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But I felt like I should have been nervous, at the very least.
I hadn't joined the Family at the same time as everyone else, making my bones at seventeen or eighteen years old when they'd all done their first hits. Back when teenage recklessness would have made the task almost exciting.
I didn't feel nervous or excited, though.
If anything, I felt strangely detached from it all.
I stood back as Brio slipped a lock pick set out of his back pocket, and gained entrance to the apartment.
The empty apartment.
"Well that's anticlimactic," Brio declared, standing in the middle of the living room after having searched the apartment.
"So, what now?"
"Now we wait," Brio declared, snatching a newspaper off of the coffee table, and sitting down with it.
"For how long?" I asked. He could have been at work.
"For however long it takes," Brio declared, shrugging. "The fucker is probably out buying a new flatscreen."
Right.
It was Black Friday.
Impatient, I couldn't occupy myself the way Brio could.
I paced.
Until Brio told me to stop.
"You gotta sit, man," Brio demanded. "Save that energy for questioning this bastard," he said, flipping through the newspaper.
I couldn't quite sit, but I leaned against the wall, fiddling with my watch, going over the whole situation from start to finish, rolling over the details in my head that Lorenzo had given me.
Like how the SUV was registered to the owner of this apartment, but there were clearly others involved since someone had to drive, and someone else had to shoot. Like how we were going to get the other name out of this guy, and how much bloodshed and screaming there might be.
"Here we go," Brio said, perking up, folding the newspaper, and getting off the couch.
I didn't hear anything, but yet again, Brio was the expert here, not me.
"Go into the kitchen," he demanded, waving casually as he pulled a gun out of his holster, and moving behind the door to the hallway.
I took myself into the kitchen, finding a surprisingly neat kitchen with amber glass bottles sitting in a line near the sink.
It was the bottles that had my hair standing up on the back of my neck, something niggling at the very edges of my mind, begging to be uncovered and understood.
I was just about to walk toward them when I heard the door close, then the quickly indrawn breath, followed by Brio's voice.
"I'd say this ain't gonna hurt," Brio said, calm as could be, "but I'd be lying to you, man," he told the man. "Why don't you come out now?" Brio suggested to me, making me abandon the bottles, and move back into the living room.
"Oh," the man said as his gaze fell on me, nodding.
That was strange.
If he should have recognized anyone, it should have been Brio, not me. He'd been in the Family longer. He had a reputation that preceded him all across the States.
Brio's curious gaze slid in my direction, something working behind his eyes too.
"You know me?" I asked, cutting to the chase.
"Yeah."
"How?" I asked, wondering if I'd worked with him in my legit business, if I'd pissed him off, if he felt fucked over. It wouldn't be the first time a man snapped if he felt his livelihood was being threatened.
To that, the man took a slow, deep breath, releasing it on the one word he said. The one name he said.
"Britney."
"You don't get to say that name, man," Brio warned, pressing the muzzle of the gun into the man's temple. He didn't even stiffen at feeling it.
It was then that my brain seemed to start working all at once.
That was why the amber bottles had put me on edge.
Brit was obsessed with amber bottles. All the cleaning products she bought, she emptied into amber bottles and lined them by the sink because she liked how it looked.
There had been amber bottles lined by our kitchen sink for years until, when my mom came to help around the house after Brit's death, she'd stashed them under the sink instead.
This guy had the amber bottles lined up just the way Brit used to do.
Because she'd been here.
She'd been here at this apartment often enough to feel at home, to make changes.
"You were the one seeing Brit," I said, knowing it was true without needing his confirmation.
We'd had a don't-ask-don't-tell rule about it. I knew she'd been seeing someone, but it wasn't my business so long as she kept it away from Avi. So she didn't talk about him and I didn't ask about him.
Apparently, this was him.
And he was nothing like me.
He was shorter and more solidly built, suggesting he likely spent a decent amount of time in the gym picking up and putting down heavy shit. Brit had always been very into her fitness, so that didn't surprise me at all. But his features were opposite of mine, too. He had a very squared jaw, blond hair, and light blue eyes. He was in a pair of lightweight exercise pants and a white tee.
