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He doesn’t show up in the best of shape—he’s sporting a black eye and busted lip. His nose leans more crookedly than usual with a gash across the bridge. When he smiles to show us his teeth, they’re bloodied from many hits to the face.
“I got the shit beat out of me.”
My hands fly to my mouth. “Is that what happened when you went to get champagne?”
“It’s what happened when thatcazzosent me off to go get champagne.”
“Are you saying—Mr. Thomas had you—oh my god, Francis. I’m so sorry!”
“I went over to the champagne and refreshments. Next thing I know, two armed guards are escorting me out. Nextnextthing I know, I’m outside in some alleyway being pummeled nonstop. They KO’d me. I woke up a whole half hour later to alley cats licking blood off my face. One of them was even trying to gnaw on my nose.”
“You can get anything you want at a party like that,” Salvatore says as we enter his compound. “Mr. Thomas probably put in a request with the Buyers Block to have you roughed up.”
I shudder. “I never want to attend one of their events again. Now I understand why my mom always stalled whenever she had to go.”
“Sorry for leaving you with that old fart, doll face.” Stitches winks at me in jest. “Hopefully he wasn’t too insufferable.”
But as we make our way through the compound, I’m more distracted by Salvatore. His behavior since we left the party has been short-tempered and abrasive. It hasn’t lessened since arriving at his compound. If anything, it’s grown more noticeable.
As Stitches and I converse about the evening, Salvatore strides a whole pace ahead of us and ignores every word.
I say goodbye to Stitches outside the medical room, where he plans to stitch himself up, and chase after Salvatore.
“Will you slow down? Are you in a rush to get somewhere?”
Right away I know it’s me he’s angry with—the energy rolling off him is palpable, hot and combustible like a deadly electrical charge.
I don’t back away. I keep pace with him as we enter the weapons room and he takes apart his beloved Walther PDP pistol.
Neither of us say a word, so the only sound in the room are the sounds of the thuds, clicks, and clanks of the metal being disassembled.
He’s wearing the same expression he had on at the party when he turned up on the X level. His brows are drawn and his gaze focused, the blue and green that make up the color in them, darker than usual. Because he’s shaved his beard, his jaw is more pronounced and distinct as he bites down and carries tension.
I’m done waiting on him to make a move. I’ll light the fire.
“You can be pissed at me if you want, Jon.”
He places the disassembled gun away and then moves on to storing his ammo, turning his back on me.
“But I’m pissed at you too. My attacker was there. He was in that room, and you dragged me away.”
“What part of the mission being aborted did you misunderstand, Phi?”
“You decided that. I didn’t. No one was around except Gene. We could’ve taken out my attacker.”
“And when we returned to the elevator and found a group of armed guards had tracked us down? Then what?”
Salvatore tosses the magazine from his gun into a bin full of them. The next thing to go is the holster he’s wearing. He unhooks the leather strap with quick, jerky movements, flinging that too.
His white dress shirt and black trousers that remain look strangely rough despite their traditionally designer wear—or maybe it’s the intense, furious Mafia boss donning them that’s giving the formal apparel its edge. His dark hair has reverted back to its usual styling, slicked back away from his handsome, composed face; the same face whose jaw carries enough tension that it makes even my body feel tight.
How he manages to look emotionless yet pissed as hell at the same time is beyond me. It’s a skill he’s perfected over the years.
But I know him better than anyone. I’ve memorized his tells.
The mélange of blues and greens that make up his gaze reveal his heated anger.
He pushes up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing thick forearms decorated with tattoos and protruding veins. But it’s his knuckles that give him away—how he can’t resist grazing the fingertips of one hand over the scarred knuckles of the other as if tempted to tear them open himself.
