Page 48 of Mafia Baby

I try the door that we watched the men walk through and find that it isn’t locked. Predictable. Lots of dangerous men are too casual about securing their property. I have two different kinds of security in place at my apartment alone. I can’t imagine leaving a door unlocked like this for any reason.

But then again, I’m the Reaper, and these people are likely lowly amateurs who The Cobra is just using to transfer goods from one place to another.

I crack the door open and give it a little push, then draw back into the shadows around the corner. When no one shows up to close the door or see why it opened up, I approach and then slip inside.

The hall on the other side of the door is dark, but there is a single flickering lightbulb a few feet away to illuminate the space somewhat. I hear voices, both of them male. I edge down the hallway until I can hear the conversation taking place nearby more clearly.

“I want to make the trade at the Casino tomorrow,” one of the voices says. “I’ll do it myself. I just need you to take the product to this location. Our buyer will pick it up there as soon as I’ve handed off the keys to the container that you’re going to stash it in.”

The voice sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t quite place it. Something about the person’s accent feels fake, or forced to me. It’s almost like an English accent, but it’s not quite right. I ponder this as the other person responds. This voice is patently, entirely English.

“Righto,” the other voice says back. “Happy to do it. Glad to get that gear off our hands. We’ve been sitting on it so long, you’d think we were trying to hatch an egg.”

I hear a derisive snort at this little quip. “Gear doesn’t make more of itself overnight,” the voice says. “But it would sure be nice if it did.”

They seem to be wrapping up, and I back down the hallway and slip through the door. As I jog through the shadows between warehouse buildings to get back to the car, I think about the man in the mask. Why an opera mask? It wasn’t practical at all, and certainly didn’t hide all of someone’s face. Why would anyone pick that kind of mask to obscure their features?

“Find out something good?” Gianna asks me as I get back into the car and turn the engine over.

I nod. “They’re meeting at the casino tomorrow to make ‘the trade’ which turns out to be a key to a container or locker somewhere which will be holding all the gear…drugs.”

She ponders this for a moment. “We need to go to the Casino and figure out who The Cobra is when they show up to offer their business partner the keys to a storage locker or container that is likely going to be full of drugs.”

“Smart cookie,” I praise her.

“My daddy didn’t raise no fool,” she says with a little laugh.

Then she sobers as she seems to remember just how foolish everything about our relationship truly is.

We both know that we have no business being together, yet here we are, spending time together not just in bed but also while I’m working. No one else on earth has ever gone to work on jobs with me. She’s the first.

I think that’s very significant, but I don’t have time to ponder it too closely right now. For now, we have a night of spying to plan.

Chapter Eighteen

Gianna

I touch up my lipstick and then make a little pout to see if it looks right. I’m feeling far too excited for someone who’s involved in spying on a potential hit with her assassin boyfriend. However, the fact remains that I am having a great time tonight.

Dom’s “personal assistant”, whoever that is, had done a good job of packing clothes for this trip.

I had discovered a few evening-wear outfits in the bottom of the bag, carefully packed in tissue paper. The dress that I had chosen to wear to the casino is a silver, sparkly number that has beads all over it.

It has a flapper vibe, so I had styled the long, blonde wig I had worn here the day before into a classic, 1920’s-inspired style. I might run into the same wives who accidentally gave us a tip the day before, and I couldn’t have possibly explained to them why my hair had suddenly turned brown.

Besides, Dom was adamant that I needed to wear different makeup than usual and stick to the blonde wig in case any of Vince’s or my father’s business partners saw me.

He’s probably right to be paranoid, although it’s new territory for me to have to feel so paranoid about my safety around my own family.

It’s been easier than I expected to believe that my father’s business is as shady as it gets. I think deep down, I always knew that was the case. Why else would they have sent me away to boarding school for so many years? Why else did we have so much money for a family that had a small shipping company? I just never looked at the facts closely enough to put two-and-two together before.

I smile at my reflection, then drift out of the bathroom. I see Dom playing Blackjack near the middle of the casino floor. It’s not a very big place, so being in the middle of the room gives him an excellent view of all the entrances and exits, as well as all the comings and goings at the nearby bar.

He sees me, and he gives me a little wink before he goes back to subtly searching the room for signs that something big is going down.

I asked him what to keep an eye out for, and he just told me that I would know it when I saw it. He had shrugged, like that was all there was to spotting criminals in action. I had rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help him if he didn’t explain what to do, but I figured that I would at least help him to gather information like I had the day before.

I make my way over to the bar, suddenly starving. This seems to be happening a lot during this phase of my pregnancy. We just ate a couple of hours ago and this isn’t really the time to be turning up hungry.

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