Keep Him Like Secrets

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Saff

I hadn’t returned the drop key to the doorman.

I had it in my fist and told myself the whole ride down that I was going to leave it there because I knew my pride would never allow me to ask for it a second time.

But the next thing I knew, I was moving out onto the sidewalk, my thumb teasing over the pigeon key charm.

Annoyed by my weakness, I rushed toward the closest subway platform, ignoring the growing sad sensation spreading through my chest.

At what?

Leaving a man’s apartment after some mutually enjoyable fun?

I scoffed out loud at that.

Mutually enjoyable.

That was the understatement of the year.

That man cracked open the world and sent me flying amongst the stars.

Dramatic? Yes. Cheesy? Oh, absolutely.

But true regardless.

I got back to my apartment, stripped, and climbed in the shower to scrub the scent of him off me.

Even scrubbed red, I could swear I still felt his touch all over me.

As I dressed, strapped on a gun so I could go play bagman for the family in an attempt to distract myself, I was starting to worry that I would always feel him. Like he was scorched, branded into my skin.

“God, get a grip,” I grumbled at my reflection before hitting the streets.

It helped to be distracted.

Going in and out of businesses, collecting the protection money owed to us. It was a job typically reserved for soldiers, not capos. But every once in a while, I liked to get my face out there, remind everyone who they were dealing with.

That said, by midday, there was no one else to hit up, nothing for me to do, since Renzo had all but benched me, wanting me to focus on the nightclub situation.

As if drawn there by just the thought—and totally, absolutely not because I wanted to run into Soren—I found myself standing outside the nightclub, finding Gav standing out front with his crew. Everyone had matching worried faces.

“Hey, Gav. Everything alright?” I asked.

“Wow. That was fast,” he said, turning to look at me.

“What was fast?”

“I just called Mr. Vale. I figured we’d be standing here for another hour or two, twiddling our thumbs. Or talking to the cops without one of you.”

“The cops?” I croaked, heartbeat hammering against my ribcage. “What do you need cops for?”

“Well,” Gav said, looking oddly squirrelly. “The thing is, we had a delivery this morning. And, well, we’re not sure what happened, but… I guess the door wasn’t locked. And someone…”

“They jacked everything,” one of his guys supplied.

If they expected shock or outrage, I was the wrong boss to be speaking to. Not many people knew this neighborhood better than I did. There was always someone around who was willing to steal a bunch of shit—from high-end electronics to fucking stuffed animals—and resell everything.

Everyone had to have a hustle.

I didn’t even particularly begrudge someone for this one, since we didn’t want the neighborhood knowing it was partially my club.

“Alright. What’d they get?” I asked, watching Gav’s brows knit.

“The flooring.”

“The… flooring?”

“Black marble tiles. Go for about fifteen per tile.”

“And how many tiles were there?”

“Seventeen hundred. That’s—”

“Twenty-five grand,” I supplied. “Marble tile, that’s heavy, right?”

“It would have been a project. Something like ten pounds per tile.”

“How long a gap was there between when the shipment got here and when you got here?”

“An hour,” Gav said. “Max.”

“Any chance the dumpster is missing?”

“The… dumpster?”

I moved past them, going down the alley beside the building toward the little opening behind where, the day before, there’d been a mini dumpster.

“What…”

“Work smarter,” I said, shrugging. “You said Soren is on his way over?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Good.

He could deal with the cops.

I wasn’t going to get my ass chewed out by Renzo for getting my face on anyone’s radar.

“What?” I asked, catching Gav staring at me.

“Your hair is different.”

Shit.

The rest of the dye must have washed off in the shower.

Great. That was just great.

“Nope, same as it was,” I lied. Better to gaslight the contractor than have Soren find out I was secretly dying it each time I saw him, so he didn’t get suspicious about my credentials. “Alright. I’m gonna let Soren handle this. I have… somewhere to be.”

I had to see a man about a dumpster.

More specifically, I had to see a local crew about a dumpster. Because there was no way one guy had pushed that damn thing full of that much marble.

Before Gav could object, I slipped back down the alley.

“What is it?” Renzo answered on the first ring, sounding distracted.

“Someone jacked a shipment of marble from the club,” I told him. “Twenty-five grand in product.”

“Shit.”

“I want to get it back.”

“No shit you do. Alright, look,” he went on, sounding more focused. “I don’t want them knowing you’re involved with that club. At least not directly. If you want to spew some shit about not wanting the club to take this as a sign to choose a different location, when we planned to lean on them, go with that.”

“Got it,” I said. I hung up, then called Bastian.

