“You sound pretty happy for a man who killed his own father.”
“I thought you were going to ask how I got this number.”
“You hired a hacker from the Dark Web. You lifted my consigliere’s phone and somehow got into it. You have a contact in the police.”
“Oh no,” Patty laughs. “You see, Gabriel Smith is working for me.”
“Of course he is,” I mutter, not even one part of me believing it. “What do you want, Patty?”
“I want you to stop burning down my businesses, obviously.”
“And I want you to stop trying to kill me. Let’s come to an arrangement.”
“What sort of an arrangement?”
“You step down as the leader of your Family and give control over to one of your more level-headed colleagues. You leave the city and never return. You stop dealing drugs and arms and trafficking women.”
“And what do I get in return?” he says, his laugh grimmer now, the madness in him creeping into his voice. “Sounds like a pretty one-sided fucking deal.”
“I just told you what you get in return, Patty,” I snarl. “You get to leave the fucking city. And in a car. Or a plane. Not a body bag.”
“Ooh, scary,” he titters, but he can’t hide the real anxiety in his voice. “When’s the last time you put somebody in the ground, Dom? You’re old. Your day has come and gone. It’s time for the young wolves to take control.”
“You’re not a wolf, Patty. You’re a wild dog. And when I start chipping away at your pack, you’ll realize just how truly alone you are. Your men follow you because they’re as mad as you and they like the mayhem. But when the mayhem turns toward them and they start dropping like fucking flies – or when the money stops – they’ll be gone. You’ll see.”
A pause.
I hear a crashing sound and a smirk touches my lips.
“Something tells me this phone call isn’t going how you wanted it to,” I comment. “Did you have a proposition? Or were you merely intending to act tough?”
“I’m calling to let you know things are going to get bad, really fucking bad if you don’t step aside and give me Downtown. Have the rest of the city if you want, but Downtown is mine.”
“So you can kidnap girls and turn them into prostitutes. So you can funnel drugs into the poorest neighborhoods. So your men can ride around like it’s the Wild fucking West, raping and killing and torturing with impunity. That will never happen, Patty.”
“What I do with my business is none of your business,” he snaps. “You think you’re so high and mighty. Just wait. One of these days, it’ll just me and you and our fists. You won’t be so cocky then, old man.”
“You better hope that day doesn’t come. Goodbye, Patty.”
I hang up and tighten my hold around the phone, tension writhing through me. In my mind I’m stomping my boot onto Patty’s smug face over and over, watching the blood well and bleed into the concrete.
I call Gabriel on his secure landline.
“Skip?”
“How did Patty get my fucking phone number?”
“Ah, fuck,” Gabriel says. “I lost my burner phone last night. I assumed it went up in one of the you-know-whats, but maybe one of them got their hands on it?”
“Was it password-protected?”
Gabriel pauses. I can hear him fidgeting.
“For fuck’s sake, Gabriel. Don’t make that mistake again.”
“I know, Dom. I’m sorry. It’s just we update those burners so often, sometimes I forget.”
“Well, fucking remember next time.”
“I know, I know. It won’t happen again. Anyway, what happened?”
I tell him about the conversation as we pull up outside his apartment building, driving into the underground garage and parking close to the private elevator that leads to the penthouse suite. Two of my men are posted on either side of it, their hands near their hips, ready to draw if they need to.
“Well, shit,” Gabriel says. “We knew he was going to be angry. There’s nothing new there.”
“No,” I murmur. “But he sounded unhinged. Like a madman. And the problem with madmen is you can never predict what they’re going to do.”
Chapter Six
Dallas
The cocktail dress clings to me as I move out onto the balcony, letting the wind kiss my face and the cold night air jolt me to wakefulness. The city glitters at night, a thousand lights sparkling up at me. Behind me, Dad’s apartment is filled with around forty people, the mobsters, and their wives, most of the wives with giant extravagant haircuts and slim, fuck-me bodies that make me feel ungainly and – say it, say it – yep, fat.
They make me feel fat.
When Dad said dinner, I assumed it would be a few people. So when the event organizers rolled in and converted the living room into a Last-Supper-style banquet room, complete with giant table and a center area for dancing and conversing and socializing, I couldn’t help but feel a tremor of anxiety move through me.
I remember once, when I was around fifteen years old, Mom came swishing into my room in one of her way-too-revealing dresses. She glittered around the place, oblivious to the fact that I was trying to do my homework, Poppet nestled close to my feet. When I didn’t immediately start fawning over how pretty her dress was, she frowned at me.
“Dallas,” she sighed. “I understand that you’re not a party sort of girl, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun, does it?”
And then she left.
And the worst part was I couldn’t disagree with her.
I’ve never been the sort of girl who enjoys parties, the loudness, the pressure to be somebody I’m not. I can read about parties in books and enjoy them, the vicarious thrill of a stolen kiss by moonlight, but to actually be there, living it …
My thoughts
