7

Slade

What a fucking crazy night.

We drove back to the city slowly, Jumaine’s wreck of a car limping along. First chance we got, we’d ditch it. Jumaine was surly about that. Rock was surly in general. I couldn’t remember the last time when we spent hours together and talked so little.

Nobody was willing to speak. We all knew what a close call that had been.

I really wanted to blame shock for this weird silence, and yet, I couldn’t. We’d all come close to getting killed, more than once. In our line of work, we’d been shot at and stabbed, but this sort of gloom was a complete first. After a gunfight, we’d all mention this or that about our enemies and brush it off. Bullets and guns were part of the life. We got to suck this up, long before that goddamn van blew up right behind Jumaine’s car.

The next morning, I woke up feeling better. The night was behind us. We’d survived. Rocello was too thick-headed to be laid out by an injury like that. It was over.

At least until the text came from Don Roscano.

“Get ur sorry asses down to the pier. I wanna know what you fuckers were up to last night.”

Shit. That wasn’t good. And Rocello was going to go apeshit crazy. How could anyone have known that we were casing that bank? Well, except for the guy who’d blown up the van behind us. That thought stopped me in my tracks, but then I realized that Jumaine would probably be all over the implications of that. His massive brain was always eight steps ahead of mine. My brain was simpler. It liked tequila. And pretty barmaids. I’d seen Margo sitting on Jumaine’s lap last night. Lucky bastard.

But none of us would be lucky today. Roscano was going to be all over us. He and his squeaky voice would be pissing us off for a while, in his attempt to hear about what had happened in North Haven. Like I had a clue why that asshole Sean Baxter had been there in the first place, let alone blow up the van behind us. Jumaine had been pretty silent on the ride home, but I’d heard him and Rock muttering that it had likely been more of a warning than a serious attempt on our lives. Yeah, right. Tell that to the giant shard of glass the pretty nurse had pulled out of Rock’s neck.

Today, I’d let them do the talking, but that was mostly so that I wouldn’t be tempted to wring Roscano’s scrawny neck. Killing your Don was frowned upon in our line of work, but god the guy was an ass. I’d been a fuck-up my whole life, but I looked like a responsible, upright citizen compared to Nick.

He’d inherited the family business from the real boss of the family, his father Emilio. The man who had taken in Rocello, Jumaine and me. He’d taken us—Rock especially—under his wing and had been almost like a father. He’d been a fair boss, and he rewarded our service handsomely, unlike his son. But then he died and left his asshole son in charge. Nick had to be the stingiest, and one of the stupidest Dons in history.

Mainly, though, his worst quality was his experience.

Or, rather, his inexperience.

Before Emilio’s death, Nick didn’t give a shit about the family business. All he did was squander his daddy’s money in Miami, Monte Carlo and every other place his kind loved to visit. He would party up with whores, cocaine, thirty-year-old scotch and post pictures of that shit on social media. Needless to say, anything illegal stayed out of those photos.

I stewed about it as I walked toward the pier. But it was hard to stay pissed off. The sun was shining, the weather was perfect, and a pretty girl at the coffee kiosk gave me a flirtatious look. I tipped an imaginary hat at her and went on my way with an extra spring in my step. Maybe, once we were thoroughly chewed out, I’d swing back this way to see her. Except then a face popped into my mind. That of the gorgeous bartender who’d saved our asses last night. Was she interested in Jumaine? She sure looked content to be on his lap last night.

I spotted Roscano and his weaselly face on the pier fifty yards ahead of me. My boys were there already. Rocello and Jumaine were on his either flank, their gazes on me. The Don himself was staring at the bandage around Rocello’s neck.

Asshole that he was, he reached out to poke at it, but Rock grumbled and slapped his hand away. Only Rock could get away with crap like that around Roscano.

“Morning, boss,” I spoke, my heavy footsteps drawing his attention.

“Nice of you to join us. Fucking finally,” Roscano complained. “Now, I want to hear what you idiots thought you were up to last night.”

“Sure.” I said the word easily, but then I paused. Conversations with Roscano never went well when I took the lead.

When no one spoke, Roscano pursued his thin lips. “This is the part where you explain to me what the hell you were doing in North Haven last night.”

I glanced at Rock, who was being uncharacteristically quiet. Maybe his neck still hurt. He caught my eye and nodded.

Shit. They wanted me to do this? Then again, it had been my idea. “We were staking out Palmer’s Savings and Loan there. It’s easy pickings, and we thought you might want to hit it. We thought—”

“You thought?” Don Roscano’s face turned red. “No one pays you to think.”

The way he stressed the word you pissed me off, but I kept my cool. Mostly. “We weren’t going to do anything without your permission, Don Roscano. We just did some recon. I think you’ll find…”

“Recon?” His annoying voice rose up another octave. “What the fuck? Are you in the Army or something?”

“No,” I said. Very early on, I’d ruled out that line of work. Too many orders to follow.

“In our line of work, we don’t do recon,” Roscano continued. This from an asshole who did lines of cocaine off stripper’s bodies in Miami while the three of us collected loan shark debts.

“Don Roscano…” Jumaine cut in respectfully. “What Slade’s trying to say is that we were checking out the area for possible escape routes. Of course, we were going to report this to you today, but my car was in such bad shape that we barely got back last night.”

“It’s amazing that piece of crap lasted as long as it did,” Roscano snapped. Then he actually asked a relevant question. “So who blew up the fucking van?”

“Sean Baxter,” Jumaine said immediately.

