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Again, Salvatore had a lot of bodies to his name. He wasn’t scared of me.
But he respected that I was upholding traditions, so his chin inclined toward me.
“Got it. And you’ll get it if I just hang here to make sure you do what you say you’re going to do.”
“Whatever gets you off, man,” I said, moving inside my building.
I’d considered getting myself a brownstone like the boss man had. It was nice, had room to grow. But a part of me didn’t trust that I wouldn’t use the opportunity to bring my work home with me.
And that, well, that was how a man could get pulled in on all kinds of charges.
True, New York didn’t have the death penalty anymore. But it wasn’t just in New York I’d been… conducting my business. So if some overzealous cop got me on murder in the city and started doing some digging, wanting to make his bones off my back, he would link me to some cases in states where I would end up strapped to a table with a cocktail of pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, and midazolam dripping into my arm.
The last of the three was to calm you down while the first paralyzed your muscles and respiratory tract, so you are still as they inject the second drug in to kill your heart.
Anyone who’d ever lived through it said it was like having fire poured through your veins. But you can’t move or scream.
Apparently, you welcome death.
Don’t get me wrong, I earned a needle in my arm more than a few times.
But I was going to try to avoid it at all costs.
So I went ahead and got myself a fourth-floor apartment with nosy-ass neighbors who would know if I left my TV on all night, and damn sure wouldn’t miss me stringing up a body in the bathtub to dismember it.
I didn’t spend a hell of a lot of time at home. Even several years after moving in, it was pretty much the exact same builder-model streamline gray and white look with a black sectional in the living room and a king-sized bed in the bedroom.
There was no real food in the fridge, no stocks of essentials in the pantry. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I had the pots and pans required to cook a meal in the space.
When you had as big a family as the Costas, you didn’t really have to go out of your way to find someone who was cooking a big meal who wanted you at their table.
So on the nights when I wasn’t busy working, that was where you could find me until it was time to go home and sleep.
I’d never really given my lifestyle much thought before.
And I wasn’t exactly sure why I was doing so then as I put a pod in the coffee maker, then went into the bathroom to take a quick shower to wash off the scent of perfume and sex while it brewed.
Well, that wasn’t exactly right.
I knew why.
Ezmeray was why.
I was no stranger to women, but I hadn’t ever really had anything other than casual hookups with them before. Just some light bar or dinner conversation followed by a tour of her sheets. Not mine. I never brought anyone home.
But since the interactions were short-lived and casual, I’d never felt the need to take a step back and take stock of my life, to think about what I had to offer.
Because the only thing I would typically offer a woman was a good time and then a friendly enough goodbye.
Ezmeray, though?
Something said that a woman I went out of my way to kill for was the kind of woman worth taking stock for as well.
And as I drank my coffee and got dressed to go over to the boss man’s place, I wasn’t sure I liked what I found.
A bare apartment.
A workaholic lifestyle.
Family, yeah, I had that.
But no friends.
No real hobbies. If you didn’t count torturing and murdering people, that is.
What the hell did I even have to offer Ezmeray? Aside from hands that wouldn’t beat her, that is.
On that depressing thought, I made my way back downstairs, finding Salvatore true to his word and still waiting out front to make sure I was doing what we both knew I needed to do.
“Are you coming or are you going to trust me from here, man?” I asked, pausing at the bottom of the steps to wait for an answer.
“I’ll trust you. Ant is probably getting sick of having his sister for a babysitter right about now. Gotta get back.”
“Ey, Salvatore,” I called when he was several yards away.
“Yeah?” he asked, turning back.
“Appreciate you holding me accountable. But remember it isn’t your place until it is your place, yeah?”
“Yeah, I know,” he agreed, nodding, then turning to walk away.
