Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
LUKA
Traffic is sparse at this hour, and the air is thick with the lingering scent of rain. I pull up my collar, waiting for the car. The sidewalks are lit in patches by the faint glow of neon signs and scattered storefront lights. Horns blare in the distance.
Maybe you don’t think it’s a thankable event, but for me, it is.
A thankable event?
And then she wanted to retract her thanks?
I just completed a bloody takeover of one of the most savage clans in the history of the Albanian mafia. I have killers to find and scores to settle... and her right to retract her thanks is what I’m focusing on?
And what kind of whore talks to me like that in the first place?
I’ll admit, I goaded her. Some dark part of me was hungry for her balled fists, her flashing gaze, and the way she lifted her chin when she was upset.
And God, the way it felt to be inside her, her defiance burning through me like a purifying flame.
Not that I need purification. I left behind concepts like dirty and clean a long time ago. Brute force is the only thing that matters now .
Taking back her thanks.
I check the GPS. It’s off? Off?
I grind my molars together.
That won’t do.
The town car slides up, long and sleek. I slip in next to Orton, across from a kid. Zedd’s corner guy.
Orton unwraps a stick of gum. He’s a terrifying bull of a man, crafty and cunning yet sentimental.
He loves the old songs. He can dance the Valle Pogonishte better than anyone.
He believes in the ancient lore. If this were olden times, he’d be burning heretics or joining up with the Spanish Inquisition.
When I seized power from my brother last month, Orton commissioned us a traditional Albanian man’s brooch inset with a hound’s head and carved from deep red carnelian for the Ghost Hound Clan. Such brooches are traditionally used to hold together vests or scarves, but we use them as tie clips.
This kid is fourteen at most. His wild gaze is fixed on me like I might tear out his windpipe at any second.
I put out my hand. Orton gives me a stick of gum, and I unwrap it. “You know why you’re here?”
He stares at me, wide-eyed, teeth clenched around his black bandana gag.
I give him a version of the loyalty lecture I gave to the other guys as Storm drives us through the night, silent as a mountain.
“Some people think they’re better off telling me what I want to hear when I ask them questions,” I say to the boy.
“Some people think it’s safest to stick with their original story, like maybe they lied at first, and now they’re thinking that hiding that lie is the only way out.
Like once they’ve gone down that road, they have to stay on it.
” I pause here, nice and long. “Those people are all dead.”
The kid nods. Storm tied the gag; I can tell from the lack of twists. Orton always twists a gag up like a rope.
I pull out a blade and slice the thing off.
The story pours out before I can get to the zip tie binding his wrists.
As I suspected, Zedd thought he’d take advantage of the chaos surrounding the leadership change to cash in, and he strong-armed this kid into playing along, using money and a threat on the kid’s dog as his carrot and stick.
Ten minutes later, Storm’s shoving Zedd into the back seat with us.
Zedd puts the situation together pretty quickly and starts blaming the entire thing on the kid, which is very convenient and just more proof of his guilt.
Zedd denies it all the way to the Palisades. We park and walk to the edge of the cliff. I make the boy watch me put a hole in Zedd’s face with my nine. Orton shoves his body over the edge and down into the river.
I turn to the kid. “Any questions?”
He shakes his head energetically.
Orton lights a match, lets it burn down to the end, and then throws it over the cliff and into the river after him. The match symbolizes extinguishing a life. Tossing it into water cleanses the sin.
Supposedly.
We drop the kid off at the run-down building where he seems to be squatting.
“Your brother would have killed the boy, too,” Orton says when we’re back on the road. “And the boy knows it.”
I grunt.
“And now he’s yours. You’ll have his loyalty now.” He turns to me there in the back seat. “You came for the vengeance. You stayed for the power trip.”
I give him a look. “How much do I have to pay you to stop saying that?”
He’s grinning. “You took the throne, and you like it.”
“For now.” That’s all I’ll commit to. I never wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps long term, but I do like the power and all the rest of it .
“You send the girl home?” he asks.
“Yeah, but she’s on the hook for two weeks.”
Orton straightens, surprised. “You hired her for two weeks?”
“Yup.”
He falls silent in a way that says no comment.
“What?” I demand.
“Just not like you, that’s all. To want a repeat performance.”
“I saw her, I wanted her, I took her. Now I’m keeping her a bit.”
He toys with his relic ring now, looking thoughtful. The ring has tiny hinges on the side where it once opened, though it would’ve been long since fused shut, concealing its contents inside.
I don’t do relationships—at least not in this decade—and I never fuck the same woman twice. Orton likes the people around him to be predictable.
I fix him with a hard look. “Got something to say?”
“It’s just not like you.”
I let the uncomfortable silence expand beyond what normal people can tolerate, daring him to say Sara’s name. I know that’s what he’s thinking.
It’s not like you to get hooked up with someone since Sara.
Not like you to care about who you fuck since Sara.
Not like you to differentiate one pussy from the next since what you did to Sara.
But he stays quiet. He concentrates on his ring, turning it on his finger.
The ring is a family heirloom that he managed to keep through our mercenary years, from bloody battles in sweltering alleyways to snowy hellscapes. I’m supposed to take it off him if he dies. He’s supposed to take my St. Michael medallion.
He twists it again. Old rings like his usually contain family relics or clan relics—hair or bone or bits of burial shroud from The First, a mafia king who lived four centuries ago. Orton will never say what’s in it. More superstitions .
The pseudo-uncomfortable silence stretches on. Orton can tolerate as much discomfort as I can.
“Right, okay,” Orton finally says.
I grab my coat. I’ll be the judge of what’s like me or not.