Mickey turned his gaze briefly to the ceiling and huffed out a breath. “Can we cut the shit? I’m not an idiot. And I’ve lived that motherfucking life. I know what dirty money looks like and what you’ve done to get it, and I’m telling you right now that you can’t use it to dig your mum out of this. It can’t happen that way.”
I’ve lived that motherfucking life.The coarse words stood out more than the rest, hooking claws into Benito’s heart that he couldn’t comprehend. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a taxi driver. Check my car for my Uber ID.”
“Uber doesn’t pay in rolled up bank notes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s not a cash business, bro.”
“Don’t call me bro. We’re not friends.”
Mickey snorted out a bitter laugh. “Trust me, it’s better than what I want to call you right now.”
“Fuck you.”
“No thanks. We’re done with that.”
Benito flinched. He leaned back against the closed front door, recoiling from the impact that felt worse than if Mickey had hit him. The nausea he’d brought home that morning reignited, and for a horrifying moment, he thought he might puke.Don’t look at him. But it was like asking a river to stop flowing. Benito was as drawn to Mickey as he’d always been, and he couldn’t look away.
Long seconds passed. Heavy moments cloaked in a dread Benito couldn’t stomach. He was drowning under the weight of Mickey’s stare. Suffocating. “You don’t know me,” he whispered.
Mickey’s face softened. “I know, man. I’m trying to do the right thing here, for everyone. Not just your mum.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my job. I want this resolved as much as you do. It’s gone on way too long.”
Benito choked on his own bitter laugh. “For you, maybe. I already told you I didn’t know about it until today.”
“For real?”
“For real. My mum poked your letter through the letterbox at me this morning.”
“Did you read it?”
“I tried. Couldn’t make most of it out.”
Mickey winced. “That bad? I got my boss to read it before I brought it here.”
Benito eyed Mickey’s suddenly stricken expression. Watched it deepen and then pass, as if it had never been there at all. “My mum spilt oil and coffee all over it, like she thinks that deletes it from the matrix.”
“Oh.”
“What did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.”
Liar. Benito let his gaze pass over Mickey again, lingering this time from his boots, to his jeans, to the navy-blue shirt he wore. And then his hands. Benito stared and pictured them as he’d last seen them, pressed against his own skin, rough and hot. Recalled Mickey’s dirty moan as they’d kissed against his front door, and then his hazy smile when they’d parted ways two blood-heating orgasms later. Benito had fixated on it for days. Dreamt of it.
We’re done with that.
Fuck.
Losing it to Rosetta’s bullshit felt like a slow death.
“How involved are you with this?” Mickey said. The interjection felt sudden. Invasive. But it wasn’t. It was a fair question.
Benito willed his shoulders to relax and his hands to uncurl from fists, but he couldn’t make it happen. His body was a live wire of painful tension. And he still wanted to throw up. “Are you asking me if this is a one-time thing?”