Chapter 47
Chapter forty-seven
LIAM
I had to stop twice on the way over here to do some box breathing and reel my thoughts back in. I take a second now to organize everything in my head. I’ll freak out emotionally later, maybe.
No, I’m totally going to freak out later.
The second I have a plan in place, the guilt will tear me to pieces. But I need to go get that plan.
Beckett is in love with Ash. Fuck, I probably am too. Pierce is her scent match. Randal is blackmailing us. I now know where Randal lives.
And Ash—or Lynn, whatever—has suffered close to a decade of abuse and worse at the hands of Randal Voss.
I can’t know for sure right now if she’s a part of Randal’s plan.
It’s too fucking convenient. Ash is not dumb, but it would be 007 level spy shit to infiltrate our pack and blackmail us.
She’s never gone after Beckett’s money. But she had to know who we were the second she met us.
She might not be working with Randal, so maybe there’s something else at play?
I step out of the Charger and shut the door softly. The beep of the alarm seems extra loud.
Mama’s back door is ancient, warped steel. Something you’d see in a fortress, not an Italian place in Nashville. I knock twice. It cracks open instantly.
“What do you want?” the guy asks. A scar splits his lip in two, like a cleft, and he’s got a diamond in his ear big enough to blind me.
“Enzo in?” I ask, hands jammed deep in my jeans.
The guy looks me over, shrugs, and swings the door wide. I squeeze by him and almost swoon over how good the kitchen smells. Onions, basil, garlic, and something sweet and rich, like fennel sausage. Mama’s has the best Italian food in the city, hands down.
The kitchen’s empty except for a dishwasher, who eyes me and then goes back to stacking plates. I cut through to the main dining room. It’s dark, but the neon glow from the sign out front leaks in, giving me enough light to work with that I can navigate the booths and round tables.
I’ve been here a dozen times in the last month fixing their computers.
It’s a joke how they run rackets out of here, but Enzo won’t move the servers.
Not my problem if the Feds show up and find all his little secrets on one server rack with impeccable wire management.
I’ve taken to wearing gloves just so my fingerprints aren’t on any of the drives or cables.
I duck past tables to the hall by the bathrooms, then the storage room that isn’t actually a storage room. I open it, step inside, and pull the panel in the back. It gives way to a narrow stairwell, and I follow the sound of shuffling cards and the clack of chips.
Down here, Enzo runs four high-stakes poker tables. Tonight, every seat’s filled. Enzo is at the head, hunched over a pile of chips, two fingers pinching a cigarette, ash dangling dangerously. When he spots me, he crooks his finger.
“Liam, my boy. You said poker wasn’t your game.” He kicks out a chair for me, never looking away from his hand.
“Not here to play.” I stay standing.
Enzo looks at me, the chair, then back at me. He bares his teeth and sticks his smoke between them as he puts down his cards and leans back to a side table for a short, fat glass and bottle of whiskey. He pours three fingers, and sets it hard right in front of the chair.
“Sit.”
I do, like the good boy I am. I down the whiskey in one go.
“We closed the books for the quarter. Laundromat looks clean. Car wash might need a little more work.” Enzo picks up his cards, sighs and flicks them onto the table.
“Oh, did like you said and bought Frankie a new computer, so he can download all the porn he wants and not fuck up his school one with those viruses.”
“Yeah. It will keep him away from the omegas for a bit while he gets a handle on this new alpha shit.” That comes from Matteo, one of Enzo’s capos.
Enzo flicks his ash into a giant crystal ashtray and tosses a chip into the pot for the next hand.
“If you’re not here for the game, how can I be of service?” Enzo says that with no attitude or snark. He genuinely wants to be helpful, because he knows his help is very valuable.
“You remember how we discussed alternative compensation for this job?”
Enzo’s eyes narrow. “Yeah.”
“I want to collect.”
He gestures for me to keep talking.
“I found the guy. The one I was looking for.”
“And?” Enzo raises an eyebrow, and a wicked little grin spreads across his face.
I grab the whiskey bottle, splash some in the glass, and down that too.
“I was halfway to Walmart to buy a shotgun.” I pour a third drink, but I find my manners and sip at this one, squinting at the burn. “But the Scorpions are close to the playoffs. My pack can’t take that kind of publicity right now.”
“Damn right,” Matteo says as he shuffles the cards. “I got ten large on them taking the Cup, so you better not fuck it up.”
“What did this upstanding citizen do to demand such action from your side?”
I pour another whiskey. I’m feeling the buzz, now, it’s numbing out my tongue.
I’m not about to give Enzo ammunition he can turn against me later.
I want to get rid of a blackmailer, not acquire another—one that has endless resources.
I’ve seen the books on just two of his businesses, the legit and not so legit. I need Enzo to not be a frenemy.
“There’s a girl…”
“There’s always a girl,” Matteo snorts. Enzo shuts him up with a hand gesture.
“She’s scent matched to my pack.” I pick up my glass and raise it to Matteo. “Your star defender for the Scorpions is in love with her.”
“And you think ending the love affair with a shotgun is going to improve his gameplay?” Enzo’s face morphs into the beginnings of calm fury.
“No. You don’t get my meaning.” I want to finish off my drink, but I push it away an inch. “She’s with her father and bad things are happening.”
Enzo stabs out his cigarette. “‘Bad things’ can cover quite a lot of territory.”
“Yeah. The kind of bad things that can happen to a girl, an omega, when the men in her life are desperate.”
Enzo physically bristles, and Matteo makes a disgusted noise.
“And the name of this upstanding citizen?”
“His name is Randal Voss.”
Enzo snaps his head to Matteo. They have a long, completely silent conversation of raised eyebrows and head shakes. I have no idea what passed between them, but it ends with Matteo letting out a low whistle and sitting back in his chair.
Tapping another cigarette out of his pack, Enzo lights it and tops my glass off again, like he knows however this conversation ends, I’m going to need to be drunk.
“Why don’t you just take the girl? If she’s scent matched to your pack, the law will come down on your side.”
“You think a man like that will ever let go of something so valuable? Sometimes closure needs to be complete.” I speak slowly; I don’t want my words to slur at this point.
Enzo clamps his teeth around his cigarette and stands to straighten his cuffs. The diamonds on his cufflinks are understated, unlike that guy’s earrings. He fills my glass one last time and puts the bottle far from my reach.
“Finish your drink, then I’ll have one of the boys take you home. There’s two things I can’t abide, one is drunk driving. Senseless waste of life.”
“What about Randal Voss?” I pick up the glass but don’t drink. If I finish this, I’m going to have a life-altering headache in the morning.
“Someone’s already holding that chit.”
What the fuck does that mean?
He moves toward the door, clapping a few shoulders along the way.
“Hey, what’s the other thing? The other thing you can’t abide?” I raise my voice just enough to be heard over the soft chatter and shuffling cards.
Enzo stops by the door and inspects the glowing ember of his smoke. “Sex traffickers,” he says without looking at me, and then steps out the door.
Matteo shuffles the cards one last time. He knocks the edge of the deck twice on the felt-topped table. There’s something final about that, like a judge’s gavel sealing the death penalty.
“Tony will get you home,” he says with a wink and follows his boss out.
I take another sip and sit back in my chair to let myself enjoy the whisky buzz for just a minute before it tips me into full-blown drunk.