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“Molly?” I asked.
Julien shook his head. “Nah. Marco bought from him to check his inventory. It looks like he’s got all scripts. Percs, Oxy, some Addies. From what Marco saw, Schiffer’s cleaning up. The crowd is liking what he’s supplying.”
I rubbed my chin, attempting to maintain a level head even as my blood boiled. This kid knew better. He really did. That was why he’d been staying out of my eyesight. You didn’t walk into Reno’s party and sell your own product. That wasn’t how it worked. Schiffer was small time, no real competition for Reno, but it was the principle and the fact that we’d caught him at this game more than once. Obviously, the lesson hadn’t been drilled into his head hard enough.
“Bring him to the back.” I nodded toward the courtyard behind the warehouse. Surrounded on three sides by brick walls with barbed wire on top, it would give us solid privacy. We didn’t have any neighbors, so it was ideal for the kind of talk we’d be having.
“He came with a girl,” Julien said.
I rotated my head on my neck, stretching it out, getting the blood flowing. “Bring them both.”
I was already outside, waiting for them, when Marco and Julien shoved Elliott Schiffer into the courtyard so hard, he went down on his knees. They followed him out, a short girl walking calmly between them.
If she’d been struggling, yelling, cussing, spitting, I wouldn’t have given her a glance until I’d dealt with Schiffer or needed to use her to deal with Schiffer. It was the lack of dramatics that brought my attention to her. Something sharp plunged into my gut when I met big blue eyes under the midnight sky.
Zadie Night.
“What the fuck’re you doing here, little mama?” My fists went to my hips as I helped myself to a slow, up-close perusal of her for the first time in months. I couldn’t find any pleasure at the sight of her, not with how we left things and her appearance here with Elliott Schiffer.
“Don’t touch her!” Schiffer climbed to his feet, whipping his attention back and forth between me and Zadie. Marco and Julien barely had their hands on her shoulders. They weren’t hurting her. She was standing like a docile little doll between them, her gaze burning into me.
“Did I tell you you could stand?” I walked forward, fisted the top of Schiffer’s hair, and swept his feet from under him. He landed on his knees with a crack, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.
He glared at me, eyes wild and face flushed. “What do you want from me? I didn’t do anything.”
I kept my hand in his hair and yanked his head back. “Do you know who I am?”
His mouth ticced. “Everyone knows you’re Reno’s brother.”
“Amir,” I spit out. “I’m Amir. That’s Marco and Julien. I have to tell you, we take personal offense on behalf of Reno that you thought it was okay to come into his territory and spit in his face. The disrespect, Schiffer. The audacity to sell your product right under his nose. Do you think Reno’s a little bitch?”
Zadie gasped, and the pure sweetness in the sound was almost enough to distract me. Almost. If I hadn’t been on the very edge of losing my mind and ripping her apart at her pretty little seams, it would have.
“No, of course not. Reno doesn’t sell what I do, and I’m small. My supply is minuscule compared to Reno—”
I jerked his head hard, bending so we were almost nose to nose. “What the fuck do you know about Reno’s supply?”
Schiffer’s shit-brown eyes bulged. “Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I was being stupid. I’m so stupid. This won’t happen again. It won’t.”
“No, it won’t.” Taking my hand from his hair, I shoved his chest. He skidded on his ass across the brick ground. “Convince me it won’t happen again. I need you to assure me.”
His face had gone purple. Sweat dripped down his temples. His shaking hands reached into his pockets, yanking out folded bills and two baggies filled with pills. Knowing how small time he was, they were most likely stolen from his rich friends’ mommies’ medicine cabinets.
“Keep it.” His tone had gone from threatening to placating in the span of a minute. The little shit must’ve realized the kind of trouble he was in. “Take it all. Please, I want you to have it.”
I knocked the bills and pills from his hands. The wind whipped it all around in a whirling dervish of depravity.
“You think you have togiveit to me? I own your shit. I own you right now. If I take you to see Reno, tell him what you’ve been doing, what do you think will happen?”
His swallow was audible, and I swore to all that was holy his bloodshot eyes filled with tears. This big man, who showed up at a Savage party intent on horning in on Reno’s business, was crumbling before my very eyes. I would have been laughing if he hadn’t brought little Zadie Night along for the ride. That, I didn’t find amusing in any way.
He raised his hands in supplication. “I screwed up. I know it. Please, I’ll do anything. I have more money at home. I’ll pay you. Just please, please don’t tell Reno. It’ll never happen again.”
His patheticness disgusted me, further serving to piss me off. My foot shot out, striking him in the gut, and he immediately folded to his side. That had felt good, but it wasn’t enough, so I unleashed on him, hitting his legs and back over and over until Julien shoved me back a step.
“He got it, man. He got the message.” He spoke low, calm, the way he always did to get me back in my head. The thing of it was, this time, I hadn’t left. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wasn’t going to kill this little shit, but I wanted him to limp out of this courtyard andfeelthe message I imparted a long time after.
“Please, Amir.” Her whisper was watercolors on canvas. Too delicate for a place like this.
