AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’ll be happy to know that Carlos has turned up.”
I go loose. “Oh good.”
“Not good,” Luca says, shaking his head. He comes out of the shadows and sits down in a chair across from me. We’re separated by the vast distance of a single desk. He folds his hand and points his fingers at me. “He turned up in New York, trying to sellmygoods tomypeople.”
I balk, and the air escapes my lungs.Shit.“Huh?” Is all I can manage to get out.
Luca is pressing his fingers together, and his eyes are burning pits of flame. “He also tried selling it to the Kumarin’s. As well as Sergei’s enemy, Alexei Petrov.”
My gut knots back up immediately, and I feel that everything is about to get a lot worse.
Luca leans back and rocks in his chair. “Who it turns out, your friend was in a little bit of trouble with. Carlos Martinez owed quite a bit of money to Alexei. About three hundred grand, to be precise.”
The pit in my stomach deepens and somehow turns into a tighter knot. I’m staring at Luca, but I may as well be staring at the floor.
“So not only was Carlos trying to pay back Alexei Petrov, but he was trying to sell the goods to the other parties too. He was aiming to settle his debt and keep a tidy sum for himself. But do you want to know what the worst bit is?” He finally asks, coming around the table and standing over me.
“I get the feeling I don’t even know the worst bit yet,” I say.
Luca nods. “That you didn’t even mention to me that you’d been trailed by Russians on the drive up. I had Leandro tell me this fact himself. Just after you left in fact. I’d been letting it go, hoping you would tell me…” Luca is pointing at his phone now. Like the very object that had delivered this news to him was just as guilty and stupid as me.
“Luca, I meant to tell you. I wanted to sort it out. And well, once Leandro said that it had nothing to do with them, and I figured it was all Carlos—”
“Did you even ask Carlos?” Luca asks, sitting back against the desk. Calm like a viper.
“The man hasn’t told me anything about New York since he returned. He’s been tightlipped.”
“And you vouched for him to work for us. Not even knowing if you could trust him. If he was undercover.”
“Hey, I’m as betrayed by this as you.” I snap back. “I’ve been friends with Carlos since we were kids. I vouched for him because we were brothers.”
“And don’t brothers know each other?” Luca folds his arms. “Or what about respect?”
The move reminds me ofwhoI’m talking to. “Fuck man. Look, I’m sorry I fucked up. But I can’t exactly drag Carlos here to apologize either.”
Luca picks up his phone and then unlocks it. “You’re more right about that than you realize,” he says, handing it to me.
“What's this?” I ask, taking the phone and reading the screen.
“Carlos is dead. My van has been found torched in the dockyards. The drugs are missing, and a body was in the front seat. Dental records already proved it was Carlos.”
I’m punched in the gut and can’t breathe. I clutch at the phone and my vision blurs.Carlos is dead?I look up at Luca in shock. Then anger when I see his face. “You didn’t want to lead with that?”
“I had to know.”
“Know what?” I ask, shocked.
“Know thatyoudidn’t know.”
“That he’s dead?” I say, the shock making me rise from the seat. “Carlos was killed for being a dumb fucking idiot, and you think I withheld it from you?” Luca just watches me and says nothing. It feels like it’s all my fault. We’re eye to eye and all I feel is even more stupid in my anger.
“You should’ve told me about the Russians before Leandro,” Luca says. “You know I’m right. But see how we should lead with the important things?”
I shake my head and then let it hang, slumping back down into the chair. “I know you’re right, I’m just being a fucking idiot.” I sigh and it’s like a bull is sitting on my chest. “I should’ve seen he was doing something stupid like this.” I throw my hands on my head. “Let me guess, he tried selling it to everyone at the same time so as to cause a little standoff?”
Luca sits back down. “Potentially. Leandro began asking around through his people after you dropped the van off. He was looking for any current contracts out on anyone. In the process he discovered the abandoned car that had been crashed when it tried to take you out. The men, rather than get it towed, set that on fire too. He had the plates traced with his connections and expected it to head back to Kumarin, he is a cautious man after all, but it went somewhere else upstate. It went to a fish packing facility that led to somewhere else. A rabbit den of trouble later, it eventually wound up linked to a laundromat business that belonged to someone that Kumarinknewof.Alexei’s first son.”
All the while I’d been hearing this I was sinking lower in the chair. I was reeling from Carlos’ death, and yet pissed off that he’d attempted to do what he’d done. Had he always been like this? Had Mimi always been right about him and I’d been blind? And why the fuck was the room so fuck’n hot?
