Page 44 of Tammaro DeLuca

He loosened the belt and Shields took a deep ass breath, coughing to get air back into his lungs.

“Why have you been following me?” I asked Shields.

“I told you,” he coughed again, “your dynasty needs to burn in hell.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“You’ve got a lot of mouth for somebody with a death sentence.” I warned him. “The only thing keeping you alive right now is me. Cruz here has already marked you to dance with the devil.”

“Then kill me.”

“Trust me, that’s happening.” I pulled out a knife and pressed the tip into his temple. “You’re going to talk first.”

“Aaaaah! There’s nothing to fucking tell!”

“Who hired you?”

“Nobody! Aaah! Fuck!”

“Who. Hired. You?” I pressed harder, watching the blood cover the blade.

“Puff Relators!”

I pulled the blade back and waited. “They withdrew their claim to my land.”

“Yeah, but after they’d given me all the information, I couldn’t let it go. I approached them about it and they told me to drop it. But one of their attorneys, Chambers, told me that if I could find enough to put you and your brothers away, he’d make it worth my while. I was giving up, but he insisted I follow his granddaughter and it would lead me to something. It led me to nothing but getting fired. I couldn’t get to Martina, so I hid.”

“I was working with Chambers, too. I didn’t know that Shields was in on it until a couple of weeks ago. We started pooling our resources on you and then finally Chambers gave us the green light to go inside your house if we got the opportunity. When he told me you were leaving town, I gave the information to Shields, knowing that’s exactly where he’d go. While he went there, I went to the airport to get you flagged by the TSA.” Lias said.

“So, you don’t need torture to talk?” Max got close to his face. “What else do you know?”

“That whatever y’all have done to Chambers, this shit is personal. He dropped big money to make sure that regardless of what happened, we made sure that Tammaro took the fall. Everybody knows Beniamino runs the family. He didn’t care. Tammaro was going to pay for it all.”

Me and Max looked at each other. Chambers was a problem. He’d hung on to his life through that gunshot. He was in there fighting for his life. But what I’d just heard was that regardless, he wouldn’t let this go. Yolanda told me that her mother found out about the affairs, which meant that I had no leverage over him anymore. If he had two police officers investigating, that means he had nothing on me either.

“Cruz, I made you a promise.” I said to him.

He smiled and looked at Shields. He held up the belt and snapped the two leather halves together.

“Yeah.” He responded.

“Go for it.” I looked at Lias while it happened.

Cruz beat Shields in the face with the buckle of that belt until he was a bloody mess. Blood flew, splattering across the floor and Lias’ face as he carried on. Max and I had stepped back, trying to miss out on as much of that shit getting on us as possible. Then Cruz strangled the little bit of life from his body with that same belt. When he moved away from Shields’ body, he was dead.

Lias was shaking from shock. Blood covering your face would do that. Besides, he’d gotten to see a calm man turned mad, up close and personal.

“I’m going to give you a choice, Lias.” I said to him, “you’re a man who understands an excellent business opportunity when he sees one. Now, I know you came to the airport instead of my house because you have two daughters of your own and you couldn’t do what Shields had to do. So, you chose something safer. I’m not interested in having you harass children. I’ve got something better in mind.”

“Any … thing.” He stuttered.

“I bet. Because you don’t want to die here today. So, these are your options. You’re going to become the face that makes Donald Chambers remember to stay in line, or you’re going to be the man that goes into his hospital room and kills him. I’ll let you decide. If you kill him, I won’t hold it against you. You’ll be free of me forever. Understand, though, if you step out of line, I’ll have the evidence to prove that you did it. Or you can watch him. Have him followed. Go where he goes to make sure that he’s a good boy. You’ll report to Cruz here. If he thinks you’re slacking on the job, he’ll correct you. There’s no harm in that, right?”

Cruz wrapped the belt around Lias’ neck. “No harm at all.” Cruz said for him.

“I can’t kill him.” Lias spat. “That’s not my thing.”

---