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I want her—either to kiss her or to kill her, I’m not sure which yet. But the easiest way to get to her would be to look into those cryptic offers.
I lower my gun and pull a small piece of paper out of my pocket. The number isn’t a burner phone, which surprised me, but not as much as what I discovered when I looked into who the number belonged to. If I call, everything will change.
But how much do I even have left here? Saint is never going to get over himself, Lucia is gone, Nico is dead, and Victor…
It all hangs on Victor.
I clean up and head to Victor’s office, punching in my code and letting myself in, not caring whether Victor’s busy or not.
Victor sits behind his desk, staring at his computer and nodding at the screen. I can hear a few voices, discussing some issue with shipments. When Victor notices me, he holds up his hand to me, signaling for me to stop or to shut up.
That makes me want to interrupt even more, but I wait for him to click a few things to mute his call session.
“What is it, Angelo? I’m in the middle of something.” Victor pushes away from the desk though, which lets me know there’s no video on our end, at least.
“Yeah, you’re always in the middle of something lately,” I say. “Is any of that getting us closer to taking down Bellini? Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like we’re losing ground. Pavone’s bringing in a lot more men, getting flashier in his attacks…”
“Yes, thank you for stating the obvious, Angelo.” Victor stares at me coldly. “Is there a point, or did you come to criticize our progress?”
“To do that, we’d actually have to have some fucking progress,” I snap at him. “Which we haven’t. We’re getting pushed back.”
“We may have lost a few battles, but we’ll come out on top.” He sounds confident,arrogant, which isn’t at all surprising even though there’s very little to support his theory.
“You keep saying that, but it’s been seven fucking years.” I pace over to his desk and slam my hands down. “Seven years, and Bellini is still on the loose. Even your plan to kidnap Lucia didn’t do much, did it? Bellini didn’t cave, and we lost Lucia.”
“But Al Ricci is dead,” Victor answers calmly. “What brought this on? If you’re sexually frustrated, there are plenty of men and women for you to choose from.”
“Yeah? You gonna bend over for me, Victor?” I say it only to get a reaction out of him, but he remains calm.
Always calm, always emotionless. Never once letting anybody see what he’s actually feeling, because he’s so much better than we are. There’s no real way to know where I stand with him. I thought I could trust him because we both wanted the same thing.
I’m not sure anymore.
I growl in frustration and turn away from him. “Now that Pavone’s got Lucia, he’s got no reason to hold back. You’re calling in all your favors, but you don’t have influence beyond this city. Pavone can call on people throughout the coast.”
“Yes, I know,” Victor answers, and finally there’s a note of annoyance. “If you have any ideas that will turn the tides… Well, I’m all ears.”
“We could get Lucia back,” I say. “We kidnapped her once. It shouldn’t be hard to do it again.”
“And then what? You’ll hand her over to Pavone yourself?” Victor rolls his eyes at me. “Santino would never forgive you.”
“That wouldn’t have stoppedyou,” I mutter. “You were going to sell her out anyway, weren’t you? She thought you were.”
“What Lucia thought and what was true are two different things,” Victor says. “She made inferences from fragments of information.”
I don’t know why this, in particular, pisses me off so much. Victor’s being his normal self, playing his cards close. Never trusting anybody, not giving anybody the full story.
Never trustingme.
I’ve been following this fucker for seven years, convinced that he’d help avenge Nico and give me what I want.
I don’t know what I want anymore, though. But staring at Victor, I know it’s not this: being lied to by a cryptic asshole who can’t even admit to the people he’s closest to what he’s planning. What he’s feeling.
There’s no reason for me to stay here. I’d have better luck getting at Bellini on my own.
“Fine,” I say, pushing off from his desk. “But I’m not waiting much longer, asshole. If things keep going to shit, I’m going to start killing people on my own terms, and I won’t give a fuck if it messes with your plans.”
“Yes, yes, I heard you.” Victor sighs loudly. “If that’s all? I’ve kept my call waiting long enough.”
