growing.”
“You’re setting off that temper.”
“Make sure everyone’s on guard.”
“You,” he said. “Be sure none of that alley shit happens again. Lee cuts your head off, that’s the end for all of us. For good.”
Cormick Grady was known as the Butcher. Lee had that same gruesome streak, but he saved the massacre for personal offenses.
“But at least the Scarpones are not getting involved with our feud,” Raff continued. “That saves us some trouble.”
“For now,” I said. “They’re too busy trying to find out who’s fucking with them.”
“Works for us.” He shrugged.
Silence filled the room, but our thoughts were loud. We both knew that we needed to make a big move. I was the marauder, stealing was my specialty, but I had to play this right. Hitting small shipments wounded and led to bigger wounds over time. But I wanted to cripple them in one go—and fast. Grady was tired of working small loads. He was ready to go bigger, since he’d set this up over the years with the Scarpones.
His first big shipment, his life’s work, I’d already claimed as mine. Unless the ghost, who I sensed was Macchiavello, got to it first.
A knock came at the door, and Raff and I both turned to look. Susan came in a second later, holding a plain envelope.
“Urgent,” she said, setting it in front of me. “From Mr. Fausti.”
“Ah,” I said, opening it, recognizing Rocco’s stamp right away. Inside was a fake bill for his legal services. I knew the difference between the real ones and the ones they used for show. Anyone who worked for them did. It was a way for him to communicate. This bill? I owed payment to Macchiavello. He’d decided to cash in on that debt owed—killing Cormick Grady.
Rocco added a note on his personalized paper: We need to catch up. I hear Sullivan’s has good roast beef. Dinner. Around 7 o’clock.
He gave me the date, which was around the time of Macchiavello’s wedding in Italy. Then he signed off in his regal fucking handwriting.
Rocco Fausti
A slow smile came to my face, and I stared at the paper a few seconds before I met Raff’s eager eyes.
“What is it?” His knee bounced up and down.
“Roast beef,” I said. I’d give Raff orders to keep his eyes and ears open, but what went on between the Faustis and me stayed between us. No one else knew the details.
Rule number one in this life: never trust anyone one hundred percent.
Back to roast beef.
It wasn’t the word that Rocco used, but what he had conveyed through the message. The Italian families, especially the Faustis, were known to speak in code like no one else. Being fluent in their language, I understood right away. Rocco was giving me a time and place for a reason.
This happening during a time when Mac would be getting married was significant. Because it meant he wouldn’t be in New York.
My gut told me it had something to do with the big shipment, and if I learned what I needed to know, I had my mark. I knew it was going to happen soon, and Rocco came through just in time.
There was no doubt, though, that Mac was giving me this at a price. I’d hit the delivery, but he’d get the goods. I wasn’t familiar with his business, but this time, I would have to let it go. I could do what I wanted with the small loads, set them on fire like usual, but he had the right to do whatever he wanted with this one.
Then my debt was repaid.
All in all, this was a good deal for the both of us, if it turned out to be the big shipment. No matter what the situation was, though, if Rocco sent word, it had to be something good.
I could taste the roast beef in my mouth now.
Raff went to speak again when a loud bang echoed in my office. Harrison was flying past the windows, his fist landing against another glass as he did. I stood before Raff, wondering why the fuck he was banging on my shit. He’d been a testy motherfucker after his girl decided to marry Macchiavello and after I forced his sister to marry me.
“My sister,” he said, after he’d thrown my door open. “She’s just been arrested.”
I moved through the crowd waiting outside of our place as Stone led my wife out of the door, her hands cuffed behind her back.
She wasn’t making it easy on him. She was taunting