DARIO
EIGHT
Marco’s office looks like power dancing for an audience that isn’t there.
Heavy brown curtains, a desk built for a man with more physical presence than Marco actually has, a bookshelf lined with framed photographs of him shaking hands with people who matter less than they think.
Even the men flanking him don’t improve the intimidation factor—Charlie hasn’t seen combat since the war ten years ago, and Big John should be Little John since he got on medication for his weight last year.
I’ve sat across this desk a hundred times, and I’ve never once been impressed by this paltry display. Today is not the exception.
“Let me clear Lena Swan’s debt. Tell Ed to back off. You get your money. She gets peace. Win-win.”
“You’ll clear her debt, just like that?”
“Just like that.”
He frowns, which only deepens the lines on his face. “How do you pay me with my money?”
“Not your money. Mine.”
“Money you make from working for me.”
It takes considerable willpower to refrain from having a physical reaction to the implication. We both know he runs things because of my family’s acquiescence.
“As you said. The money I made.”
He sits back, folds his hands in his lap. “No.”
“Marco, this costs the organization nothing.”
“It costs me something. It costs the impression that my men are out here doing favors for women they’re involved with. That’s not an impression I’m running. We don’t do mercy for civilians. It looks soft. It is soft.”
“One has nothing to do with the other. You call stealing money from single moms business, when all Ed’s doing is ripping off the poor. What’s the point of that?”
“It’s a favor for your piece of ass,” he says flatly. “Call it what it is.”
I look at him. I can see the full shape of this conversation from where I’m sitting—the wall he’s built, the reasoning behind it.
It all goes to how he runs things, and I’m picking at that foundation.
Marco decides what things look like before he decides what they are, and once he’s decided, the decision becomes architecture.
I’ve spent years learning which structures to work inside and which ones to route around.
If I keep picking, he’ll get an attitude. “Understood.”
“Good.” He unfolds his arms. “Anything else?”
“Thank you for your time.” I’m in the elevator before his office door is fully closed.
Routing around is not always faster than going through, but it’s more reliable, and I’ve always preferred reliable.
Esposito’s face sits in my brain on the drive home.
His patterns, his bullshit, what he has and doesn’t have.
That low-level asshole always wants what he can’t have.
He blackmails his way into women’s beds by offering to knock off some of their debt for an unsatisfactory fuck, then complains about their performance, raising their interest rate.
He will not have Lena.
I run surveillance for three days, with Alanda ready to text me for emergency cases while she helps out with Opal.
I know Ed’s routine, his car, and the geography of his operation.
He’s small-time, but a big enough producer that he has Marco’s men to help.
What I’m looking for is his schedule in relation to Lena’s—where he shows up, when, how often.
Day one, he drives twice past her old building. That tracks for someone running a collection route, checking whether the debtor is home, keeping her aware she’s being watched. If she doesn’t notice him, her neighbors will. Standard low-grade pressure. Unpleasant, but bounded.
After her shift, he followed her to my building. Explains why Marco knows she’s staying with me.
Day two, he hits Opal’s school. He parks on the block and stays in the car for fourteen minutes during pickup time. This is no longer about the debt. He’s circling what means the most to Lena.
Day three changes the math entirely. He’s in the park—the one Lena brings Opal to on her days off. He’s on foot, wearing a dark jacket, and keeps moving while his eyes are on his fixed point. The fixed point is Lena, who is pushing Opal on the swings and has no idea she’s anyone’s target right now.
He’s moved from collection to surveillance. He’s building a map of her movements, her patterns, her vulnerabilities of schedule and geography. I know what that kind of map gets used for, and it’s not something I’m willing to let develop.
I wait until Lena packs up and she and Opal clear the block. Ed plans to pop out from behind a tree on their way back home.
I cross the park to get to that tree first. It’s near an alley between a bistro and a bookstore.
Ed clocks me coming and does the calculation—registers the suit I’m in, and lands somewhere between cautious and dismissive.
The suit always earns me that half second of underestimation. It’s useful that way.
“Spinelli. Can I help you?”
“You’ve been following Lena Swan.”
He recovers fast, which tells me he’s had practice. “I don’t know who that is. I walk in this park just like everyone else.”
Translation: Marco told me your plan, and you can’t do shit about it, so I’m gonna lie to your face.
