Page 28 of Deception & Desire

“Shouldn’t you ask me about payment?”

I give her a look. “Are you going to pay me?”

“Yes.”

“Good, that settles that.” I slide another burner across the table to her. “Contact me on this. All my details are already in there. You can keep calling me Red.”

She takes the cell from me. “Red works.”

“What should I call you?”

“I suppose you’ll find out soon enough,” she sighs, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “My name is Carmen. Carmen Rubio.”

8

LEON

Amos Rubio might be a bigger thorn in my side than Mia Natali née Chiavari.

In the three days since I last saw my wife, I’ve been relentlessly throwing myself into my work, eager to distract myself from the festering wound of rejection she left behind.

Only to be pinned down by an altogether different problem.

“He’s moved the shipment again,” Dante reports to me in my office above the casino.

Max doesn’t bother concealing his groan. “Surely, he’s run out of dockyards by now.”

“We’re monitoring everything in Brooklyn.” Dante flops down in the seat next to my second. “Teo’s asking if you can double down here.”

“We spent the last week searching for his new shipment. I don’t have the men to double down again,” I tell him. “How the hell did he find out we were on to him?”

Dante winces in a way that makes me think Teo has been asking the same question. “He’s always been a paranoid bastard.”

“But this quickly?” I press.

He doesn’t rise to the bait. “All we can do is start looking again.”

“If he was importing merchandise into Manhattan, we would have found it by now,” Max answers for us both. “Have you tried New Jersey?”

“The Irish don’t want any part in this.” Dante runs a hand through his dark hair.

“Staten Island?” Max says.

The three of us share a grimace.

With a sigh, I get to my feet. It’s already late, and the lack of sleep I’ve been getting for the last few days is starting to weigh on me.

“Tell Teo I’ll be at the old shipment site tomorrow to see if I can pick up on any clues as to where he might have moved to. But we can’t spare the men to do anything more than keep an eye on our own dockyards.”

“Have you got anyone who can join our search parties?” Dante says a little too carefully. “I think it would help Teo’s gray hairs if we presented a united front.”

I hear exactly what he’s not saying. If thereisa leak somewhere, the first place the Guild is going to point is at the Prince’s Hand and, in all honesty, Vitale versa. The alliance might be formally signed, but it’s far too new and fragile to sustain that kind of infighting.

United front it is.

“What about my gray hairs?” I mutter to myself.

Max sighs and stands up. “I can go. But I’m taking Saturday off. I’m fucking exhausted.”

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