Page 21 of Pink

“Forgive me for asking why right now,” Lev said, choosing each word carefully because he might really like to make it out of the parking lot alive, “but why are you here?”

Because really, wasn’t that the important thing?

That cigar in Andino’s hand curled with smoke when the man dropped his arm to his side. Pushing away from the hood of the Benz, he peered off to the side where Lev noticed another man stood waiting, dressed in all black, about twenty feet away.

“Another man of mine,” Andino informed, “he drives like shit, but he knows how to handle a gun and really, that’s what I need at the moment. I seem to be down a man considering the one that got his brains blown out at Nickie’s a couple of nights ago. Hard to find good, loyal guys in this business so it’s always a rough go for a while when you need to replace one.”

“About that—what happened at Nickie’s, I mean.”

Andino’s sharp gaze swung back to Lev, silencing him immediately. “More whys?”

Well …

“Something happened, and it kind of felt like I might have had something to do with it without actually knowing about it,” Lev replied, keeping his tone as respectful as he could manage. “I might like to know what it was, Andino.”

The other man nodded. “Fair point.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Well, no. I wasn’t. Business, you know?”

“Not really, no.”

Andino laughed under his breath and shook a finger at Lev. Like a loaded gun would be pointed at his face, he wondered if he overstepped a line. The grin curving Andino’s lips said all was fine.

For now.

“To simplify it down—my guest at the fights had a fighter that he wanted me to invest in. Nickie is a small fish in the underground fighting world, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“I pay less attention to things I hear and more to what I see, actually.”

A finger wagged at him again.

“See, another reason to like you, Lev,” Andino replied without malice. “Nonetheless, I may or may not be dipping my toes into that side of things, and my potential business partner thought his fighter would be the one for me to drop a few million into over the next few months.”

“The fighter—”

“You knocked out in less than three minutes, yes,” Andino interjected with a chuckle. “And you don’t even fight for a living. You just … have a way about you in the ring. I noticed. Anyway, my guest felt a bit put out by my dealings on the side that night with picking the fighter his man went up against. A small dispute, really.”

Lev’s brow lifted high. “You call a man getting shot in the head a small dispute?”

“Wasn’t my head, was it?”

He suspected that, in a nutshell, was Andino’s outlook on a lot of things. Maybe it had to being a man in his position, Lev couldn’t be sure. And he had zero intention of asking.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Lev pointed out. “Why you’re here, I mean. Seems to me that the only reason a man like you would be around these parts of the city to talk to someone like me would be to make sure I don’t talk at all.”

Dark eyes surveyed him. Lev stayed tall and firm.

He lived for pressure.

Always had.

“You wouldn’t be wrong on any other day,” Andino returned, “but no, that’s not why I’m here. Are you in a rush? From what I understand, Nickie’s place is closed for the next couple of days so the police can finish their … investigation. If that’s what one wants to call that travesty. They were paid off before the night was out—it’s all details now. That is where you work, yes? What exactly do you have to do today if work is out of the question?”

Lev shrugged. “Whatever I want. Whether or not my business is important to your business doesn’t really matter, does it? I’m not on your time clock, Andino.”

The man grinned. “But you could be.”