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I followed the beautiful rhythm until she turned to walk down the hallway. “You sure will,” I murmured while adjusting my package in my pants. Someway and somehow, I had to arrange my day to make it back to Nicole as soon as possible.
***
My secretary called me on my drive to the office. “Mr. DeLuca, this guy has been up here since seven waiting for you. What do you want me to tell him? He says his name is Tae.”
My muscles tightened. The whispers I’d put out in the streets had worked well enough to make the judas who went ghost over a decade ago reappear. Tae was at my place of business.
I laid into the gas and said, “Tell him I’m on my way.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tae was a nuisance. He was on my hit list for more than one reason. He had betrayed me by colluding with my enemy, then snitched on me and got me mixed up in a drug case. That was eleven years ago when I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life, so I let him make it. I didn’t even mention my problems with him to Ishmael.
But lately, Tae had been smelling himself again. He was jealous of Ishmael and Miracle’s relationship, so he was fucking with them. And well, when you have bad blood with Ishmael, you have bad blood with me. So, just like that, our beef was reignited.
Thankfully, Ishmael wouldn’t be in the office today. He and Miracle were away in Hawaii for a six-day mini vacation. Neither of them needed to know about this meeting with Tae.
I had other plans for Tae at the moment. He was going to help me with my Desi problem. He really only had two choices. I would kill him for withholding information about his friend, or I would kill him for our old and new bad blood. Either way, he was living on borrowed time.
After maneuvering through traffic like a madman, I pulled into my normal parking space within minutes. I came through the IVCC main corridors like a man on a mission.
“Where is he?” I asked my secretary.
“Right over there.” She pointed toward the waiting room just as Tae stood and walked out to meet me. He looked rough like life had been giving him pure hell.
I nodded toward my office.
Tae strolled inside, dropped down in the chair in front of my desk and made himself comfortable. “I hear you’ve been looking for me. Well, here I am.”
I adjusted my tie and leaned my head to the side to work the tense muscles in my neck. “You’re a hard man to find.” Had I found him a month ago, he wouldn’t be able to help me with my current problem. He would have been dead already.
“What do you want with me, Veet?”
“Vito,” I corrected.
“Veet, Vito, same difference. What do you want?” The weasel had grown some balls.
I shook my head. “You see, Tae, That’s why you didn’t last on my team. No respect then, no respect now. Before a man leaves the earth, he must learn the principles of respect,” I warned.
Tae scoffed. “Now that we have the pleasantries and lessons out of the way, I will ask you again. What do you want with me? Why are you looking for me?”
“Straight to the point, huh? Very good.” I took my seat and stared across the mahogany desk at him. “Boys who beat their women are rat bastards. Do you know any rat bastards, Tae?”
He shot me an uncomfortable glance. “I’m sure I know at least one or two, but I don’t beat my woman, so why are you questioning me about this?”
“What about Desi? Does he beat his women?”
“Who, Nicole?”
“Yeah, Nicole.”
He shrugged. “I might have heard something like that, but I never witnessed it. Why you asking me about another man and his woman?”
I growled, “She’s not his, and she will never be his again.”
He held both hands out to me in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “Whoa, okay. I hear you, man.”
“She's under my protection now, and I’m looking for Desi. Can you help me with that? And before you answer, I want you to give it some thought because your cooperation might help get you off my shit list.”
