Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
H angman…
“She’s okay,” Corvus said, coming up to me and touching my elbow. I had wandered away from the conversation with the little puke and nodded, still keeping my eye on him.
“What’s the play?” I asked.
“Lore is with Tor,” Corvus said and I snorted. “He’s doctoring up that hand. I sent Lainey for Syn to loop him in. Now, I go find Syn and we game, set, match.”
“Copy that,” I said.
“Reaper’s in Hell,” he observed and I felt a wry twist to my lips.
“Yeah, well, it’s the least he can do.”
Corvus snickered at that and said, “Send for you soon.” He slipped off into the crowd and mounted the stairs.
I caught Madisyn’s eye from across the room and she smiled pleasantly at me and gave a slight nod. Syn wasn’t with her, which meant the message had been delivered and he was working at untangling the knots toward a resolution.
Somebody was getting fucked tonight. Maybe even several somebodies.
It was precisely eighteen minutes later that Requiem came down to the bottom of the stairs, caught my eye, and jerked his head behind him – a sign I should go up.
I made my way over and slipped up past him as he said, “Syn’s waiting. Lorelai’s being taken home. You’re clear to handle business.”
I nodded and said nothing in return. Nothing needed to be said. I flowed up the curving staircase and wandered down the hall by a couple of doors and found Spooky standing outside Syn’s door. He gave me a sharp nod and opened it for me and I went on through.
Some pomp and circumstance, we had esteemed guests… this was going to be interesting.
Spooky shut the door behind me and I looked over to Syn who raised his eyebrow and his glass in my direction.
“Hangman,” he intoned. “Like you to meet Don Vincenzo Mancini.”
I came around the couch in Synister’s room and found a tall, slender, gentleman – probably late forties – seated comfortably with a glass of probably something expensive in one hand, onyx pinkie ring on display. His suit was impeccable, his head full of perfectly coiffed hair and with the steel gray appearing at his temples, he was almost to put together, matching his charcoal pinstriped suit to perfection. He was just on this side of acceptability but was right on the line of trying too hard.
I nodded politely but didn’t say anything.
“We were just sorting out the details of this most sordid and unfortunate turn of events,” the Don declared, and I took the seat across from him that Synister gestured to. Syn took the chair next to mine, the gas fire flickering in its fireplace and providing most of the light in here.
“Perhaps we should start at the beginning. Get my man up to speed,” Synister declared.
It was a fuckin’ story.
A disgusting and depraved one at that.
It started with Daddy Dearest fucking up and cutting corners on a build or two for Mr. Mancini. Those corners that were cut led to hazards in one of Mr. Mancini’s nightclubs up in Myrtle Beach. A fire broke out, a couple patrons didn’t make it out, and huge fines had been levied, wrongful death suits were still being litigated, and Mr. Mancini was none too happy with Gantz Industries and Construction.
On a personal note, Mancini had a son. One that was coming of age and had taken a shine to Lorelai at one of the mixed functions she’d attended with her family.
He decided that if his boy could get his dick wet and pop his cherry on Lore that some of the shit Daddy Dearest was on the hook for could be forgotten. He just needed his man informed on where Lore was going to be, when, and he would handle the rest.
Daddy Dearest had sold Lorelai’s location out and had been instrumental in putting a bug in her bestie Julie’s ear about doing a girl’s weekend in Savannah. He’d paid Julie to tamper with Lorelai’s new heels and the rest had gone accordingly.
Except for the part where his man, Calrose, had given Lore too much of that new street drug to make things easier and Lore had, by all appearances, expired.
Cal hadn’t panicked, though. He’d used the proper channels, according to Mancini, and that’s how she’d become our problem… except Mancini was an idiot thinking that just money was going to solve this problem.
Synister let his displeasure be known, and the negotiations began. I wasn’t leaving without his man’s head on a fucking pike, and Syn knew that. I just let him work, stayed silent, and trusted the process.
Mancini had a lot to worry about, abusing our hospitality like he had – and putting corpse weed onto Savannah’s streets which was liable to hurt just about every venture we had. He hadn’t realized, like most of them didn’t, just who he was fucking with and how we did things.
“What do you want?” Mancini asked pointedly, clearly annoyed, and Synister and I exchanged a look.
“Money isn’t going to fix this one, Don,” Synister said, sipping his drink.
“Then what?” he demanded.
“Eye for an eye,” Synister declared. “And your man Cal doesn’t go home.”
Mancini frowned and demanded, “Just what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting it didn’t cost Tobias Gantz a thing to sell out his daughter to you. I imagine that he didn’t even hesitate, did he?” Syn demanded.
