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A slow grin creeps across his face. “Nah, that’s just Bambi playing in the dark again. Hey, Bambi!” he yells over my shoulder. “Come and say hi to Frankie.”
Bambi?
I turn, expecting to find some six-foot beast with a machete because I hear he favours blades over bullets. Instead, there’s a five-foot-nothing of green-eyed cheek and pink hair staring back at me.
“Hi,” she says, Taylor Swift pouting up at me from her T-shirt as she pops her bubble gum loudly.The kid can’t be much older than twelve.
“Bye,” I say dryly, giving her a dismissive once over. “Interesting crew you run with these days, Viper. If I fart, will she fall over?”
He taps his blade against his thigh in amusement. “Give her half a chance and she’ll bite your balls off.”
“You sure she’s lost her baby teeth? How old?”
Maybe I misjudged him.Maybe I need to be running my own blade across his throat before I leave.
His expression sours. “Watch your mouthandyour thoughts there, mafia boy. I’m not a paedo, unlike my brother-in-law. Bambi’s my cousin’s kid. Her mother died young, and her dad was never in the picture, leaving her with two choices: to get carted off to some nun-run kiddie home where they beat you black and blue for thinking out loud, or to live in Spain with me.”
“Interesting environment for a child.” My gaze lands on the half-dead man at the end of the diving board again. “What’s today’s life lesson? How to take one?”
“I never said I was a father figure, but she’s still alive, ain’t she?”
“Yes, but is she up to date with her shots?”
Behind us, there’s another bubble gum pop from Bambi as the half-dead man starts snivelling again.Jesus Christ.It’s like an opus of all things light and dark and screwed up.
Viper smirks, giving me the shades of a boy I never had the chance to know. “If you’re done gate-crashing my evening’s entertainment, Lastra…” Stepping forward, he pulls me in for a rough embrace.“Tell me he died the way he deserved,” he murmurs, the hate and pain in his voice all too familiar.
They took everything from us. Now it’s time to take it back.
“He died in pieces. Screaming out our family’s names.”
There’s a rough clap of appreciation between my shoulder blades. “Then we drink to celebrate, but first…” He pulls away again. “Bambi, sweetheart, do the honours. Make it memorable.”
“Okey-doke.”
With another pop, Bambi retreats back into the shadows as Viper beckons a couple of his men over from the bleachers. They nod at me in respect, which makes his smirk re-emerge. “Seems I’m not the only Brit around here with a reputation. Heard you and Knight fixed the game and won the Riviera before you got yourself banged up for twenty-five-to-life.”
“Hollow victories,” I say, glancing away. “There’s only one fight that counts, and it started this morning.” I hold up my wrist to show him the bloodstains.
There’s a pause. “You got a jet?”
“Standing by.”
“You got a plan?”
“One with a Colombian flavour.” His eyebrows lift a notch. “But I can’t do it without you. I need all the men I can get. We made a pact to come back harder and stronger. Avenge both our fathers. Save Ada. You in?”
His answer is drowned out as the opening riffs of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck come blaring out into the pool area.
Shooting me a ‘hold that thought’ look, he heads over to the man knelt shivering on the diving board, and soon he’s screaming into his mouth gag again.
I watch, dispassionately, as Viper carves something into his chest and forehead, and by the time the second verse of the song kicks in, he’s straightening up and rolling his shoulders back. A beat later, he’s kicking the bastard off the end of the diving board to a messy end below.
Clicking his fingers, the music shuts off again, and he saunters back to where I’m standing, wiping his blade clean on his jeans.
“He kidnapped an eleven-year-old kid and made him do shit no kid should ever do.”
“No need to rationalise it to me.”
