Chapter Thirty-Four
Hours of bullshit with the Don, with him turning his nose up at the coffee, and refusing to sit on the ‘dirty substandard’ chairs, and then he drops a bombshell and flies off again.
A week. I had a fucking week left here, and then I had to go back to his compound, and that stuffy fucking life I literally hated at this point.
“Get some sleep, man. We’ve been up all fucking night with that asshole.”
Asshole was the right fucking word. First he warned me to stay away from my little pain again, because he figured out I was with her, even though I did everything I could to stay off the radar, and now… now he was taking literally everything from me.
“I can’t… I don’t think I can go back, man. They make me go back, and I’ll end up killing every fucker who even looks at me.”
Micro groaned, pointing toward his office.
“You want a drink and a chat, man? I don’t like seeing you like this. And not just because you might kill me, or someone else here. Maybe everyone.”
He wasn’t all bad, as it turned out, in fact, I was really starting to like the fucker.
“Nah, Pres, get home to your old lady. I’ll get my head down for a couple of hours, then get to work.”
I would have as well, only I ran into Rocket on my way to the block housing the few bedrooms we had so far, and he was drunk and in a pissy mood yet again.
“Aw why the long face, Tesio, getting reamed by the boss again?” I knocked the fucker a few steps back, and then I buried my fist right in his smug fucking face.
“What the FUCK did you just call me?”
He glared up at me from the ground, using the back of his hand to wipe blood from his mouth.
“You walk around here acting like you’re a fucking god or something. You’re just a mafia bitch, and it’s time to go home to daddy.”
“Whoa, it’s like you really wanna die today, fuckhead. Are you the one who’s been running to him about every little thing I do?”
He blinked dumbly at me, turning to spit blood out on the ground.
“Wish I’d thought of that, cunt. Why don’t you fuck off back to your luxury fucking mansion, and leave this place to the real bikers, huh?”
“Why don’t you stand up and say that to my face, if you’ve got the balls? See, I’ve heard all about you, man. Women gotta fake being pregnant just to get you to act like a man.”
“FUCKER!” Rocket surged up from the ground and crashed into me, swinging his fists like he thought he was any kind of threat to me. I held him off easily, because he was so fucking drunk he could barely hit the mark.
“Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you fuckers?” Micro was suddenly trying to drag Rocket off me, but the fucker was heavy, and pissed, and this was getting old fast.
A prospect came to help drag him off, and as soon as my legs were clear, I planted them in Rocket’s gut and shoved hard, knocking him flying, and unfortunately taking down Micro and the prospect at the same time.
“Dammit, Grease!”
I stood up and brushed the dust off myself, before I reached down to help Micro up, and then the prospect, before I glared down at Rocket, who’d stayed down while I fought to breathe.
“I’d spit on you, but you’re not worth wasting the saliva. Watch yourself, cunt. When you’re sober, we’ll finish this, and I don’t think you’re gonna like how it goes.”
I slapped Micro’s back as I passed him, murmuring an apology, because I genuinely didn’t have a beef with him, but Rocket? That fucker was dead meat. I just wasn’t down for killing someone who was as helpless as a fucking kitten right now. I’d fight him for real when he’d be aware of the pain.
Ah pain. And now I was thinking of her again, my little pain. The fucking medicine my exhausted body needed. The remedy for fucking everything wrong in my life. And I couldn’t even risk reaching out to her, because I’d get her killed.
Jamie
Ididn’t hear from Grease at all that day, but I’d done what I could to look into those bastards I’d seen at the compound, and I didn’t like what I found.
The registration number on the helicopter was registered to a shell company, and tracing that led me to another, and another, and pretty soon I was so tangled up that I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing, so I reached out to someone I know in the Digital Crime division, and he followed the threads for me.
It was late that afternoon when he called me up to meet him in the cafeteria, and when I got there, he was looking edgy.
“Hey, you got something for me?” Eddie, the guy I sent the details to, paled and looked over his shoulder.
“I don’t know what you’re getting caught up in, but this’ll get you killed.”
Huh? I mean, I figured they were bad guys, but how bad is bad?
“You traced the reg number?”
He cursed, leaning really close. “You don’t fuck with mafia unless you want to die, and thanks to you, I’m the one the fucking trail will lead to, if they trace my blundering through cyberspace!”
Mafia. Hadn’t I even considered that? I mean, I’d convinced myself not to be so stupid, because mafia here? In a small town in Hampshire?
“Mafia? Seriously? Like with a Don running the ‘family’, and all that crap?”
“Keep your voice down!” He hissed at me, grabbing my arm and dragging me out into the hall.
“Ed, you’re freaking me out.”
“You should be freaked out. There are ears everywhere in this place, in every place. You can’t know who’s in their pocket, but they always find out when someone’s snooping into their business.”
I was panicking now, because it was bad enough that I might be dragging myself into this mess, but Eddie? I didn’t mean to put him in danger. There was only one thing I could think of to try and protect him, and it meant putting myself in the crosshairs.
“Give me their names, and walk away, Eddie. I’ll sort this.”
“How? How exactly are you going to sort this? Fuck it, I’m going on sick leave, and you need to stay clear of it!”
“The names!”
He cursed, glancing around us again. “Look, I’ve never looked into them, but we have a few names on file that are ‘people of interest’, but nobody actually looks into them.
The Don, Jesus, I’m really doing this…” he took a deep breath, “the Don is Massimo Rossi, and I have two other names. Luca Vanotti and Tesio Agosti. I don’t know who they are to the Don, but they’ve all come up in some way at some point. ”
“Okay, go on your leave. I’ll make this go away.”
He caught my sleeve as I started to walk down the hall.
“How?”
“By putting myself on their radar instead. I’m sorry, Eddie.”
I tugged my sleeve from his grip and hurried away, going straight to the desk I had access to for paperwork. I logged in, and started dropping their names into search engines. If someone was flagging these names, they’d find me.
My god, I didn’t want to die, but I couldn’t let someone else take my heat. If I’d just stayed out of this, fuck… if I’d just minded my own business, just like Grease tried to get me to do every damn time… it was too late now though. I’d made my bed, hadn’t I?
Now all I had to do was wait for them to track me down, and pray that they’d kill me quickly.