“You went past her building. You went past her daughter’s school. You’re in this park right now because she’s in this park right now, and you’ve been forty feet behind her for twenty minutes.” I let that sit. Let him know that I know what he’s doing, and that he’s not the only one who watches.
He’s nervous for just a flash, before he smirks. “I’m flattered, Spinelli, but I don’t go in for men.”
I ignore his attempt at getting a rise out of me. “She owes you money. I understand that. She’ll pay it back. In the meantime, you will stay away from her.”
He shifts his weight. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the man who knows, in clinical detail, exactly how much damage a body can sustain before it stops being able to answer questions,” I say quietly. “Not from my medical background. Or did you forget who I am?”
“You’re threatening me?”
“Marco wouldn’t like me threatening you. So of course I’m not.”
He looks at me for a long moment. There’s nothing in my face that helps him resolve the calculation, and eventually, the math produces the only answer available to it. His fingers tick like he’s thinking of taking this up a level.
Not happening. Not with Lena and Opal on their way here. I hook my arm around his and pull, forcing him to come with me into the alleyway.
“Get your fucking hands off—”
I wedge my knife against his ribs through my suit jacket. “Now, now, Ed. You don’t want a new breathing hole, do you?”
He’s remarkably more cooperative by the time we reach the alleyway. I watch as Lena and Opal walk and giggle their way past the entry of the alley, completely unaware of what I’m up to.
Which is the point.
“Fine,” he grumbles. “She can have some time. We’ll deal with it another way.”
“There is no other way. You don’t have business with Lena. You don’t have business with her daughter. That’s permanent, not provisional.” I release him, largely because I refuse to go home smelling of cheap cologne.
He laughs once—flat, bitter, the laugh of a man swallowing something he didn’t choose to swallow. “We’ll see.”
“The fuck we will—”
“Marco will have your ass if you keep this bullshit up, and you know it, Spinelli. I’ll let your little girlfriend have some peace.” He holds his hands up as he backs out of the alley. “For now.” Then, he disappears into the park before I can catch up to him.
From where I’ve parked, I can see the park path. Lena and Opal are already gone. I sit in the quiet and think through what just happened, which was straightforward.
Ed needed to understand the math had changed. He understands it now. That’s all that matters.
What I sit with longer is the surveillance log—the school, the park, the patterns. He’d already moved past debt collection into something else. What would another month have looked like, what might a Tuesday night on her old block have become, what would he have done to her?
I don’t finish that line of thinking because there’s no use in it. It didn’t happen. I’m here, and it didn’t happen. It never will.
What I don’t sit with at all, because there’s even less use in it, is the fact that I did this without Marco’s sanction.
I went around him. I made a call about a situation using methods he’d consider organizational resources—my time, my read on the threat, my standing with the people whose goodwill makes a conversation like that one possible.
Marco didn’t authorize any of that. If he finds out—when he finds out, because Ed’s a goddamn rat when it comes to his fragile ego—there will be a conversation I won’t enjoy having.
Marco is going to be a problem. He’s been a problem I’ve been managing for years, and he’ll keep being one, and when the conversation comes, I’ll handle it the way I always handle Marco. Directly and without artifice.
We both know the score. We both know what I think of his so-called leadership. If this is what brings things to a head, so be it.
I put the car in drive and go home.
Lena is in the kitchen when I get there, making something with garlic and lemon that fills the apartment with the smell of a place someone actually lives in.
Opal is at the counter with a worksheet, tongue out in concentration, her sneakers dangling over the floor.
Lena smiles when she sees me. “Welcome home.”
Those two words strike something in my core. “Uh, thanks.”
I put my keys on the hook. I wash my hands. Nobody asks me to explain anything, and I don’t offer, and we eat dinner while Opal tells us about Alanda’s color game and how she explained what it means to be colorblind.
After dinner, Lena does the dishes, and Opal draws at the counter, and I review notes at the kitchen table.
The three of us exist in the same space, doing separate things without it requiring any coordination at all.
I’ve been noticing things about this apartment lately in a way I didn’t before—the way a room feels different when it’s occupied by people who are at ease in it, the way the evening feels more comfortable now than before they moved in.
It’s a normal evening. Or what I’m starting to understand normal can mean.