Page 18 of Duty

He took it that Safe Haven was popular.

Good on them.

Given there was only one chair at Nathaniel’s table, Andino grabbed the free chair at the table with all the people. “Just need it for a second,” he told the guy who glanced at him. The bearded, ripped-jean wearing man narrowed his gaze. Andino laughed. “And now you can get it your-fucking-self when I’m done, asshole.”

“Hey—”

“Yeah, you try it. You look like you could give me a run for my money outside.”

Except he didn’t look like that.

At all.

Swinging his back to the guy and not waiting for a response, Andino dropped the chair on the other side of Nathaniel’s small table, and sat down with his arms hanging over the back. The bookie passed Andino a passive glance, and then went back to his phone call while his other two phones on the table randomly flashed and vibrated with texts.

In between the phones sat an open notebook with names, numbers, and other information scribbled in every line. How the bookie handled all of this information and numbers, Andino would never understand. But the guy did it—quite well, actually.

“No, for you,” Nathaniel said to whoever was on the other end of the call, “because you catch an attitude every time I don’t give you the answer you want, the minimum just went up to one G. Five to one on Macey—take it or fucking don’t, that’s up to you.”

Hanging up the phone, Nathaniel dropped the phone on the table like he didn’t give a shit about it at all. He passed Andino a nod, but his attention was on the changing lights up by the stage and whatever the DJ was announcing over the speaker. In typical Andino fashion, he didn’t pay attention to that shit, but rather, the business that needed handling at the moment.

“Five to one—Macey. Is that the fight in Vegas?”

The bookie nodded. “It is.”

“I heard those odds are actually one to five.”

A sly grin spread over Nathaniel’s lips. “You would be correct.”

“You’re purposely misleading a client?”

“I hate when he wastes my fucking time—minimum bet is actually three-hundred. Trust that in five minutes or so, he’ll call back with a proper apology, I’ll offer to halve the bet to five-hundred, and he’ll pay with the odds I told him to. He’ll lose, and it’ll be a good lesson for him about how to speak to me the next time he calls. And … he will call again. They always do.”

Yep.

And this right here was why Andino let Nathaniel get away with some of his shit. The guy knew what he was doing, and he did it extremely well.

“And don’t go starting shit with any of the fucking young ones in here, yeah?” Nathaniel said, nodding at the table where Andino had stolen the chair from. “I actually like this joint, Andi. I might want to come back.”

Andino laughed. “Yeah, I’ll try.”

The bookie only sighed.

“On your issue—the lawyer—I cleaned it up. I was able to retrieve seventy percent of the debt through other means.”

For the first time since Andino sat down, Nathaniel’s cool demeanor cracked as his gaze narrowed, and a scowl fettered over his mouth. “That so?”

“It is. It’s not like you to get mixed up with someone who can’t pay their debts. What happened there?”

“He developed a habit, I guess.”

“That all?”

Nathaniel sucked in air through his teeth. “Favor to a friend, maybe.”

Ah.

“That makes more sense,” Andino noted.