Page 113 of Clean Slade
“Yeah, if you want Thelma, you have to take Louise too, or both of us won’t hear the end of it,” Duke said.
I stared at Duke. Wasn’t he supposed to be the voice of reason? Wasn’t he supposed to stop any crazy from walking in and adopting an animal they shouldn’t? What did I know about chickens other than how to cook them?
“Thelma and Louise? Really?” I asked.
Duke nodded.
“They’re a package deal.”
Slade leaned into my ear. “Like us,” he whispered.
Fuck me.
How was I supposed to say no to that?
TWENTY-SEVEN
KING
“I’m starting to think this isn’t a great idea.”
It probably wasn’t. It was probably the worst idea we’d had to date. If Tony found out we were meeting behind his back, who knew what kind of hell he’d unleash on all of us.
“Stop it. We’re fine. He doesn’t know we’re here,” Nino reassured me, and I looked around the empty house.
The kitchen table was old and weathered. Wobbly as all hell and the surface as bumpy as it probably had been when it was tree bark.
Dust bunnies danced in the light coming through the window that overlooked the abandoned backyard.
“He knows everything, Nino.Everything,” I told him.
Grams turned around from the kitchen counter and walked toward the table with the stovetop coffee maker and poured espresso in all our cups.
We might be about to die, but at least we’d have one last sip of Grams’s coffee.
“He doesn’t know we’ve got this place,” Grams reassured me as she poured my cup.
I smiled at the conviction in her eyes, but I wasn’t quite so sure.
Was I paranoid? Yes, probably. Did I have a right to be? Most certainly.
“Maybe that’s what he wants you to think.”
Nino rolled his eyes and didn’t waste a moment sipping from his cup.
“You’re acting like we’re new to this. We’ve been around him long enough,” he said.
“We know him better than he knows himself,” Grams added.
I wanted to tell them they were wrong, but I didn’t want to disrespect my grandma like that.
“Stop worrying, bambino. That man has stolen enough from us as it is.”
How could one person’s words offer so much comfort, reassurance, and fear at the same time? I didn’t know, but I could feel each distinct emotion coursing through my veins, and it put me even more on edge than I already was.
I knew she had a point, I knew she was one hundred percent right, but it still didn’t feel right. Meeting here, in a semi-abandoned house at the end of town, without him.
All our meetings always included him.
