt. “Do you know those names or not?”
“Marko.” His voice is weak and wobbly, like a deflating balloon. “Johann Marko.”
“That’s better. Who else?”
“He’s the only one I know, we always meet in masks, I swear it, I swear on my daughter’s life…”
“Your daughter?” I scoff. “You want me to believe that you have a daughter?”
“Sh-she’s a good girl… does her work well… the Amethyst Court…”
My stomach plunges.
His own child. Shuffled off to the sector known as the Amethyst Court, to live—to work, as he calls it—with the rest of the Order’s sex slaves.
You sick, sick motherfucker…
“You’re a real fucked up son of a bitch, you know that? And I mean it, too. Believe me—it takes one to know one.” I have half a mind to throttle him right now, but that won’t do me any good. “I’ve done enough for most people to call me a monster. But you’re worse than that. I don’t think there’s a word foul enough for somebody like you, Lukey.”
Freddie’s getting restless. I can sense it—once he gets going, he has a hard time reining himself in. I need to focus, glean what I can before it’s too late.
“Your last meeting with the Count. What did it concern? What’s he planning?”
“The Mafia rivals,” he blubbers at once. “He’s got some sorta deal going on with the Trovatos’ kingpin. Armondo. Dunno what they’re planning…”
Freddie’s eyebrows shoot upwards, and he flashes an incredulous grin in my direction. A giggle trickles past his lips, and then he lets loose, throwing his head back and cackling, box cutter spiraling wildly through the air.
“Oh, isn’t that just perfect,” he snickers. “Luke, buddy, you’ve made my day.”
McConnors swallows hard. “That’s all I know. God’s my witness.”
“All you know?” I repeat.
His head bobs frantically. “That’s everything.”
“In that case…”
I turn my back and shoot Freddie a signal—two fingers towards the ceiling, thumb extended. He knows what it means: give it your all.
I don’t watch as he gets to work. Don’t need to—the staggering screams from the bastard in the bathtub are satisfying in and of themselves. He begs and begs—and then Freddie must get sick of it because those frantic words erode into distended garbling, a sure sign that his tongue’s been cleaved.
My patience is running thin. The fact that I’ve made it this far is a fucking miracle. I’ve managed to wrestle down thoughts of Lia for most of the night, laser-focused on my work—but now that the jobs are more or less done, the memory of her touch creeps to the forefront of my mind, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold it at bay. If I get hard now, Freddie’s gonna think I’m enjoying this psycho shit as much as he is, and I’m not remotely in the mood for the brotherly bonding that he would definitely proceed to attempt.
I’ve heard enough. I reach out for the stereo again and wrench the volume to its maximum. The falsetto blares through the bathroom, twice as loud as before, drowning out any other howls from McConnors—and, with that, I knock the whole thing into the tub.
The water goes white. Luke McConnors stiffens, eyes bulging in his sockets until they look ready to burst, then begins to contract in a series of grotesque spasms, yellowish foam leaking from his lips, illuminated by blue flashes as the stereo sputters to death in the depths of his ridiculous bubble bath.
“Come on, man,” Freddie grumbles several seconds later, scowling at the smoking remains of the man we were meant to interrogate. “What was that for? I was barely getting started.”
“He was getting on my nerves. I hate when you do that with their tongues—it sounds disgusting.”
Freddie pulls off his mask and wipes the sweat from his brow with one long robe sleeve. “Christ, talk about blue balls. I really wanted to cut off his dick.”
“You’ll get plenty of dicks to cut off, you psychotic little shit. Come on, let’s get out of here.”