always did know how to make shit interesting," Brio said. "Is something going on that I need to know about?" he asked, pinning me with those icy eyes of his.
"Not that I know of. Yet. The way shit is going lately, just keep an ear for your phone, yeah?"
"Got it," he agreed, ducking into the room.
Emilio stood with me for a moment, finishing his coffee. His gaze cut to me as Brio's voice carried to us from the other room.
But he wasn't talking to us.
He was talking to the body.
He did weird shit like that.
"I heard you like touching little girls," he murmured, and I could hear him dragging a chair across the floor, likely trying to get the meat hook uncurled, so he could drop the body. "Got off easy, man. Did you know there are five basic types of torture? You got sharp, blunt, cold, hot, loud. Sure, sure, there are millions of little subsets within each group. Hot water. Fire. That sort of thing. So many ways to spend so many hours. We would have had lots of fun, you and me."
"Jesus Christ," Emilio hissed, shaking his head. "I hope to fuck that bastard never gets pissed at me. He'd revive a man just to rip out his teeth one-by-one."
"Oh, shit. Sorry 'bout that man. Guts just fell right out. Guess I gotta be more careful with ya."
"Do something," I demanded, barely holding back a laugh at the look of horror on Emilio's face.
"I think I'm owed hazard pay for having to dispose of something with that crazy bastard."
"You got it," I agreed, nodding my head.
"Go clean up fully. We got this. Then get your girl out."
"She's not my girl," I insisted, shaking my head.
To that, Emilio moved into the doorway, looking at Paulie's mutilated body, then back at me.
"You sure about that?"
"Oh, man," Brio interrupted. "He didn't cut your tongue out? Shit, man. That would have been my first move. Harder to scream when you're choking on your blood, y'know? Missed opportunity, there."
"Yeah," I said to Emilio, trying to block out Brio's insane ramblings. "This was business. He made the family look bad. Got away with it for years. It's not personal."
"Aw shit, little boss man," Brio said, standing upright, facing me. "Even I know this shit is personal. I mean, where is his cock? Oh, wait, shit, is that it?" he asked, pointing. "I thought it was a finger. Damn. No wonder he was such an asshole, packing that pencil dick. But yeah, boss man, me? I do this shit. You? You don't do this shit. So you doing this shit, that's personal. Own that shit."
With that, he turned his focus back to Paulie.
"Keep an eye on him," I told Emilio quietly.
"You have no worries with this," he told me, shrugging. "We know what we're doing. Go handle the rest of this, so we can all get some much-needed rest."
With that, I did, heading home for a quick shower and change after checking with Chris to make sure no one had tried to come and relieve him of his duties.
Luckily, everyone was working on laying the new floor, and had forgotten about the woman in the basement.
Which was good.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and made my way back to the brownstone, taking a deep breath, steeling myself for whatever might come my way.
Or so I thought.
"Where the fuck have you been?" my father asked when I made my way in through the house, glancing over at the new flooring that was carefully being put into place by men who were not qualified to do so, their suits getting rubbed bare in the knees from crawling around, their fucking gold jewelry dangling. It was a sight. If I were less tired and stressed, I'd have had a good chuckle over it. "I was just going to talk to our guest about her actions last night," he added, already reaching for the door to the basement, making his way down.
He might have always had a poor tolerance for liquor, but the bastard rarely dealt with hangovers. Which made him a lot more on his game than I was currently feeling.
I had to shake it off.
This was the most important part.
The only part that mattered.
I didn't even trip over that thought like I knew I would have just a week or so before.
Because back then, it was saving the family's face that was most important, making sure the other families—especially the Espositos and the Lombardis—had no reason