Page 12 of Fight Me Little Pearl

She eyes me haughtily for a fleeting moment before walking into the bedroom and shutting the door firmly behind her. The rejection is unmistakable.

“Redial Marlboro,” I tell Vance. “Tell him I’m on my way.”

Vance disappears from the room, leaving me alone. I stare at the door Francesca just disappeared into. I pride myself on my razor-sharp focus and control, but it seems as if everything goesto shit the moment Francesca walks into the room. I’m tempted to storm my way into the bedroom I paid for and have my way with her. But only for one second.

No.

She will come to me or I will not have her. I walk out the door and meet Vance and Dutch in the vehicle.

Chapter Six

VALENTINO

“Someone has been siphoning the olive oil off our trucks,” Marlboro explains as we walk to the basement where the captured man is kept.

“Diluted or undiluted?”

He grimaces. “Undiluted. They’ve been stealing in doses that are small enough to put down to wastage and careless spillage, but it is starting to add up.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?” My fury is with Francesca, but I’m getting ready to dump it all on everyone else since I can’t take it out on her.

“The situation is under control. It’s not enough to cause alarm ye?—”

“When someone touches my shit, you tell me. You are not the Boss, I am. I make the decisions on what’s not enough to cause alarm. You hear me?”

“I’m sorry, Boss.”

“Continue…”

“I got a tip that it was the Moretti gang so when my men found Alban driving in our territory, we picked him up. He mayhave information on what Boga is doing with our stuff and which of our men are making it a possibility.”

“Take me to him.”

Marlboro rushes forward, pushing the basement door open to reveal a room with a meat hook hanging from the ceiling, a table with shiny instruments of torture laid out on it, and two chairs, one pushed against the wall and the other, badly stained and cemented to the floor. A man in his mid-twenties is tied to the stained chair. He has a busted lip, but that’s it. Since he’s been left fairly unharmed, he still looks cocky. He smirks when I walk in and I see immediately that he is high on something.

“Oh, look,” he taunts. “If it isn’t Silent Night himself, and here I am thinking I don’t matter.”

I snap my fingers, and someone appears with a chair. I straddle it, leaning my chin against the headrest as I look at Alban. He’s smiling, but it’s false bravado. That’s the problem with drugs. First, you think you’re invincible, then one taste of pain, and you become totally and absolutely paranoid with the conviction that someone is going to flay you alive.

“You are right. You don’t matter,” I say quietly.

“Fuck you.” He spits, sending bubbles of smelly saliva my way. The gob lands on the floor a few feet away from the chair I’m sitting on.

“No one will sit at the gambling table with your boss because he is a cock-sucking, cowardly thief, but you know that, seeing you’re one of the pathetic losers he uses to do his dirty business.” I push myself to my feet. In my head, Francesca is wearing a red silk dress as she storms away from me. She’s so fucking fine. Damn her for not letting me touch her.

“I know nothing about a stolen stash,” Alban shouts, just as I hoped he would.

I hold out my hand, and Vance appears beside me with an open toolbox. I play the game. Expectation is everything inmoments like this. Delicately, I skim the array of tools and my fingers caress the glinting metal, before I pick a pliers. I see Alban’s eyes melt with fear as his drug-fueled swagger deserts him. I’m almost disappointed. I haven’t even started, and he’s already giving up. He’s worse than a fucking deckchair.

“I’ll ask you just once.” I glance at Alban as I run my fingers over the small pliers. “What does Bogo want with my oil?”

Alban hesitates, but not for long. There is the beginnings of real fear in his eyes. “I don’t know anything about stolen oil, I swear. I’m just a nobody.”

I nod and capture one of his fingers in my grip. He squirms and tries to pull back, but it’s hard to do that when your forearms are bound to the chair.

“Wait. Wait. Please,” he begs desperately. Beads of sweat are forming on his forehead, but he has not crossed over into pure terror country yet. “I don’t know nothing. Nobody tells me anything. I was just driving around and I got lost.”

I sigh. “If you plan to walk out of here alive you better start talking.”

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