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The door creaked and all eyes snapped in the direction of my bedroom, Amelia standing in the doorway, one foot stretched out like she froze mid-stride, wearing a plain black tee and jean shorts that put her legs on perfect display. Her hair was wet, falling in black sheets around her face. Her deep eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted, confronted with a room full of men I knew to be the most fearsome on the East coast, and they were all giving her goofy grins.
She moved toward me slowly, just barely hiking a hip onto my thigh until I wrapped an arm around her and hauled her up.
"Um. Okay. So... tell me," she said, looking for a safe face in the room and settling on Cash.
"Alright, doll," Breaker started, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs. "I ain't gonna sugar coat this. You seem strong enough to handle this. Coupla years back, Shoot carried out a contract for Luis Carlos. Luis was working for a big time H dealer in Miami. He was a violent piece of shit and Shoot was happy to take him out. Shoot didn't know that Luis Carlos wasn't just trying to get free, get his life back; he was making a power play. See Shoot doesn't hang around after a job and none of us have any reason to keep their eyes on shit going down in Miami. So we didn't see Luis taking over Diaz's operation. We didn't see him expand it."
"Expand it?" she prompted when he paused to try to let things sink in.
"Babygirl," Paine broke in and her gaze fell to him. "Luis is a developer. Your apartment building is one of fifteen he has across Florida, Georgia, and Alabama."
"Oh my god. How much heroin..."
"More than you can imagine," Paine finished. "Luis hides the goods when the law is snooping around. He lets things calm down. Then he gets it back out, probably under the pretense of doing some upgrades in the apartments, and then he ships things out through his web. Up the East to smaller dealers, out into the Midwest. His operation is huge. It's... massive. Normally, that would be a good thing."
"How could a massive drug empire be a good thing?" Amelia asked, arms crossing over her chest, her chin lifting in a haughty way.
"You're a nobody," Wolf said on a shrug. "An ant."
"Exactly," Paine agreed. "Problem is, you're not an ant are you?"
Amelia's face scrunched up. "What do you mean?"
"How many other residents in your building does Luis take out on dates, angel?" I asked and felt her shoulders slumped slightly.
"Most of the people in the building are older or men. I'm... I'm the only single woman."
"Honey," Cash said, giving her a smile that screamed 'you're being ridiculous'. "You own a mirror, right? You ever look in the damn thing?"
She rolled her eyes at him and focused on Breaker instead. "So because he wants to date me, I'm screwed. That's what you're telling me."
"We're saying that because he wants to fuck you, babe," Break went on, undeterred when she visibly flinched at his bluntness, "that you're on his radar. My guess? He doesn't even know the names of most of the people in the places he stashes his goods. But he saw you somehow and he got interested and it makes it a lot less likely that you could just... move to a new place and expect to be left alone. Might get you free of the drug problem, but doesn't get you free of the Luis problem."
"I've turned him down plenty before. He's never seemed all that upset about it."
Cash sighed. "Luis dated a girl back in Miami. Gorgeous. Could have been your sister, babe. She was a nice piece of arm candy for him. Dated for a while, got herself a whiff of something on him she didn't like and got shot of him. She moved clear across to California. But Luis, well, he's a man who likes to keep the pretty things he likes around. So he went back, found her with a new man, shot him dead, and dragged her back to Miami. And he kept her there for three years until she fell into the product he was pushing, overdosed. Now honey..."
"I look like her," Amelia supplied in a small voice.
"Yeah, you look like her."
"And he likes to keep pretty things."
"Yeah honey."
"And he likes to kill men who put their hands on his pretty things..."
"Amy," I broke in, not liking where her mind was going.
She hopped up off my lap. "God, I'm so stupid! Why would I come here? I could have just... disappeared. I didn't need to come here. I could have gone anywhere and started over."
"And what, babygirl?" Paine asked, sounding calm. "Let him catch you alone? Unprotected? You did right coming here."
"And putting Johnnie at risk?" she demanded, spinning back to face us.
All eyes went to me. Breaker look amused, Cash and Wolf confused, and Paine hurt. Because the whole "Johnnie" thing wasn't one anyone knew about. And, given that Paine was a close friend, not knowing that... it stung. But I didn't have time for that. "Darlin', I ain't at risk."
"You don't know that. He could be..."
"Amy, I'm not at risk," I said more firmly. "Honey, no one even knows you're here except my people. You didn't tell anyone in Alabama you were coming to Jersey. They all probably think you're in Maine with your family that doesn't exist. We have the upper hand here. We just need to figure out what to do with it."
"Are you going to kill him?" she asked bluntly, eyes on me.
"Maybe," I answered honestly. "Thing is, we don't know how his operation works yet. Sometimes you cut off one head and two or three more grow back. And if his men start fighting for top position, you and all the people who unwittingly have drugs in their walls could be in trouble. Not because you'd be implicated in any way, but because you could be in the way. They could come charging in and..."
