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But he wasn’t.
Morning light streamed through my window, the sounds of rush hour traffic reaching from the streets. Sighing, I knew I couldn’t stay in bed all day, no matter how much I wanted to. Sighing, I turned, finding my phone still resting on the bedside table. There was only one message.
I swiped the screen open, reading the text from David Atwell.
We need to meet.Same place. Same time.
The restaurant wasn’t crowdedby the time I walked in. It was just after the breakfast rush and before lunch. David was sitting in the same booth as last time, though he was more underdressed than before. Instead of a suit, he wore a dark gray sweater that clung to his chest and arms, in a way that I didn’t think it would for suits like him. His hair was slightly messy at the top and gelled into place.
“How are you?” he asked, half-rising from his seat.
I slid into the booth, giving him a pointed look. “Fine. But we’re not here for pleasantries.”
“No,” he said, half grinning. “We’re not.”
He didn’t say anything more for a moment, just sat there watching me. My eyes narrowed. “So?”
David cleared his throat, shifting in the booth. “So, I thought we should start by sharing what we know.”
“I don’t know much.”
“Of course.” He shifted again. “But maybe what little you know and what little I know, matches up.”
“All I know is that they have some vendetta against the Italians, and their favorite form of killing is by snake venom,” I muttered.
“And?” he prompted.
I frowned. “What do you know?” I wasn’t about to give up everything I knew for no promise of something in return.
“I know that any officer who has been sniffing around these murders was kidnapped and killed,” David said flatly. “Whoever this Snake is, they have deep ties to the underground and the black market, plus the funds to pay whatever low-life they can find to do their dirty work—and there’s a lot of them apparently. The police have stopped multiple transfers of weapons. A few of which were yours, by the way.” By the look on his face, I could tell he was curious about that.
“You didn’t hear?” I asked sweetly. “My warehouse was robbed and then blown up.”
He blinked twice, probably not expecting me to admit that I was dealing arms. But if he was the feds, then he’d already know. Or at least could guess. “We can’t get any leads from the men we’ve found. They either refused to talk and wound up dead the next day, or they killed themselves with a small pill before we could question them further. So that tells me that, whoever this person is, these men are more afraid of them than they are of death.”
“Then that tells us a lot,” I said quietly. “Even my own father couldn’t gain that much fear from his own people. Not even Sal Scarano could. And both of them could be terrifying and merciless in their own way.”
We were quiet for a few moments. “Why, though?” he asked, mostly to himself. I shook my head, not understanding. “Why would they be more afraid of this person? When they apparently don’t even know who they are? No one we’ve been able to question could tell us who. None of them met the Snake. So, how does a person instill this much fear without ever showing their face?”
“Easy,” I said. “Reputation. Knowledge. Often, not knowing something makes it that much more terrifying.”
At his blank look, I explained. “The Snake’s reputation has shot up after killing not one, but two mafia leaders. They forced the Irish and Russians underground these past few weeks just by that threat alone. And knowledge—they seem to know everything and anything, but no one knows who they are.” I thought back to the note, about how the Snake had somehow known I was pregnant the day I’d found out.
“They can’t know everything all the time,” David replied. “They’re still human.”
I shrugged. “You said they have the funds to pay a lot of people off. They probably have the funds for spying tech as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Snake knew about our meeting.”
“Then why come?”
“Because I can’t sit around and do nothing.”
“We need more information.” He sounded irritated, which amused me for some reason. Like, no shit Sherlock.
“We’ll only get information if we can actually find someone who has had more dealings with the Snake than the low-life associates,” I said finally.
“But who?”
My mind thought back to Vincent. He was dead now, but I was sure there were more of my men that had been some of the first to betray us. “We need to know when those next shipments will be.”
