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“How many dates do we have to go on before I can profess my undying love for you?” he joked. I laughed.
“Oh, is this a date now?”
“Yes,” he nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, this is a date now. And it’ll be a date tomorrow, too, when I stick around to help you around the house while you’re too sore to walk.”
I burst into guffaws, even though I felt the twinge in my hips that told me he was right. Tomorrow was going to be rough, and I honestly didn’t mind.
Chapter Nineteen
RICHARD
Ilistened to the wet thunk of a baseball bat hitting a man’s soft stomach, rolling my eyes. I wished I was anywhere but here.
I’d been with Lauren four days, and most of that time was spent hunting down this little rat—I wanted it over and done with so I could get back to pampering my new favorite person. Or making her cry on my cock, one of the two.
Unfortunately, we were both stuck at work, her at her office and me at the industrial laundromat where the massive machines could cover up the sounds of screaming.
“Tell me,” I sighed for the thousandth time. I got a groan and a few weak coughs, so I massaged my forehead for a moment before swinging again. He had to cave eventually.
His name was Nico Guerra, and he’d been on the Marino payroll for almost ten years now. That said, he wasn’t anything special; he wasn’t high-ranking, didn’t excel, and didn’t draw attention to himself in any way. He’d never worked his way up the ladder, and he was always overlooked. His performance was fine, but that’s all it was. Some of our guys were like that—they were good at their jobs, liked them, and were loyal to the family, but were comfortable staying right where they were in the pecking order. Up until now, Guerra had been one of them.
The man, who was even thinner than me and had no fat to pad his vulnerable organs, was in really bad shape at this point.
I’d finally hunted him down, I knew for sure he was the source of the leak; he was the snitch who gave the police the information they’d used to put my father in a cell, and I couldn’t even hit him as hard as I wanted. He just wasn’t strong enough to survive it, and he’d broken Omertà—the code of silence. He didn’t get to die from something so easy.
I was so looking forward to it.
But before I could get into the meat and potatoes of my day, I had to get information out of him. The kind of pain I was going to inflict on him was beyond the torture we used for interrogation—it was the kind of cruelty that drove people insane, and you couldn’t trust a confession from an insane man.
But I was getting so bored. It had been almost three hours, and I hadn’t gotten anything out of him, just a bunch of curse words and groans and a couple of ‘just kill me’s. It was cute that he was begging for death already—or maybe he was begging for death now because he knew how much worse it was going to get. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t going to let him skip to the end of this particular film.
“Listen, Guerra,” I sighed, sitting heavily on the metal folding chair. He whimpered on the floor, already looking utterly pathetic. “We both know what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna get what I want, and then I’m gonna kill you slowly. That’s what you signed up for. You have no one to blame but yourself. But this part? This part doesn’t have to happen. We don’t have to sit here and play games, waiting on a rescue you know isn’t coming. Just tell me who paid you so we can get this over with, yeah?”
Guerra, curled into himself on the dingy concrete, sniffled with a whine. I dragged my hand down my face and groaned.
“Come on, man! I’ve got a beautiful woman waiting for me. I wanna get back to her. I might even be persuaded not to dragthis outif you just tell me who paid you." Guerra trembled, but I could tell it was sinking in for him; what he'd already gone through was horrible enough, and he realized there was no way out of this alive. If I offered to reduce his torment in exchange for information, wouldn'tit be his best option?
He coughed weakly, each action shifting the ribs that jutted at unusual angles beneath his skin. I hadn't meant to do that—I hadn't realized how little fat he had until I removed his shirt, and he'd already taken a few hits. His wheezing indicated that one of the bones was pressing on, or perhaps into, his lung. I bet he was close to wanting to die. And I was right.
“You’ll make it fast?” he whispered.
“I’ll make it faster,” I emphasized. Guerra’s whole body quaked, and then he hesitantly shook his head. I huffed. Trying to bargain with me, huh? Too bad, because I wasn’t going to make the offer twice. I picked up the baseball bat again and stood. Guerra screamed.
“The Irish Mob paid him off,” I said, lips pressed together in a serious line. Dad looked upset, but not surprised.
“Did he say how they got to him?” he asked.
“No,” I groaned, running my hand through my hair. “That was the only thing I got before he bit off his own tongue. It wasn’t even on purpose, the idiot just fucked up that bad.” Dad nodded somberly. “I cauterized the stump before he could bleed out so he could get his full punishment, but he can’t talk, and his fingers are all too broken to hold a pencil. He was more or less just blubbering at the end anyway, I don’t think he’d be able to give us anything useful if he could.” Dad sighed.
“Thank you, Richie,” he said. I frowned. He hadn’t called me Richie since I was fourteen and told both him and mom to stop using such a ‘little kid’ nickname for me, and on the rare occasion it made an appearance, it told me he was in a bad place. It told me he needed me, not as his underboss or heir, but as his son. But he was never going to admit it.
“I knew the Irish Mob would take offense to our Colombian collaboration,” he said, sitting back in his chair and rolling his neck out. “They’ve had the heroin market cornered for years, so I knew they weren’t going to react well to us moving in on that, but I hadn’t thought they’d be able to turn our own.”
“They shouldn’t have been able to,” I frowned, crossing my arms over my knees. “There’s so much more we need to know, and the fact that Guerra can’t tell us is a huge roadblock. I’m looking for others.” Dad slid his eyes shut like it hurt him to hear that but nodded tiredly.
“Good,” he said, voice heavy. “There’s no way a low-level grunt like Guerra could possibly know about the heroin deal before it went down, especially not in such detail. Someone closer had to be feeding him information, and now they’re using him as a scapegoat.”
I grit my teeth. I’d come to the same conclusion, but I fucking hated it. Everything we did depended on loyalty, and now we had to question whether or not we had it from every soldier we saw.
