Page 35 of Confession
Quinn is going to be pissed when he learns what Joe’s call was about and where I’m headed right now. I probably should have told him, but I just couldn’t. Not with his cock in my hand, not with him so open and vulnerable. Not when I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to him.
This could be a problem, considering what his job is. But I’m not ready to have him doing that job, not today.
I didn’t tell Sasha either because she would have told Quinn. That’s why Roman is with me.
Besides, it’s hard for me to think about anything but Quinn when he’s around, and I do need to think this situation.
Something is bothering about all this shit with the DiMaggios. Something just keeps striking me asoff, and I don’t know why.
Hopefully I can get some answers from the assholes that Joe’s crew got cornered after they tried to rip off one of my vans after it left the transfer station this morning.
Imports come first to my warehouse, but product is then moved to my transfer station outside the city. There, it’s loaded into vans that transport the orders all over New England. It’s a complex network to manage, but dispersion keeps the heat low—and distant from me. I don’t distribute in Boston, only outside of it.
But the DiMaggios hitting a van that left the transfer station means they know the location of the station. That means I needto activate my backup station, relocate all product, and replot all routes.
What a pain in the ass.
The only good news was that when DiMaggio’s guys rammed the van, they fucked up their own truck so much that they had to abandon it. Joe’s crew chased DiMaggio’s guys through the woods, and they’re now holed up in an abandoned barn.
I want those assholes because I need to know where the hell they got their intel. The transfer station is a well-buried secret. But according to Joe, all options for getting to them risk casualties.
That’s why I brought the bulletproof Jeep. I probably shouldn’t have brought Roman though.
I wasn’t going to. He intercepted me in the garage. He must have seen me heading to my room to change and somehow been alerted. When I asked him what alerted him, he just shrugged. He still doesn’t talk to me much.
It frustrates me. Roman talked to Quinn so easily when they were sparring, but we’ve been riding in silence for forty minutes. Why can’t he talk to me? Quinn, I can kind of bully into talking to me, but that’s not my dynamic with Roman. It never was even before he spent four years in hell, but we used to be able to talk to each other.
Now … fuck. There’s a void between us, and I don’t know how to reach across it.
I think he hates me. He should. I didn’t see the truth about my uncle. I didn’t figure out what had happened to him. I didn’t find him, didn’t save him, didn’t help him at all.
I glance at him in the passenger seat. He’s so damn still, so damn silent, way more so than Quinn. Where Quinn is deliberately reserved but always busy, Roman is like a damn rock—but one that could explode at any moment.
What’s going on in his head? His dark eyes, staring through the windshield at the road, give nothing away.
Following the GPS to Joe’s location, I turn onto an overgrown road that bumps and dips through the woods until I reach Joe’s truck. In a little clearing ahead stands a rotting barn.
Joe comes walking out of a cluster of trees with his rifle angled down. I open the driver’s door so he can stand behind its bulletproof protection.
“Cotter and Martini have the perimeter here,” he informs me with no preamble. “I’ve got two more guys in the woods on the other side and another two watching the roads for the DiMaggios in case they send backup. No sign of them, at least not yet.”
“No trouble at the transfer station?”
“Clear for now, but we’ll need more trucks to move everything.”
“That’s gonna have to wait until I know how compromised we are.”
Joe’s paunchy face scrunches. “No way there’s a rat on my crew—”
“I’m not saying that, Joe, calm the fuck down. Let’s just get shit done here and put the pieces together later.”
Joe looks toward the barn. “Safest option is fire. We torch the barn and force them out into the open. Then we pick them off.”
“A fire big enough to force them out will have the fire department here before we’ve cleaned up. There are only three of them?”
Joe nods. “With one rifle, multiple handguns.”
Through the bulletproof windshield, I study the rotting barn. Then I doublecheck my weapons. I’ve got two .45s in my chest holster and a backup strapped to my thigh.
