Page 43 of Marked

Slowly, he comes back to me and lowers his mouth to mine. Gentle kisses now, soft, and yielding as he makes his way to my cheek.

“You’re my perfect girl, Harley,” he says, gingerly rolling away from me.

I smile. How can I not? I’m his perfect girl.

He collects my clothing and helps me get put back together.

“I suppose we need to take down this Dustin Hastings now,” I say wiping my hands off on a rag Zack gives me.

“He can’t help us,” he says, sounding regretful.

I turn to him. “Why not? He helped Artie, and he might know who Vince is.”

He frowns.

“Because I killed the fucker last week.”

Harley sleeps like an angel, with her hair fanned out on the pillow behind her. She hasn’t moved once since she fell asleep hours ago. It’s as if a calm has settled over her soul.

My phone finally goes off, and I grab the call before it wakes her up. It’s already noon, but last night was a lot for her. She needs her rest.

“Hey.” I take my phone out of the bedroom and head into the living room. “What do you have for me?”

“Plenty. These assholes aren’t doing a good job of hiding,” Jeff starts.

“Maybe they don’t need to. If they have a Special Agent on their payroll, no reason to believe they don’t have more powerful people on there, too.”

“That could be true.”

“So what do you got?”

“Well, turns out Dustin and Artie were cousins. Couldn’t find much on Dustin other than what we already knew.”

“Who did he fucking work for?” I push the curtain away from the window enough to look down at thestreet.

“I’m getting to it. Damn, you’re impatient today.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. “It was a long ass night.”

“All right, I’ll get to it then. Artie has ties to the Blackwood family. Got busted a year ago with a tiny bit of product on him, and the Blackwoods sent their best attorneys to get him out of the jam,” he says.

“They sent high-powered attorneys down for a drug dealer?”

“Yeah, seems overkill, right? I’m thinking Artie wasn’t just a low-level dealer. Especially if he was sent last night to take you and the girl out.”

My jaw clenches. “I didn’t realize the Blackwoods had dealings in Chicago. I thought they stayed on the east coast.”

“Nah. Jimmy is the youngest of the brood. He broke away from New York a long time ago. He’s been in Chicago for the last fifteen years. But he’s not peddling just coke.”

“He’s the loan shark of the family, isn’t he?” Fucking Mafia families have their hands all over the fucking country. So long as they stick to shit that doesn’t involve the innocent, I leave them alone. There are bigger monsters.

“That’s where he got his start.” There’s a crackling on the line.

“And Vince? The phone number I gave you?”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean when I say they’re not hiding. It’s listed to a Vince Scaletto. His rap sheet is a little more…disturbing. He spent five years in max security for multiple rapes– not all women, and not all adults. They tried to get him on trafficking, but nothing stuck.”

“Only five years?” Even the most corrupt judge would have a hard time giving that little of a sentence to those charges.

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