“He put on a good show,” Mancini said, shifting uncomfortably. “But you are correct. He agreed just a little too readily.”
I gritted my teeth and felt a muscle in my jaw twinge. Mancini looked at me and looked alarmed.
“She was yours?” he asked.
“She is mine,” I said, an affirmation and not a lie, but he didn’t need to know that she’d become mine after the fact… after what his people had done to her.
It seemed that Vincenzo Mancini cared a hell of a lot more about his boy than Tobias Gantz had about his little girl, because he was fighting pretty hard to keep any blowback from hitting his son.
In the end, he was going to lose his best man, Cal, and at least four others were going to lose pieces of themselves to appease my wrath. Cal was a dead man. I wasn’t going to go back on that. The other four were going to walk around with daily reminders to look at on why consent mattered.
Money was going to change hands, too. That money was going into Lorelai’s coffers to do with what she pleased, after Syn and the rest of us took a cut for the trouble we were about to undertake. That was business and Syn was smart when it came to doing business. Lore wasn’t going to be missing out any. He negotiated a firm number for her and then our cut on top of that.
Vincenzo wasn’t going to leave 513 Whitaker Street a happy man. Cal would only be leaving so far as to head my direction for retribution and burial.
The other four would come to us for their punishment, but Vincenzo’s bouncing baby boy would reap no consequence and I hated that part.
You always knew it was a successful negotiation when both parties left the table with neither party one-hundred percent happy or satisfied, but still both parties able to live with the outcome.
That was where I was at with this.
“I’ll have one of our best men escort you home. Cal isn’t leaving here tonight,” Synister declared at the close, and Mancini nodded.
“I don’t like it, but I understand that is what is best,” he said, and he looked at me critically. “This satisfies you?” he demanded.
“Not even close,” I said evenly and honestly. “But it will do.”
He gave a curt nod and Synister jerked his head, the sign that I was good to go.
“I hope you consider my sincerest apology louder than any perceived disrespect.” Mancini’s sharp dark eyes met mine, and he inclined his head with poised and overdramatic deference.
I didn’t say anything, just looked to Syn who nodded once and jerked his head one more time to tell me to get out of there before I opened my mouth and ruined all his hard work. I nodded back to Syn respectfully, and to Mancini politely, but with a lot less respect, before taking my leave.
I had carte blanche. Reaper was in, which meant Grim was in. I was both surprised and not surprised to find Fear and Tor waiting in the hallway for me.
Fear had a hard-on for rapist pieces of shit. Tor sort of was a rapist piece of shit sometimes but he had a hard-on for tormenting the fuck out of people and he knew that was on the proverbial menu in some capacity, so count him in.
“What’s the word?” Fear asked, falling into step with me and Tor as I jerked my head down the hall further away from Syn’s door and the potential for being overheard.
We went into one of the guest rooms up here and caught a couple fucking, apologized somewhat, and shut the door and followed Torment to his room when he jerked his head we should follow.
I filled them in when we were secure and said, “You boys handle getting me pieces of the other four. Cal being the mastermind of it all is fucking mine and a dead man.”
They nodded, and both traded a salacious grin.
“Fingers or toes?” Torment asked.
“Noses or ears?” Fear raised his eyebrows as he upped the ante and Tor made an appreciative noise.
“Fucking left nuts,” I said, and both of them in unison had their mouths turn down as though they hadn’t considered that and nodded together like they were impressed.
“Worth getting all up in another man’s junk for that,” Torment said.
“Would scare the shit out of me watching you come at my junk with a fillet knife.”
“Oh, this is going to take multiple knives, a whole lot of straps, and we better get a good gag on ‘em before we start. I don’t want to listen to high-pitched girly screams all night.”
“Whatever, just do what y’all are gonna do. I got my own problems,” I said and headed for the door. “You seen Grim or Reaper?”
“Check their room. Last I saw, Reap was staying friendly with that other Army boy or whatever.”
I paused at the door and turned with a feral grin splitting my face into something damn near rictus as it occurred to me – “ How friendly?” I asked.
I was met with answering feral grins from my brothers.
“He didn’t strike me as the gay or bi type,” Torment said with a wicked glee. “So, I imagine he’s not having a real good time right now.”
“Good,” I said, letting myself out of the room and heading back down the hall for the room next door to Syn’s. I rapped on the heavy wood surface and Grim opened up.
“Come on in but hurry it up. It’s about to be my turn,” he said. I smiled and it wasn’t nice.
An eye for an eye… his suffering was just beginning.