“You’re calling me?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

“I need some muscle. Literally.”

“For what?”

“Someone in the neighborhood jacked the marble for the club. Just stacked it in a dumpster and rolled it off. I’m gonna need some help rolling it back when I find it.”

“Alright. Tell me where to meet you.”

Done with that, I shot off a text to Serano, then started looking.

The neighborhood was big, and there were many places to hide a dumpster. But there were also a lot of eyes around. While most people liked to mind their own business, sometimes kids or the unhoused would be willing to provide some information for some cash.

It was about an hour and a half before we finally found someone who’d both accept the money to talk and had actually seen something.

“Should have guessed it was the Gallagher boys,” Bass said.

“What do you know about the Gallagher boys?”

“Haven’t been sitting on my ass since I got out of prison, you know—”

“To be fair, I figured you would be fucking your way through all the boroughs.”

“Well, there’s been some of that,” he admitted, eyes warm. “But I’ve been working hard to figure out all the crews operating not only in Brooklyn but some of the other boroughs. So many have changed since I went away. When Renzo finally lets me have my own crew, I want to be a solid leader.”

“Etiquette lessons aside, I think you’ll run a solid crew.”

“Yeah? Means a lot coming from you.”

“Sure,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Hey,” he said, stopping mid-stride to look at me. “For the record, I’m not on your ass because I don’t think you know what you’re doing. I really need this job to reflect well on me. Lost years of my life inside. My career should be on par with Rico’s, but I’m doing jobs like an associate instead.”

“I get that. It took a long time to get where I am. I treated every job like my future depended on it. This one is going to work out.”

“Your hair is blue,” he observed.

“I know. I wasn’t planning on being by the club today.”

“We’ll grab you a hat before we head back.”

“Yeah, good idea. So, what do you know about the Gallagher boys?”

“Dad was Irish mob. But he’s too much of a drunk to be of use to them, so the whole family got ousted. So the kids do petty crime. And, likely, will form their own crew once they get enough money going for them.”

“That about covers it.”

“What I don’t know is why Renzo is allowing them to wild out right under his nose, unchecked.”

“Renzo appreciates their entrepreneurial spirit,” I told him. “I think it reminds him of himself at their age. And maybe he’s aligning himself as an ally to a future superpower in the area. Which would only make our family stronger.”

“Makes sense. This where they’re at?” Bass asked when I stopped outside of a dive bar. Not even one of the fun ones that I would pop into on occasion. It was the kind of place with chronically sticky floors, warm beer, and bathrooms that likely had cameras in the stalls.

“Their apartment building doesn’t have somewhere to stash a dumpster. But since their father is always passed out here, it’s familiar to them.”

I walked around the corner to the small service yard.

“Pretty sure a bar this size doesn’t need two dumpsters,” I told Bass, waving toward where a mini one was sitting next to a more normal-sized one. “Want to bet that one weighs something close to two thousand pounds?”

“How could those kids push something that heavy?”

“Industrial casters made the load lighter for pushing or pulling. Most people could easily push or pull five times their body weight with one of these,” I told him. At his blank look, I shrugged. “I may or may not have moved a bunch of electronics that fell off the back of a truck when I was still making my name as a soldier in the family. Did a bit of research on how to move that much shit without a car.”

“Hey, that’s ours,” a wobbly, pre-pubescent voice called, making me turn to see a tall, skinny Gallagher who had to be about twelve.

“Actually, it’s not,” I said. “Where’s your older brother? We need to have—oh, good,” I said when a copy-and-paste of the little kid, but with a solid five years on him, appeared behind his back.

Cormac Gallagher. Seventeen going on fifty, with his kid brothers to take care of and his father to drag out of bars each night.

“Saff?” he said, brows pinched.

“We need to talk about the dumpster. Actually, about the new nightclub in general.”

If I hadn’t been watching him so closely, I’d have missed the flash of desperation cross Cormac’s eyes before he tamped it down.

He’d likely already done some quick math on how much he and his brothers just scored. Even selling at a loss, that was some life-changing money.

I felt a pang in my chest seeing it. I’d been on the streets at his age, my desperation for money, food, shelter, an ever-present churning in my gut. I couldn’t imagine how he was dealing with the hunger and needs of five younger siblings.

“I’m listening,” Cormac said, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Go back inside.”

I’d bet that all the brothers had helped push the dumpster across town, each celebrating in their success. But Cormac wanted to save the younger ones from the loss. You had to respect the poor kid.

“Look, the family needs that club to be renovated and opened as quickly as possible. They’re going to be a… client of ours.”

“Alright,” Cormac said, jaw rocking side to side.

