Page 95 of Cook

“What about Maddie?” asked Roni. “How is she doing?”

“She’s strong.” I had a lot more ways to describe Maddie, but I didn’t think they would understand or want to hear. “She’ll get through this, but we’ve got another problem with the goddamn Mafia.”

“Because of the guns?” asked Roni.

Celt shot me a look. He didn’t chase her out of the room, so it wasn’t my problem if she got the lowdown.

I gave a slow nod. “The guns and kids... and Maddie. The rescue and Sas putting a bullet in Amaranta Gambino’s skull has Enzo on our collective ass. Probably on orders from the Don.”

Roni buried her face in Celt’s shoulder for a minute, then gathered herself and rejoined the conversation.

“The feds were on our asses for a while about the trafficking from the reservation. I think Melanie got them off, but they had the Diablo cut on video.” I said, thinking back to what Angel and Melanie said about the video. “Those kids seemed like Signora’s cash cow.”

All color drained from Roni’s face. “I’ll see all that as a nurse at the recovery house.” Her voice sounded like she was a million miles away.

Celt pulled her close again and she curled into him.

I exchanged glances with him—whole lotta “how’d we all end up in the same ring of shit?” passing between us.

Lifting my beer to my lips, I couldn’t help but think how the Yuma triangle might be worse than the fucking Bermuda triangle. At least people only disappeared into some parallel dimension there.

Celt rubbed his girl’s shoulders. “Roni will eventually have to testify in court about all this shit.”

I cocked a brow at the man. “Why?”

Roni fisted his T-shirt, but he kept spilling the tea. “Working with the kids will give her some info, but she was one of the Don’s victims too.”

The beer bottle dropped slowly from my lips as I took in that information. She was trafficked? I thought it had mostly been kids from the rez. Maddie had been an exception, but the rest had been indigenous.

I let that lie. Their biz, not mine. I had enough problems of my own and needed to focus on the MC’s play in all this shit.

“Signora has bigger connections within the Mafia, and the Don is still alive,” I said. “Though I don’t know how the fuck Tommy Gambino is pulling strings from his prison cell.”

Roni tensed in Celt’s arms, and Celt shushed her.

“Do you want to go?” he asked.

I held my tongue for a hot second until she shook her head.

“They’ve got connections to the big players. Now that we’ve taken the bitch out of the game, who the fuck knows if someone else will step into their shoes.”

More kids. More Maddie.

“We can’t let them,” said Roni.

“Wilde’s got eyes on that mill, so they’re done for now,” Celt said, as much to ease Roni as to inform me. “Given that the feds were involved, if we see anything, we can tip them off anonymously. Let the big dogs do their job for once and leave us out of the fucking mix.”

Roni dropped open her jaw. “But what about—”

Something shattered in the bedroom, and I immediately reached for my gun in the small of my back. Celt pushed Roni behind him. The door to where Maddie slept was closed, but what the hell was that?

I rushed forward.

Maddie

“Damn,” I muttered to myself.

This was what I got for waking up somewhere strange with no lights on and no idea where shit was. Now the lamp was a heap of porcelain shards on the floor. I rolled off the other side of the bed, my body like jelly. I needed to find another light so I could clean up my mess.

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