AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Where’s Viper, and who the fuck betrayed us?
I can’t even message him to bring hellfire into this room. I left my phone in my office.
Keeping low to the back wall, I tuck in behind the nearest roulette table. There are at least twenty-five armed Irish. No Bratva, though. Every exit is blocked, except for the one to my office, but that’s where Bambi’s hiding, so no one’s going through there without a bullet from me first.
My thoughts dart to Ada, and the ache is raw. If they found out about this place, they’ve found out aboutus,which means her life is in just as much danger as mine.
Are you here too, O’Sullivan? If so, let’s get this show started.
On cue, the Irish mobster cuts across my periphery, pausing by the line of men on their knees to pistol-whip the closest, kicking him onto his back when he starts to sway. He moves slower these days, his old swagger is more a fat man’s stagger, but he’s still the same man who smashed my life apart.
“Frankie Lastra,” he shouts, his dark brogue kicking me back down the stairs to a basement. “We have some unfinished business, you and I…” From my vantage point, I watch him walk a tight circle around Viper’s men. “Are you going to come out like a good boy, or am I going to have to make you?”
“Phone,” I hiss at a gambler cowering on the floor close by.
With a shaking hand, he dives into his pocket, unlocks the device, and tosses it across to me as O’Sullivan points his gun at the next man on his knees.
“I’m going to count to three, Lastra… One.” His gun explodes, along with most of the guy’s head as horrified screams ripple around the room. “I liked your surveillance guy,” he announces, as another hush descends. “Took me hours to break him, and there wasn’t much of him left when he finally started talking. Threatening his daughter turned the final screw, but she’s dead now as well, so that’s a fucking shame.”
Silas.
Motherfucker.
Fighting back my anger, I tap out a message to Viper’s burner.
Betrayed. At Encore.
I don’t know Grayson’s number off by heart, but I’m hoping that the squeal of tyres I heard in the background of our call was the sound of a hundred trained Santiago soldiers heading in our direction.
All deals are off now.
All bets are lost.
“Is it time for another number, Lastra?” he calls out. “Two.” Without warning, O’Sullivan fires again, and another body hits the deck. This time the ripple of screams around the room comes with begging and pleading.
“Silence!” he roars, as a message bounces back from Viper.
Eyes to the front in five, mafia boy. This is how we do things at The Firm.
What the—
“Were you a player in Monaco, Frankie?” O’Sullivan resumes his circling, though it’s significantly smaller with three less men. “Is that why you thought you could just stroll back into my city and play with her life, too? She’s all mine, by the way. Semenov’s had enough. He’s there now to bring her to my house. I was thinking of keeping her in the basement to make her feel at home—”
“Stop.”
I rise to my feet with my hands up, and chuck my gun away.
“Ah,thereyou are.” O’Sullivan’s face breaks into a vicious smile as every gun in the place turns on me. “I didn’t recognise you, Lastra, without all the blood and piss. Sorry about your casino….Three.” Switching his gun to the side, he shoots another man dead without dropping his gaze from me. “I hope he wasn’t a friend of yours.”
“Think you took a wrong turn into Park Lane, O’Sullivan.”It’s all about stalling for time now. “I came back to London to open up a business and get on with my life, and now this?” I glance around at the carnage with raised eyebrows. “I’m half-tempted to go back to Monaco.”
“I don’t think Zaccaria and Rossi would see it that way. I’m sure their definitions of a ‘peaceful return’ didn’t include forty-eight stab wounds and a bad case of ‘ripped-out throat’. I know you got yourself arrested in France on purpose, Lastra, and I know why you did it. Was it your plan to psyche out yourcapo dei capifor five monthsbeforeyou killed him, or was that the first chance you had?”
“It was just an unhappy coincidence, O’Sullivan. Nothing more.”
“Did you shoot my planes down, too?” He moves up to the last man kneeling and points his gun at his head.
Shit.