He had to be close to his eighteenth birthday. He was probably planning to use the marble money to get his own place where the kids could be free of their father’s influence. Where the fridge and cabinets would be full. And free of roaches.

“I want you to help with that,” I said. I could feel Bastian’s gaze on my profile, but ignored him. He might be working with me on the club project, but I was the one in charge. I could make this decision.

“What kind of help?”

“I’m gonna be putting up a security system. But I’d like it if you and your brothers could keep an eye on the place while it’s being renovated. Let me know if you see anything suspicious. Report it to me—or Bass here—immediately.”

“What’re you paying?”

You had to respect his guts.

Most criminals, once they realized they’d fucked around on the mob, would be begging for leniency, not demanding money.

“It’s a round-the-clock kind of job,” I told him, knowing he had other brothers home to keep an eye on the younger ones while he pulled a night shift. “Two hundred a day.”

It was chump change for me.

It would be enough to keep his family afloat. Without he or his siblings needing to risk arrest or retribution from other local crews by stealing over and over.

“No strings?”

“Not outside of not stealing from the place anymore yourself.”

“Won’t need to,” Cormac said with a shrug.

“Alright. Starting tomorrow. You got a phone?”

He gave me a tight nod, reaching for his pre-paid cell, then taking down my number, then Bass’s number too—just in case.

“If anything at all seems suspicious, give one of us a call. If whoever is there has access to a phone, take pictures.”

“Got it,” Cormac said. “No,” he added when I reached for my wallet to hand him money. “Don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” I said, handing him a fifty. “I am not pushing that fucking thing all the way back to the club. I hope you stretched. Don’t want you pulling a muscle.”

With that, we made our way back across Brooklyn, with me stopping to grab a damn baseball cap to tuck my hair into before getting back to the club.

The cops had likely been and gone, and Soren was standing there in his stupidly nice suit that fit him in all the right ways. The jerk.

Gav was saying something to him, but broke off mid-sentence, raised a hand, and pointed toward us as we got closer.

Soren turned, eyes going wide as he looked at Bass and Cormac pushing the dumpster. Then, as his gaze slid to me, a smile was hiding in the corner of his lips.

“Guess I should call the cops back and cancel that police report, huh?”

“Don’t bother. They were never going to waste manpower looking for some stolen marble anyway. Around here, you’re better off handling that kind of thing yourself. So, here’s the marble. No harm, no foul. Sorry if you guys were looking forward to a few days off,” I called to a few of Gav’s workers who were standing around still.

“Come on, guys, let’s get this all sorted,” Gav said, moving over toward the dumpster.

“I’m going home to shower and change,” Bass said, looking sweaty and miserable.

“Cormac, be in touch,” I said, getting a nod from the teenager before he turned and walked off. He was trying to keep his gait casual, but as soon as he thought he was far enough away, he broke into a run—likely off to go buy some decent food to feed his siblings.

“Your driver is here… installing security cameras.” The suspicion was there in his tone.

“Serano is a man of many skills,” I said, shrugging. “Those cameras should have been up before we got anything delivered. This was our own fault.”

“I wasn’t expecting a delivery that fast. Gav heard I wanted a rush on this, and got a little carried away. He was sweating bricks about it. But, like you said, no harm, no foul.”

I didn’t miss the way his hungry gaze moved over me. Or the way my body immediately started to thrum with memory, with renewed need.

I had to get away from him.

Before I did something stupid. Like invite him back to my apartment to check out my sheets.

“Well, that’s all settled. So, I’m going to get going,” I said, waving off down the street.

“Saff,” he called, making me stop, but not turn back.

But he just moved up behind me, his lips near my ear, his breath warm on the shell of it.

“That drop key is an open invitation.”

“I do—”

“I know you still have it,” he cut me off.

Of course he did.

He’d probably asked the doorman about it.

Why couldn’t I have just… left the damn thing?

Even as I thought it, though, I knew the answer.

I didn’t want to.

I wanted the option.

Even if I knew it was a terrible idea.

“Use it,” he said, his lips touching my ear. “Oh, and Saff? I like the blue hair. You don’t have to hide it.”

With that, he walked off.

Leaving me all shivery.

“Fuck,” I hissed, forcing my legs to carry me away, when every cell in my body was screaming for me to turn and run to him instead.

I told myself not to look back.

But there was no stopping it.

Soren was gone.

But Serano was standing there, eyes knowing.

Great.

That was just great.

All I could do was hope his aversion to speaking in general would also apply to not telling Renzo what he’d seen.

It was all the more reason I needed to stay away from Soren.