“Baxter? How can you be so sure?” Roscano asked, furrowing his brow.

“I’d recognize Baxter’s freaky white hair anywhere.”

“We were about to go out looking for him when you rang, sir,” Rocello chimed in. “Meaning, Baxter’s part of Gambini’s crew, but he made a direct strike at us.”

“You’d kill him without asking for my permission?” Roscano asked, anger creeping into his tone.

“We wouldn’t kill him,” Rocello saved us the trouble of tackling that one. “But we’d rough him up pretty bad and bring him to you.”

The Don brought his gaze back to Jumaine. “Why the fuck didn’t you nab him last night?”

“Because Rocello was hurt,” he explained. “I wouldn’t let him bleed out just to hunt down that little prick.”

“Did you take him to the hospital?” Roscano’s question was a dangerous one.

“No, they patched me up with a first aid kit,” Rock said, and I was glad that he hadn’t mentioned Margo and the nurse. Not that I’d thought he would have.

Luckily, Roscano moved on, turning back to Jumaine. “Baxter had to have been on your tail since New York. How come you didn’t spot him?”

“He wasn’t.” Jumaine’s steady, confident tone once again not leaving much room for doubt. “I checked my mirrors all the time. We had no tail. I only saw that van right before it pulled up behind us.”

Roscano nodded, his little pea-brain lost in thought. Finally, he shook his head in wonder. “Knocking over a bank. It’s been a while since we’ve done something like that.” He thought for a minute longer, something that was probably hard for him. “Some friends of mine have cased North Haven before. Those rich bastards have got a lot of valuable items in bank safe deposit boxes. But how you three fuckups think you’ll get into those boxes, let alone the vault, is beyond me. You don’t have the skills—or the balls.”

Anger filled me. We definitely had the balls—far more than he did. As for skills, if there was something we didn’t know how to do, we’d find someone who did. Or learn it ourselves.

“Forget about the bank,” Roscano said, and my heart sank. “It’s an unnecessary risk. You got me?”

“Sir, think about the revenue if we could just—” Jumaine began, but Roscano cut him off with a wave of his pudgy little fist.

“Don’t make me say it again,” Roscano snarled. Just because he was a total fuck-up didn’t mean he couldn’t make our lives miserable—or end them. “If I hear about a bank robbery in North Haven, you’re going to be in deep shit.”

“All right,” Rocello said curtly. He didn’t treat Nick with the same reverence he’d treated his father, but he still knew the chain of command. We all did. “What about Baxter? What are we going to do about him?”

“Rocello, look…” The Don lowered his voice, softening his stance. “You want revenge; I can understand that, but, if you whack Baxter, it’s war between my family and Gambini’s. I’m not prepared for that war. It’s going to fuck up business, too. I’ll arrange a sit-down with Gambini to sort this out with him.”

“Sort this out?” Rocello was clearly pissed, but he kept his temper in check and his voice steady. “He tried to blow us to pieces.”

“I made the decisions, not you,” Roscano said angrily. His father would never have said that—he wouldn’t have had to. Emilio had been the boss, but he’d ruled fairly and had always shown good judgment. The same could not be said for his son. “This conversation’s over.” Roscano’s tone was blunt. “Now, get the fuck out of my face.”

Shit.

Roscano strode away, on boots that likely contained lifts. His bodyguards joined him, flanking him as he moved through the crowd. He was probably trying to look important, but with his stiff little waddle, he mostly looked constipated.

Shit.

“This was my fault,” I began, words that didn’t slide very easily from my mouth. Roscano waved me off.

“We all agreed to go up there.”

Jumaine shoved his hands in his pockets, his brow furrowed. “I just wish I knew how Baxter knew. I know he didn’t follow us the whole way up there.”

I believed him. Checking for a tail was second nature to us. And now, Jumaine had lost his car. It was a shit heap, but he’d loved it. Guilt was another emotion that I wasn’t used to, but I felt it now. “I’m sorry, guys.”

No one responded, but they didn’t need to. They were my best friends, practically my brothers and I knew they weren’t going to hold this against me.

“What do we do about Baxter?” Jumaine asked. Roscano had just told us to leave him alone, but I wasn’t surprised by my friend’s question.

“We find out what we can,” Rocello said. “Discreetly.”

“Want to meet at the Rusty Bucket the night after next to talk about it?” Jumaine asked. “I know a certain bartender who said she wants to buy us drinks.”

Rocello grunted. “We owe her, not the other way around.”

Jumaine grinned. “She seemed pretty impressed by your fighting skills.”

Rocello didn’t say anything, but he didn’t exactly look displeased. But then he sighed. “I got plans.”

I exchanged a glance with Jumaine, but we didn’t ask. Rocello often kept things close to his chest, but he let us in when he needed to.

“Want to grab some hot dogs for lunch?” I asked, since it was clear the meeting was over.

“Yeah,” Rocello said, and Jumaine nodded.

As we walked through the park, my good mood returned. The weather was mild. Kids were playing ball and shouting as they chased each other around the playground. We got our dogs and sat on a park bench, talking about nothing in particular, but that didn’t matter. These guys were my family, and that was what mattered.

When we were done, and parted ways, I passed by the coffee kiosk without looking at the girl manning it. Instead, I kept seeing the image of a dark-eyed beauty the killer figure.

Last night, Jumaine had his hands on her slender hips, the lucky bastard. If our positions had been reversed, it would’ve made almost getting blown up worth it.

Almost.