16. Dante #2
I tick my head toward my room. “You’re welcome to sleep there if you’d like. I”ll be out all night.”
She frowns. “A job?”
“Shipment.”
“This late?”
I nod slowly. I don’t tell her that Elio’s going, too. I don’t want her to worry. “Be careful,” she murmurs, and my heart stutters.
“Always.”
She keeps walking down the stairs in her bare feet. I want to turn and watch her go, but I don’t, heading to my room instead with a deep intake of breath.
I text the cleaners to come by tomorrow and take Pete out of the panic room, and then I dress simply in a pair of black slacks and a black t-shirt, placing my gun in the back of my pants and sliding a small dagger into my back pocket.
By the time I come back downstairs, Elio’s waiting for me. He grins. “Been a while since we’ve done a job together.”
Elio’s actually excited. He’s always liked the adrenaline of the life. It’s not the same for me. I do my job and I do it well, but I wouldn’t say I enjoy it.
“Did you learn anything from Grice?”
I nod. “Says it’s an enforcer, but he doesn’t know which.”
He frowns. “Alright. That narrows it down.”
“We’ll find him.”
He looks at his watch. “We gotta go.”
Elio nods his head along to the radio on the way downtown, and I shake my head at him, smiling. I guess it’s not too bad, working with Elio again.
We arrive around eleven-thirty, parking a block away and walking the rest of the way.
As soon as we approach the warehouse,I know something’s off. There’s nothing obvious, but it’s quiet. Too quiet. I know Elio has men stationed out here, and they should be talking, shifting around, something.
Instead, it’s silent.
I pull my gun before Elio reaches the door. Elio slowly opens it, and gunshots ring out. I curse, shoving him back behind me, but not before I see the blood on his shoulder.
He fumbles for his gun but I’m quicker, firing blindly into the dark warehouse.
They’ve turned the lights off, and it’s pitch black. I can only see bits and pieces in the gunfire. One face. Two. Three. There might be more hiding in the darkness.
“Fuck!” Elio shouts, ducking behind a crate.
“Stay down, you’re hit.”
“It’s nothing,” he says, as more gunshots crack the air.
I crouch behind another crate and Elio grins at me, laughing wildly. “I needed this.”
I shake my head. “You always were a crazy sonofabitch. Put pressure on that wound.”
I can’t see him to see how bad the wound is, how much it’s bleeding, and he probably doesn’t feel it due to the adrenaline.
Elio does as I say. Footsteps alert me and I pop up from behind the crate, firing off three shots. A grunt and thud tells me I hit one of them. “Saw three!” I shout to Elio over the gunfire as I duck back behind the crate.
Elio stands up easily enough and fires a few times before crouching back down. A yelp. Another hit. “Two down!” he says, sounding absolutely delighted.
The gunfire stops and it’s silent except for Elio’s heavy breathing. How bad is he hit? How much blood is he losing? “Stay here.”
“Hell no.”
I groan, knowing it’s pointless to argue. I army crawl behind a crate further into the warehouse and Elio follows. We hide behind the same crate, back to back. “Wait for it,” I whisper as footsteps approach slowly. “On three.”
“On three or before three?” he hisses.
I groan. “Didn’t I say on three? One…two…three!” We both pop up at the same time, firing, and a thin scream rings out.
“Bingo!” Elio cheers, and I get up and hit the lights.
Three bodies lie in various places around the warehouse, the third man right next to the crate we hid behind. I turn to Elio. Blood soaks his white shirt and he’s panting. He sags, bracing himself on the crate and my stomach drops. “We gotta go.”
“Not before we know who they are. See if one of them is the rat.”
“Elio, you’re fucking bleeding out, we have to go see Doc—”
“Do it, Dante.” There’s no room for argument in his tone, so I do as he says. I don’t recognize anyone.
“No one. Just Luciano’s crew.”
Elio curses under his breath. I work myself under his good arm and we limp back to the car. I haul him into the passenger seat and speed to Doc’s, our medic. “Call ahead,” Elio says, his voice weakening as I peel into the street.
I tug out my phone, put it on speaker, and punch Doc’s contact. “Coming in hot,” I tell him when he picks up the phone. “Two minutes out.”
“Fuck. You?”
“Elio.”
“Double fuck. I’ll get my bag. Come to the downstairs office, the baby’s just gone down.”
Doc, otherwise known as Johnny Greco, has been a medic to half the mob for twenty-five years. He started young so he’s just about my age. We all started young, didn’t we? Too fucking young.
My heart pounds when I glance over at Elio and realize he’s unconscious. I skid the car to a stop next to the downstairs office and Doc runs out. We carry Elio together into his office, lying him on the exam table. Doc runs a legitimate clinic every other weekend for the poor, so it’s well-stocked.
He cuts off Elio’s shirt and I pace around the room, running a hand through my hair over and over. “Bullet’s still in him,” Doc says gravely. “I’ll have to dig it out.”
“Can you put him under?”
He shakes his head. “No, his blood pressure is probably too low. You’ll have to hold him down because this is going to be a rude awakening.”
Doc pulls some medical equipment out of his bag, an instrument that looks like some kind of fucked up tweezers. I just stand there for a split second, staring at the instrument. “Look alive, Dante!” Doc snaps, and I jerk into action.
I hold Elio’s shoulders down. I can’t look as he digs the instrument into Elio’s wound. Elio wakes up with a start, fighting me and screaming bloody murder, but I’m bigger than him, and stronger. I’m able to hold him down, though Doc seems to take an hour to get it.
Finally he drops the bullet in a nearby trash can. It clinks against the metal. Elio finally relaxes, breathing hard. “Jesus fuck, Doc,” he pants.
Doc gives him a grin. “Good to see you too, Elio.” He puts a tight compression bandage on the wound. Elio’s eyes roll up to look at me, and they’re clear, at least.
“Thanks.”
“I’m the one who did all the work,” Doc cracks. Elio tries to get up and Doc pushes him back down. “Hold your horses. You’re staying here for an IV and antibiotics. You’ve lost a lot of blood. You can go home tomorrow.”
Elio groans and throws a forearm over his eyes dramatically. “I can stay with you,” I suggest. Birds are starting to chirp outside. We’ve been out all night.
Elio lifts his forearm and peeks at me. “Nah, go home. Relieve Ricardo. He’s had some family issues lately.”
I scoff but Elio’s expression goes stony. “You’re sure?”
“Do I ever say anything I don’t mean?”
“Alright, alright.” I clap Doc on the shoulder. “Thank you.”
He nods and I give Elio one last look before leaving. When I get into the car and put my hands on the steering wheel, they’re trembling.
I fucked up. I should have told Elio it felt fucking weird. Should have gone ahead of him. I wasn’t thinking.
That’s not true. I was thinking. I was thinking about his daughter.
I know what I have to do.
It’s just going to be a bitch to do it.