ALESSIO: Deal.
The sound of Xaviaro pointedly clearing his throat forces my attention away from my phone. I stuff it back into my pocket and pull out my usual chair, unbuttoning my suit jacket to getcomfortable and kicking my feet up onto the table once I sit down.
“Alright, hit me with it.” I fix my face into a curious expression to hide the nerves still dancing in my gut. He can’t have anything solid, can he? Spettro doesn’t know his own name, he rents month to month without any kind of lease and pays cash, he doesn’t have any credit cards or ID. He really is a ghost.
But I learned a long damn time ago not to put anything past Lorenzo’s right-hand man. Ifanyonecould find a ghost, it would be Xaviaro.
“It’s not much,” he warns. “But I managed to track down medical records of a John Doe who was admitted to Wildcliff General a little over seven years ago. He was an overdose they found dead in the Sleepless Reapers’ favorite dump spot and managed to revive. No identification, fingerprints and DNA weren’t on file, and when he woke up, he couldn’t remember anything.”
My heart sinks. Fucking Ice Man.
“You know where this guy is now?” I hope to hell he doesn’t hear the little tremor in my voice. I clear my throat just to be sure and lower my feet back to the ground so I can lean my elbows on the table instead.
He shakes his head and I try not to visibly sag with relief.
“They kept him a couple of days until he was stable, then they basically kicked him out the door with nothing but his vomit-stained clothes and the contact information for a drug counselor. I figure if anyone might know who this guy is, it’s him.”
I force a slightly manic laugh. “Assuming he didn’t just go right back to the Reapers for another fix. I don’t know about you, but if I’ve got nothing but the vomit-stained clothes on myback and the itch of a drug habit, I’m crawling right back to the source.”
“Maybe.” He doesn’t look convinced. “Couldn’t hurt to pay the counselor a visit though.”
Shit. He’s circling dangerously close to actually sniffing Spettro out. But I can’t keep arguing without raising suspicion, so I give a tight nod. I’m not gonna be able to drag my feet on this as long as I’d hoped. Definitely not long enough for Lorenzo to get over this Declan thing and into a better mood.
Salvatore and Elio show up, which at least gives me an excuse to drop the conversation with Xaviaro for now.
“Did you guys hear the rumor?” Elio asks with a glint in his eye, leaning on the table like a teenager who has some juicy gossip rather than a thirty-something mafioso with a body count.
“It had better not be about another dead Reaper,” I mutter. I swear to fuck, if that body surfaced already, I’m giving up the disposal racket all together.
Elio pauses and raises his eyebrows. “Wait, what? What did you hear?”
I wave my hand dismissively. “I’m just talking shit. Tell us who got a bad nose job or which Desperate Housewife got caught oiled up with someone else’s husband.”
“Or wife,” Sal adds sagely.
“Obviously. We’re an inclusive organization.” Lorenzo’s voice behind me startles me. The man can move like a cat when he wants to. His lips twitch with a smile as he rounds the table and pulls out his own chair. “I always say, just because we’re bad guys, doesn’t mean we have to bebadguys.”
“We should print that on the Christmas cards this year,” Elio says, and I’m honestly not sure if it’s a joke or not. He actually does send out Christmas cards to all of the employees, and almost all of them feature a picture of an unsmiling Lorenzothat’s been photoshopped into a holiday scene. Last year, he was Ebenezer Scrooge surrounded by Muppets. I’m pretty sure if Elio wasn’t his brother, he’d have shot him by now.
Lorenzo grunts in response and frowns slightly, I’m assuming at the reminder of the annual tradition. But whatever gossip Elio had, we’ll never know because the boss is all business tonight. We launch into our regular updates and reports. While Elio is pitching the idea that we stop wasting our time fixing MMA matches and just buy up the whole infrastructure here in Wildcliff, my phone vibrates in my pocket.
I slip it out underneath the table and click on the new text notification from Spettro. It’s not a direct response to the conversation we were having—at least I don’t think it is. It’s just two words that make my blood run cold.
SPETTRO: I’m sorry
Sorry for what? I don’t even have time to type out a response asking what the hell he’s talking about before Elio goes silent mid-sentence and everyone at the table except for me reaches for their pistols, their eyes fixed on something behind me.
Shit.
GHOST
Shit.
Maybe I should have thought this through a little better.
I raise my hands in surrender so they can see I’m not holding any weapons, but none of them relax. I guess that’s fair. They don’t know me, and I’m sure they have more than enoughenemies to justify a healthy paranoia. Alessio is the only one sitting with his back to me, and he turns around slowly. The look on his face is something between pissed and terrified. But he doesn’t look surprised.
I heard what he said about wanting to think through the best way to talk to Lorenzo about me, but I didn’t really see the point. Alessio’s worried that it might look like he knew something before he did, but that just meansheshouldn’t be the one to tell his boss about me. This was the perfect solution, even if I do currently have four pistols pointed in my direction.