Rosie?” I demand, gritting my teeth.
“My wife and my child are with me, thank you very much. Now I’m a man who doesn’t like trouble and suddenly I have all manner of people looking for me. Cops and fuckers like that. I need you to call them off.”
“Why the fuck would I do a thing like that?” I growl, roaring like thunder has laced itself into my voice.
“I know you, Christian Giordano. After watching you over the last few weeks, I see you’re the hot tempered one,” he says and my fucking blood runs cold.
Watching? Instantly I think of that guy from a few weeks back. It wasn’t Falcone who sent the fucker. It was him. Miguel. He sent the guy to watch me. How long has he been in Chicago watching? As long as I’ve known Lilly.
“You don’t think before you act,” he continues in a sing song voice. “You automatically assume you’re better than me and think you should have my woman and my child. You’ve fucked my wife enough. No more of it. Come for me and I’ll come for you. Stay the fuck away.”
“You don’t seem to know who you’re talking to,” I bellow.
“Oh, it’s you who doesn’t know who you’re talking to. Go outside and open the gates. I have a message for you and a warning.”
I’m enraged, but panic has me and it tells me to play nice. I’m not the one with the leverage here, it’s him and if I want to know more than I already do I need to cool it.
So I do as he says.
“Who is coming?” I ask.
“You will see. There should be a black Range Rover waiting by the gate.”
I practically dash outside and press the buzzer to open the gates.
Not a minute later a black Range comes down the drive.
It stops in front of me and a guy in a hooded sweatshirt gets out. Holy fuck. This guy has to be the punk who was watching me. Up close he looks leaner, a little taller, but it’s him and I can see his face. He looks Hispanic and has a cross inked on his neck. He gets out with ease and walks over to me.
“Your punk is here, what’s the message?” I ask Miguel on the phone.
“He will show you. This is the type of message you see and hear.”
The asshole in front of me takes out his phone and holds it out to me.
I look at the screen as he presses the play button on a video.
Shock suffuses me when the image of myself riding my motorcycle in the woods come on the screen. It’s from that night weeks ago when we pulled off the heist to get the guns back. Everything stops inside me when I watch myself shoot and kill Officer Tanner. Next to me is Vincent shooting Falcone.
You can see it’s us quite clearly. We don’t have helmets on.
Fuck.
“You motherfucker!” I growl at Miguel and the punk puts the phone back in his pocket.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I am. So, call off your hounds and stay the fuck away or we’ll leak that recording to the feds. Not only will you and your family lose everything, you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars for killing a cop.”
This fucker has me exactly where he wants.
“You have until midday to give me the all clear, I’ll call back then. After that, the video leaks.”
Miguel hangs up and the fucker in front of me smiles.
“That was the message ese, now you need the warning to stay the fuck away,” he says pulling an envelope from his pocket.
I take it and he gets in the truck and drives away.
I look in the envelope and my stomach lurches when I see a finger inside with a wedding band.
Dropping the envelope, I know straightaway who the finger belongs to. It’s Kirk’s. And, that can only mean he’s dead.
The guy is nearly out the gate, but the time I look ahead. I want to kill his ass, but what the fuck would that achieve.
Things just took a turn for the worse so I do the only thing I can and call Vincent.
He answers on the first ring.
“We have a problem,” I say.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lilly
My head… it feels like it might fall off. It’s so light and painful. I have it back when I try to move it forward I wince from the sharp pain that spikes through my forehead.
Opening my eyes I look around and see I’m in some