23
It was dark when Asa gave Dante his boots back and bundled him into the back of a van that smelt of bleach and stale kebabs. He was gentler than Dante expected, but his grim silence was like the blade of a knife hovering at Dante’s throat.He’s scared.
And he had every reason to be. The Albanian crew made people disappear when they were inconvenienced. Dante had been lucky to escape them with a bullet in his foot and not the back of his head.
Lucky?The police showed up and you got nicked instead, then got the shit kicked out of you on remand until they were satisfied you wouldn’t rat.
Dante wondered if Asa knew, then decided he didn’t care. The past was the past, and if they could get through the next few hours, maybe they both had a future.
The van rumbled through the city, a twenty-minute journey that seemed to take hours as Dante was tossed around the back. His knee hit the wheel arch. He gritted his teeth against the pain, scowling when Asa finally opened the sliding door. “Tie me up next time, yeah?”
Asa grunted and yanked Dante out of the van.
Dante stumbled upright, blinking at the sudden light from nearby streetlights. Behind Asa, a huge warehouse loomed over them, derelict and dark. Dante felt like he should’ve recognised it, but he didn’t. Like the faces he’d once known, he’d blocked most of London out. All he truly remembered was Paolo’s caff and the council flat he’d grown up in.
“Come on,” Asa said. “It’s round the back.”
He gripped Dante’s arm and towed him forwards.
“You don’t have to wrestle me,” Dante said. “I ain’t going anywhere.”
Asa ignored him and tightened his grip, digging his fingers into Dante’s elbow joint hard enough to spark pins and needles in Dante’s fingers.
Dante sighed. It was going to be a long night.
The back of the warehouse building was cloaked in darkness. Water dripped from overflowing gutter pipes, and shadows danced like monsters. Asa led them to a chained gate and sent a text from a burner phone.
“Who do they think they’re talking to if they won’t communicate with you?”
Asa’s grin was hideous. “Who do you think?”
“Me?”
“Ten points.” Asa pressed the phone into Dante’s hand. “Read through the thread in case they test you. And don’t be acting like a fucking hostage.”
“Get your hands off me then.”
Asa let his hand drop from Dante’s arm, though he remained close enough to let Dante know what would happen if he tried to run.
Dante took the phone and scanned the message thread. It was brief. One-word messages. A postcode. Nothing unexpected. “Anything else I should know?”
“Nope.”
As Asa spoke, a door beyond the gate opened. Flashlights swept the area, illuminating where they stood, then went dark again.
Footsteps approached. Dante listened hard, gauging numbers, but he was out of practice, and the three men he expected turned out to be four.
No words were exchanged. The gate opened, and hands far rougher than Asa’s seized Dante’s arms. His feet left the floor as he was propelled through the gate and to a door, and then the world went black, blocked out by a blindfold tied tight around his head, squeezing his brains out of his eyeballs.Fucking lovely.
With one sense cut off, the others went into overdrive. Sounds and smells bombarded Dante as they moved into the warehouse. Doors opened and shut. Voices. The scent of damp walls and unwashed men.
It smells like prison. Dante’s stomach lurched, but it was empty of anything but the water Asa had given him hours ago, and the twisting pain went nowhere.
They reached a quiet place. Dante’s handler threw him to the ground and stomped his boot into Dante’s ribs for good measure. “You wait,” he growled in thickly accented English. “Boss will see when ready.”
Winded, Dante could only cough as heavy footsteps departed and he was left alone, sprawled on the cold concrete floor.
He waited a moment, listening, hearing nothing but wheezing breaths he assumed to be Asa. Then he sat up and pushed the blindfold up his face, revealing a disused factory floor, complete with dilapidated machinery.