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Matteo slid the steel door, the scraping grating on my ears and the scent of rusted metal greeted us. Luka and Denis were already inside, Denis taunting the man sitting in a rickety wooden chair in the middle of the warehouse. Less than a man—he was a kid. I raised my eyebrows. He really was a squirt, maybe as young as fourteen with his shaggy hair reaching his shoulders, his cheeks red from the rope across his mouth. When he saw us, he sat up straight, pulling against his bindings and surely spewing curse words behind the gag. My lips twitched into a half smile— his bark reminded me of Darya.
Matteo pulled out his gun and waved it in front of the kid, a warning before he pulled at the rope and let the boy breathe.
“Fuck you!” He spat at Matteo and kicked at the ground, the chair shaking beneath him. Matteo gritted his teeth and tilted the chair back until the kid was nearly parallel with the ground. “Hey, hey, hey…” he pleaded.
“Relax, we just have some questions.” I nodded to Matteo who let the chair back up and pulled out my own gun, making a show of checking to make sure it was loaded in front of him. “You heard of a guy named Coco?”
He shook his head, narrowing his eyes.
“Really? That’s not what I heard.” I said. Matteo stepped forward and punched, the crack of the kid's cheek nearly echoing through the warehouse. My attention turned to Luka whose eyes were averted, he stayed back in the shadows of the building— preferring to stay out of the blood splatter zone. He stepped back, giving me a clear view. “I heard that you were running on the same street.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
Matteo delivered another punch, the kid’s head sagging a bit to the side before looking back at me. Denis' chuckle reverberated off the wall, the noise grating in my ears. “The quicker you spill, the faster we leave.” I stood and pointed the gun to his right knee, smirking as the boy squirmed underneath the barrel.
“Okay, yeah,” he panted, his eyes going wide. “I’ve seen him a couple of times.”
Matteo grunted from behind the kid. “And now, he’s dead.”
His head nearly snapped off trying to see my brother. Fear flashed across his face when he understood the motive for this trip. “I didn’t know.”
“I also heard that you hang around with the Desalmados,” his attention turned back to me. “I’m hoping this is a coincidence,” I said.
He swallowed hard and sat up taller in the chair, his shoulders straining against the bindings keeping his arms back. “Look, I didn’t kill him.” His voice began to shake. “I’m not even a dealer, I’m just friends with some of them.”
“Sure, like we haven’t heard that before,” Denis quipped.
I nodded, letting my hand with the gun drop. “Do you know why these friends would be after a guy like Coco? A man just trying to make a living?” Albeit, adirtyliving.
He shook his head violently, a bead of sweat falling from his temple. “The only thing I know is that…” he trailed off, his eyes lowered to the dirt ground beneath his feet, “the order came from up high. And that it was personal.”
Matteo perked an eyebrow behind the kid, letting the information sink in. We already knew it was personal— the carvings on Coco’s back were obvious enough. Unfortunately for the kid, he was friends with the wrong people and knew a lot more than he pretended to in the beginning.
“I need the names of these friends.” I nodded to Matteo who pulled out a knife, severing the rope around the kid’s wrists. He shrugged forward, rolling his neck to work out the stiffness when I handed him paper and a pen. “Write them down and you’re free to go.”
His hand trembled but he did exactly as I said, writing down three names in total. I stowed the paper and pen back in my jacket and let my hand fall heavily on the kid’s shoulder. He let out a deep breath and lifted his chin, holding himself a little higher before I turned and started to the car. Three paces away, he uttered a screech cut off abruptly by the crunch of a snapping neck.
Once the four of us were outside, my fingers tightened around the wrinkled paper. Three names were scrawled before us. I shared the information and watched as Matteo committed each name to memory.
“Personal, he said.” Luka rubbed the back of his neck.
Matteo nodded, “we were smart to keep an eye on them. The Desalmados are bigger than just a gang if they’re making hits.”
“Is that a product of ambition or revenge?” I asked.
Denis grumbled beside us, itching for a fight. “Who fucking cares? They’re toast.”
Rocks crackled behind us as tires descended the driveway. My head snapped in the direction of the noise, an incoming of three blacked-out SUVs heading too fast to be the damn police. Matteo’s hand gripped my jacket and yanked me down behind the car just as the first shot rang out.
“Fuck!” Denis screamed before lunging behind Luka. The panging of bullets off the metal doors behind us echoed in my ears as the cars got closer. Matteo wrenched open the passenger door and rifled through a bag for more firepower.
I stood up, taking a couple of shots at the vehicles over the hood of the car. I kept low, even as sparks lit up around us from the bullets smashing into the exterior. I flipped down again, my back pressed against the hot metal, a bead of sweat falling from my temple.
Luka crawled toward us, yelling out. “What the fuck do we do?”
Matteo looked his way and pulled out a grenade, winking at our little brother. “I got it handled.”
He launched the grenade over the cars we used as cover just as the SUVs pulled to a stop. I mashed my hands against my ears just in time for the surge of hot air that blasted from behind our backs. My eyes blurred and I gasped for air, choking on the heat and smoke.
