Page 65 of Spider Demon's Kiss

“What? About what you do in the privacy of your bedroom that has nothing to do with the pack or anything else?”

“Yeah. You seemed to not have a problem telling me about Matteo.”

“I also told you about myself. You’re not gonna ask me about that?”

“The guy in the hallway that night when I came over. He was coming from your place. That’s why you had enough food for two people.”

Lorenzo shook his head in acknowledgement.

“How long have you been with him?”

“Not long. I wouldn’t call it anything serious. Our world is a lot to put on someone who has no idea what they’re getting into.”

“Then you get it.”

“You mean, why it is that you’re blind to Kuroi trying to kill you?”

“No. I mean, why it’s not Kuroi. Think about it. What you feel is what he feels. He’s not some fuckin’ monster. I get his world. Fuck, I’m a part of it. Why would he try to kill the only man who gets him?”

“Because it’s his nature. Spider demon’s don’t kill because the want to. They do it to survive. Who knows, maybe he loves you. But that’s not gonna stop him from eating you after you’ve given him what he needs.”

Chapter 11

Kuroi

When you can’t get out of your head, bury your head in your work. I don’t know who said it, so I’m claiming it as a Kuroi original.

I wasn’t expecting Dante to wake me up this morning. I thought I was giving him what he wanted by getting out of his room. Wasn’t that the deal we had made, that I would only be in his room a few times a week?

I had slept there a couple nights in a row. Didn’t he want me to give him some space? If he did, why hadn’t he just gone to work this morning?

And, he had practically banned me from his office. This morning he invited me to join him? This had to be his way of taunting death. So, if he ended up dead now, wouldn’t he had just been asking for it?

Instead of allowing my sleep-deprived brain to spiral on this, I did what I did best. There was someone who needed finding. I had found people before. My father’s organization was uniquely equipped for that and I had full access to it.

My first stop was to the woman who the Yakuza had made rich for her services. The foothold my father’s organization had been able to secure in New York was heroin import. It sounds dangerous and exciting, but it’s actually quite boring.

We weren’t responsible for growing or refining it. We didn’t even transport it from Afghanistan to the Afghan airport. We simply got it onto cargo planes and cleared it through customs in the United States. Once in, we funneled it to local distributors who were happy to have our services.

The growers and transports thought of us as their wholesalers. The distributors thought of us as their bank. We extended lines of credit to those who couldn’t pay up front andthey got a set time for repayment. How was this any different from importing rugs?

What this meant was that my father’s organization had two specialties, routing money and clearing customs. We had dozens of people we could rely on for each. The person with the information I would need today was our chief customs specialist.

Whether it was product or people, she could get it through U.S. customs. She wasn’t the only person in her position that we had access to, but she was the best. Not only could she clear the path through checkpoints for anything we needed, she had access to the national database of everything and everyone entering or leaving the country.

“Vincent Ricci,” I told her sitting across from her in her office at the airport.

I liked dealing with her. Unlike so many others, she had no fear. I was told that she grew up in the abandoned subway lines under New York City. She was a mole person.

I could only guess what she saw as a child. But it was enough motivation to claw her way out and never have to live that way again. As far as my father can tell, she doesn’t even spend what we pay her. She probably just sleeps on it for security.

That’s fine with us. Large purchases were how people in her position got caught. Make a security blanket out of the cash for all we care. We just needed results and she gave it to us.

“Leaving or arriving?” she asked staring at me with her vacant mole person eyes.

“Arriving. We think he’s already here.”

“For how long?”

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