Page 6 of Potent Desire

“Tara’s holed up in a motel room as we speak. I have four men waiting in the parking lot. I’ve given them instruction that if they don’t hear from me before midnight, they are to go in and finish what I started. She’s been ordered to sit tight until morning. If she tries to leave, the same fate awaits her. If you don’t hurry and give me what I want, the feds will find her body in the morning, and you know what they’ll do?” I pause, giving Larry a second to think. He already knows the answer. ”Nothing. They’ll do nothing at all. It’s Tara Slater. The daughter of one of the powerful heads that rule Hannibal. Why would they bother getting involved in gang warfare, when they’re on the payroll?”

Larry’s jaw drops.

“If I give up Riverview, Oswald holds all of the Mississippi River,” Larry shakes his head. “I can’t do it, and you know that. My land will be reduced to—”

“Little, sure. Don’t make this harder on me, Larry. I don’t want to have to kill your girl,” I clear my throat. Really, I don’t. She’s done nothing to me. This is just the game we play.

“You’re serious? Do you think Bruno Romani is going to sit back and let your father run rampant across his city?” Larry scoffs.

“Do you think the King cares about what we do, as long as we continue to bend the knee to him?”

“Maddox, I want you to know that if you go through with this, you’re making a very powerful enemy in me. Do you understand that?”

“Damned as I am, I don’t care,” I shrug my shoulders. “Go on. Start a war. Do you really think it’s going to hurt my old man? Nah, not while you’re mourning the loss of your little girl.”

Those words strike a nerve in Larry. He opens and shuts his mouth, trying to find something to say. Eventually, he buckles, but not before he slams a fist onto his desk.

“Riverview Park, and that’s it,” he says eventually.

“That’s it.”

“You come knocking on my door again, Maddox; you or any of Oswald’s dogs, and I’ll put a bullet in you and them myself. Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

I drop the rest of Tara’s belongings on Larry’s desk. “She’s in the Motel Six. I’ll call off my boys.”

Another successful job that yields nothing more than a growing fire inside my father’s heart. His blind ambition will kill him someday, that much I’m damned sure of. At least for the time being, Larry’s surrender will satiate his hunger.

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