AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Christ.
“Where’s your family,ragazzo?” I asked him, lacing my fingers behind my neck.
“My mom’s dead,” he said, and for the first time, something fierce flashed through the kid’s eyes.
“And foster care isn’t your thing?”
He shook his head. “Those people are fucked up, man.”
Admittedly, I’d heard horror stories.
I dropped my hands and pulled out my money clip. “This is for your cooperation,” I said, tossing down five hundred dollars beside him. “Keep in mind that it pays to cooperate with the Lucianos. You’d rather have us as friends than enemies.”
The kid nodded, his gaze fixed on the small stack of bills like it was a bucket of gold. It made me wonder how little the asshole had paid him to pick up his message.
I withdrew another stack of bills from the clip, a thousand dollars. “This is to get you where you’re going.”
“Holy shit,” the kid breathed, his eyes as wide as saucers. “You’re serious?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” I asked.
“I don’t get it, man.”
That made two of us. I couldn’t quite say what the hell had come over me, but I felt slimy as fuck for scaring the shit out of a kid. Now, give me a full-grown scumbag, and it was one of my favorite pastimes.
“I’m giving you a chance to choose a different path,” I told the kid. Maybe there was some truth to it.“If you keep doing odd jobs for strangers, you’re going to wind up dead.” A whole lot more truth to that.
He nodded, his gaze going back and forth between me and the bills on the sofa.
I turned to leave but stopped at the doorway. “Don’t get caught on the wrong side of my family again,ragazzo.There won’t be a second warning.Capisce?”
He nodded vigorously. He was still nodding as Aurelio and I left the shithole of an apartment and headed outside.
But it wasn’t over. At least, it wasn’t for me.
“Heidi’s the second target Bianchi was referring to,” I said as Vito met us on our way to the car.
Vito and Aurelio both looked over at me, expressions curious.
“I had Mario watching her apartment. He said there was a car on the street all night. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the guy in it might have been watching her apartment too.”
“A black sports car?” Aurelio asked.
“Si.”
“Well then, I suppose there might be reason to talk about the doctor, after all,” Aurelio said.
Damn it, Aurelio. If the man hadn’t been shot, I might have been tempted to do it myself, just to wipe the smug smile off his face.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Heidi
I parted the curtains and peeked outside, scanning the lamplit cars parked on the street. All of them were empty. No black sports car. And yet, I could feel eyes on me. They’d followed me home from the hospital, and I could feel them now, watching.
Bloodytosser.
“Over-cautious”? This was just creepy.
