Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
LUKA
She starts to get down from the sink.
I clamp a firm hand over her thigh.
“Stay right there,” I growl.
She looks outraged.
I run warm water over a towel and clean her.
She seems surprised, but this is what I’m doing. “You got something to say about this, too?”
She shakes her head.
Gently, I pat her pussy. “You sure? No bullshit about this, too?”
“It’s nice,” she says.
“You tell yourself whatever you want,” I say.
“I’m going to tell myself it’s nice, then.”
I pet her pussy with a dry towel now.
“When I make you come while you hate me,” I say, “it takes a little bit of your soul, doesn’t it?”
She narrows her eyes, processing what I just said. “Literally—you are so deranged.”
“We established that a long time ago. But I think you are a little bit, too. ”
She sniffs, chin held high, and grabs the cloth from my hand. She finishes up while I put myself back together, and then she hops down and throws it in the towel basket.
“Ready?”
She hesitates. Something’s on her mind—I can tell from her expression. How is it I’ve come to read her expressions so well?
“What?” I ask.
“The cookies! I have to know. You have to tell me.”
“What about the cookies?” I tease.
“Come on! What was so offensive about them?”
I give her a confused look, trying not to smile.
“It looked to me like that guy was about to kill somebody over cookies. And you’re all like, yeah, those cookies.”
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat.”
“Oh, come on.” She grabs my shirt and tugs on it playfully. “You have to tell me!”
I roll my eyes, enjoying her curiosity in spite of myself, drinking in the way the pale blue dress kisses her curves.
“It’s an old Albanian superstition. Cookies in the shape of a circle are bad luck during somber or dangerous occasions.
You would never serve them during funerals, for example, or the day a person dies, or when you’re marching into a dangerous battle. ”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“The idea behind it is that the circle symbolizes a cycle or repetition.”
“Wow.” She nods. “That’s why he mentioned Good Friday being soon. The death of Jesus.”
“Exactly.”
She studies my face. “Do you think they’re bad luck?”
“I think if you think something’s bad luck, then it will be.”
Her gaze sharpens. “So when you were all, ‘Circle cookies, what the fuck!’ at the table, you were playing along with your guys?”
“That was more for you,” I say .
“Oh my God!” She gives me a playful push.
I laugh, chest light and free, like something in me unwound. And this is when I know that things have gone far enough. “We’re done.”
She blinks, studying my face.
“For the night.” I drag her back out. The guys are talking sports again. It wasn’t even an hour that we were in the bathroom, but it seemed like longer. Like we went on a journey in there.
She grabs her coat. I tell her to text her address to the dry cleaners, and they’ll send it.
She stills, clutching her purse. She doesn’t want to reveal her address, it seems, even for the dry cleaner to send her dress. “I’ll pick it up later,” she says. “Polkov, right? I’ll google them.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I say.
“What? Why can’t I pick it up?” She turns to me with a big frown. “Is Polkov Dry Cleaners a secret, criminal dry cleaner? Are they located next to the criminal Costco?”
“I brought you here. All that happens is my responsibility—mine and mine alone.”
“Oh, I should’ve known; it’s a mine thing. The standard-issue criminal mindset. Mine.”
I step in close to her. “You got a problem with it?”
“No, but Johnny Law does.”
“Johnny Law. Who says that?”
She snorts. “I do.”
I’m about to demand that she tell me, but I can feel Orton tuning in to our conversation now.
Good God, since when do I have ridiculous banter with a hooker?
And since when do I give a shit what people do or where they go on their own time? Where they live or how they know Arianiti’s eagle? I forgot to make her tell me about that one, but that’s not what this is .
I send a guy to hurry them up, and I hand her my black Amex. “You will buy some more dresses.”
“B-but?—”
I lower my voice to just a shade off of menacing. “Buy more dresses and outfits like that one, but don’t get too attached to them because I am going to be destroying those fucking outfits, and I don’t want drama about it.”
“But you already paid me.”
I give her a warning look.
“Okay, okay, okay.” She pockets the card, watching me expectantly, waiting for my next command. The whole fucking thing is getting me hard.
“Use the card or else.”
“Understood,” she whispers. Orton returns her phone.
I tell Gianni to drive her home, and I watch her walk off with a feeling I don’t like. Why am I acting like this?
I join my guys. We hash out some personnel problems.
Gianni texts me when he drops her off—at a pizza place in Midtown.
What the fuck? A pizza place? After that meal?
And who the fuck lives in Midtown?
I’m fucking annoyed now. Is she more of a distraction than she’s worth? Yes. I should cut her loose. It’s not me to be fussing about people like this.
Eventually, it’s just Orton and me at the big empty table, with Storm up by the door. The ghost who’s not quite here, his favorite position to play.
“Got intel,” Orton says to me.
“Talk.”
“The Tucumayo hitters weren’t ours. Weren’t even Albanian clan.”
“Who told you that?”
“Florian. He took me aside and told me privately. I’ll double-source it, but the info seems good. ”
“Florian’s got his ear to the ground,” I observe.
“Sure does.”
I’ll be glad if it’s true. I don’t like to think that the men I’ve inherited would slaughter an innocent young girl. Bloodbaths I’m fine with, but young kids who aren’t in the game? There, I draw the line. It’s a matter of honor. Besa .
It also says that my brother went out of his way to hire somebody or somebodies outside the clan. Hitters he knew would do a vicious job.
“Florian says there are lots of rumblings about our quest to find the Tucumayo hitter or hitters,” Orton continues. “You gotta think whoever did it knows we’re after them now.”
I set a fork on its tip, rotating it minutely, watching the reflection scatter through the tines. The last thing you want when hunting a hitman is for that hitman to know you’re hunting him.
Orton pushes a plate of baklava toward me. “You’re a target now.”
“It was always just a matter of time,” I say. “They won’t come at me personally—not at first.”
“No, they’ll throw something at you to figure out what he’s up against. Nobody knows what you’re made of. You should keep Storm around you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t be fucked up. Keep Storm with you. They’re gonna test you.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
Orton drains his raki.
I press my fork into the triangle tip of the baklava, oozing with honey and spices. The baklava here is unmatched. Edie would’ve liked it. I should’ve made her stay for it.
As if hearing my thoughts, Orton taps his own fork on one of the glasses left at the table. “Want me to run it for prints?”
So he held back Edie’s glass. “Nah. ”
“You don’t know who she is.”
I take another bite. “She’s nobody to me.”
Orton stays silent, eyeing the glass.