Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
“He’s fine, babe. Don’t worry about him,” he said as he reached into his back pocket, pulling out a wad of cash, and peeling off several bills. “Go on. Get in. Get home. Get some sleep,” he said, pressing the cash into my hand. Then, before I could object, he slammed the door and patted his hand on the hood of the cab.
Feeling something akin to heartsick, I watched his shadow as the taxi drove off and he disappeared.
Only then did I look down at the money he’d given me.
A hundred bucks.
For a two-minute cab ride.
More money for Kyle, I guessed.
Though as I pushed what I didn’t need for the taxi into the pile of the rest of the stolen cash, tears were flooding my eyes.
Sure, I was putting the money toward getting my brother back.
But I was losing everything I wanted with Rico.
And he had no idea how badly I was betraying him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rico
“The fuck you mean he was jumped?” Renzo snapped as I stood in his living room first thing the next morning, not wanting to wake him up on the first night he’d called it early to go home and spend time with his wife all week.
“Just that. He was jumped.”
“The fuck didn’t he call me?” Renzo asked as he walked over to his coffee pot.
“He was close to the meat shop,” I explained. “He decided to make his way there in case the fucks came back.”
Renzo nodded at that, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“Does he know who it was?”
“No. Two guys,” I explained.
“Makes sense. Only way that kid is losing a fight is if he’s outnumbered,” Renzo said.
Coal was his little pet project.
The kid started out as an enemy of the family. But after enduring some brutal beatings as Renzo tried to get information out of him without losing his cockiness or begging for mercy, Renzo kind of decided he would be better as a part of our family than potentially working against it.
Coal was a street kid, on his own for a long time. Which made him hard and hungry and eager to prove his worth. The kid was forever carrying around a black eye, busted lip, or ripped open knuckles. And we allowed it because it was always good for the people on the streets to remember how willing we were to spill blood.
It was rare for someone to win against him.
And it was not good that two guys who should have known who Coal belonged to decided to fuck him up anyway.
Renzo sighed. “Did Coal get any good licks in?”
“Never seen his knuckles so bloody,” I confirmed. I’d taken him with me into the bathroom to clean him up. Partly because I needed the water from the sink. But also because my office smelled like blueberries and sex.
Even just the thought of what happened in my office had my cock nearly springing to life again. Despite having tried to relieve that urge twice already.
Nothing, I was starting to see, was going to make it go away but getting inside of her, fucking through the connection that had grown between us.
If only fucking work would let up for two minutes.
“So, there should be two guys walking around Brooklyn pretty fucked up right now,” Renzo concluded.
“Yeah. I mean, unless they have the good sense to lie low.”
“If they’re jumping a Lombardi soldier, I think it’s safe to say they don’t have much in the way of sense.”
“True. I did get word out to the capos about what happened, but I wanted to wait to talk to you before we give them permission to talk to their soldiers or associates.”
To that, Renzo nodded as he took a sip of his coffee. “Let’s tell them to be on the lookout for guys who are fucked up. We don’t have to tell them all the details. Tell Coal to take a few days off at home to recover. But the more eyes on the street, the better. We need to find these fucks and see who they are working for. If anyone.”
That was what I was thinking too.
It was why Renzo put so much work on my shoulders. We’d been working side-by-side for so long we practically shared a brain.
“Anything else going on that I need to know about?”
“I put out that fire with Cage,” I said. He was another of Renzo’s pet projects. The spoiled, fucked-up son of a previous capo, Cage had gotten himself into all sorts of shit before Renzo got his hands on him, dusted him off, cleaned him up, and put him to work.
Since then, he’d been a pretty reliable soldier. Not our biggest earner, but doing good work. It was a job he was working on that went sideways, making him step on the toes of a local crew who was pissed off about the interference. It only required a little smoothing over. But I had to relocate Cage to a different neighborhood to avoid any future altercations.