Page 57 of Mafia Baby

“Hello, Dom,” Will said to me affably, as if we were meeting for a pint.

I blinked. This had to be a dream. What was Will doing here? A terrible thought occurred to me. I swallowed hard, my throat feeling constricted suddenly. “You’re The Cobra,” I said to him.

Will nodded and spread his hands out. “In the flesh,” he agreed. “You’re not very good at spying on people, by the way,” he added conversationally. “I knew the moment you left Chicago that you were coming here. I wish you’d left my sister home, though. She was supposed to be helping disadvantaged teens or some shit with our mother.”

I tried to collect my racing thoughts. I wasn’t sure what this meant for Gianna. I knew it meant nothing good for me, but was Will really crazy enough to kill his own sister for disobeying him?

We hadn’t actually threatened any particular business deal of Will’s with our presence, but he had to have known that I was in town hunting him down to kill him. He had been willing to scare Gianna enough that she had tried to cause his driver to crash his car outside the casino. I would need to tread very carefully here.

“What’s the deal you want to offer me?” I said flatly.

“Oh, what’s your rush?” William said cheerfully. “Give me your gun and phone and then come with me. I know this place doesn’t look like much, but we still have some creature comforts to enjoy here.”

“No gun. No phone,” I told him, holding my arms out. He patted me down and tutted at me.

“So trusting. That’s not like you,” he commented.

I looked at Will’s face. He had a huge shiner, and it looked like his nose was broken as well.

“Who gave you a love tap?” I asked gleefully, hoping that it was Gianna.

Will scowls at me and just gestures for me to follow him. I glance back at the door to the outside world. I wish that there was someone else outside backing me up, but Gianna and I are alone.

I have never been afraid in my life, but right now, I admit that I’m scared. The fact that Will is The Cobra is terrifying in ways that no other piece of information could be.

I feel off-kilter and disconnected from reality, like I’m having a nightmare.

I follow behind Will warily, glancing around me as we move through a hallway that is lined with small rooms. He finally turns into a doorway to his left, and I follow him.

I freeze when I see Gianna curled up on the floor with her eyes closed. Was she already dead? My heart leaps up and lodges in my throat, making it hard to breathe.

As I stare in horror, imagining a thousand awful things, her eyelids flutter and she wakes up. I nearly passed out with relief. It was quickly erased, however, by the look on her face when she saw me. I saw the hope flare in her eyes for a moment, and then fear and horror replaced it. She knew like I knew. There was no way out of this for me.

“Sit down,” Will said, taking advantage of my distraction and pressing a gun to my temple. “We have things to talk about.”

I did as I was told, moving carefully to sit in a folding chair in the middle of the room. There was a small, folding camp table next to it.

I saw that he had placed a bottle of whiskey on the plastic surface and two plastic cups. I looked over at Gianna and saw that her mouth was set in a grim line. She struggled into a seated position, her eyes darting from her brother to me and back again.

“You’ve been a problem for me over and over again since we first met one another,” Will said to me. He put away the gun so that he could pour us both glasses of whiskey. “You’ve killed so many quality business partners of mine. It’s been tough to get started in this industry with someone like you constantly underfoot.”

I glared at him. “I get asked to kill people who do the worst kinds of business most of the time,” I said to him. “I would have expected that you wouldn’t want to get into bed with those who sell tainted drugs and human slaves to others.”

Will chuckled. “I like money, you know?” he said. He actually sounded happy. He took a drink from his glass. “I don’t care what kind of business I’m in as long as it’s profitable. That’s the main difference between us, you know? You think you can earn money in our line of work while having a moral compass. Well, you’re wrong.”

I met Will’s gaze and realized that he was a little insane.

How had I missed this side of him over all the years that we had been friends? I felt incredibly stupid for being so naïve. I glanced over at Gianna and saw distaste pass over her features as well.

She probably felt ten times as betrayed as I did. I couldn’t even imagine what she had gone through when she realized that her brother was The Cobra.

“Moral compass or not, I don’t think that being involved with the lowest of all low dealings is a great way to carve out a place for a new mob family in Chicago’s busy hierarchy,” I say drily.

I can’t think of a single successful mob family that deals in the kind of scummy things that Will seems to be wrapped up in. Surely, he’s been around the business long enough to know better. There’s just too much chance of being caught, too much heat.

“The thing that you’re not thinking about,” Will said, nudging the glass of whiskey that he put down in front of me, “is that everyone in the mob business likes to crow proudly about who they are and what kinds of shitty things they do. There’s this whole badge of honor for doing dirty business just practically in the open. None of you mafioso types are aware of the true underbelly of the crime world because you think you’re too good for it. Well, the reality is that there is a lot of money changing hands in the streets, and all of you stuck-up pricks are missing out on it due to your fancy ways.”

“You’ll still get caught,” I state flatly, ignoring the drink. For all I know, it’s laced with something.

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