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“Corvi sent this to you? Why?”
Giulio shrugs. “Proof that they killed him? A nice souvenir? Honestly, sometimes I think of framing it and displaying it in my living room. That’d be quite the conversation piece!”
In some ways, Giulio is a lot like his father—not that I’d ever say that aloud. Emilio had wanted me to take obscene pictures of Lucia to frame and put on the mantel, which I’d steadfastly refused to do.
I’d ended up taking compromising pictures of Vanessa and sending them to Giulio for him to jack off to instead, but that’s besides the point.
“That’s sick,” Nilo says, his voice wobbly. “But you have to take care of him before he keeps pulling this shit!”
“It’s on the to-do list. But, man, he is well-protected. And he rarely ever leaves his fucking mansion.” Giulio taps the photo away and puts his phone back in his pocket. “Now, about the missing product. It fucking sucks. Damien, see if we can’t get at least 250k worth of product to Lauro while we figure out a plan to retrieve the goods from Corvi.”
“250k?” Lauro repeats, glaring at him. “That’s nothing, Giulio! You just scammed an extra ten percent out of me, and this is what I get? You need to cover the whole damn thing until you get it back from Corvi.”
Giulio rolls his eyes. “You just heard Damien say we don’t have that much! I can’t make product appear out of nowhere. Do you think it just grows on trees?”
Nilo coughs awkwardly. “Well, it kind of does…”
“Good job, kid, you caught the joke.” Giulio raps his knuckles against my chest. “You’re going to send more people to investigate Benton. We’ll work with Lauro’s men on this.”
“We don’t need a fucking CSI investigation! I want to be paid for this fuck-up of yours!”
“Crime scene investigators investigation?” Giulio repeats with a snicker. “Don’t worry, we’re not passing this on toCSI. What are they gonna do about missing drugs?”
Lauro scowls at Giulio. “Well, you’d better do something, because if it gets out that you’re not actually doing your job, you’ll have more people looking for alternatives to your shit.”
Giulio is about to do something reckless. Not another smoke grenade, but I can already see the way he’s starting to smile. His hands have disappeared under the table, too, which is a dangerous thing.
“Lauro, you’re absolutely right,” I say. I ignore Giulio’s sudden kick to my calf. “We’ll put together what we can, but our main area of expertise is… not that kind of product. We’d be happy to compensate you with our specialty, instead.”
“Which is?” Lauro asks with a sneer. “Your little whorehouses? I can get any kind of woman on my own. I don’t have to pay them to warm my bed.”
“Pay? Nah, a free round on me for tonight. I think I promised Nilo a nice time, anyway. And after that…We have a, ah… private facility, where you can get things a bit too spicy for the public menu.” Giulio claps his hands once and beams. “Yeah, this sounds like a fun night out. I am very, very certain I’ve got something worth at least 100k, just for you.”
“I doubt any of your girls are worth that much,” Lauro mutters.
“And I don’t need anice timefrom you,” Nilo adds in, glowering at Giulio. “You should offer something we want… like the money you owe us.”
“For the record, I don’t owe you anything. That’s Corvi. I’m being a generous friend here. But if you’d rather pass on this offer and start actual shit with me, I guess we can continue these negotiations until I’ve got a second picture for my apartment.”
Nilo blanches. “No, I…”
I take the last sip of my coffee, then stand up. “Please, we’ve wasted enough time. Giulio, stop provoking everybody. Lauro, it’s a generous offer and you know it.”
Lauro doesn’t look impressed, but he finally grunts in approval. “As long as you get it all back from Corvi within the month, I won’t spread word about how you fucking failed people who pay you to keep their shit safe. But these had better be some premium girls, Giulio.”
“Only the best for you, Lauro!” Giulio says. He gives Lauro the address for, surprisingly, Ntimacy. Not exactly thebestgirls we have on offer, but I guess Giulio doesn’t want to ruin the girls in the higher end clubs just for a business deal with somebody he doesn’t actually like.
Giulio follows me to my car. As soon as we’re inside, he turns to glare at me. “What the fuck were you thinking? Offering our merch?”
“We can’t afford to lose allies, Giulio.” I start the car and slowly merge onto the streets. Traffic has lightened, but a big city like this won’t have clear streets until the early morning hours. “We give him a few girls, he’ll be appeased. Emilio would have—”
“I don’t give a shit what my old man would have done.” Giulio makes a frustrated noise. “Fuck. How’d we lose Lauro’s product, anyway? Is Corvi really that good?”
“We don’t have enough of a foothold in Benton City. The wedding stunt lost us a lot of our allies too. We really should be avoiding that area entirely until we’ve got a proper base of operations and a lot better footing.”
“Fuck.” Giulio looks out the window while tapping on the door panel. “When this is done, set up some meetings with whoever is still on our side in Benton. I guess I need to go there in person and scare them into getting their shit together.”
“Of course. I think we could transfer Di Fiore to Benton to handle the day-to-day business, too.”
