Page 5 of A Love So Deadly
Or else bad things happen.
To them.
Vinnie’s eyes are a little wild as he looks between me and Vittoria who’s bored out of her mind, and probably, knowing her, very hungry.
I swallow my sigh as he tries to come up with words, and I tune him out. I’ve heard every excuse under the light of the moon. Every threat, every plea, every bargain, and ever promise. There’s never anything new. Ever.
So I take in the office once more, now the man himself is in it.
Vinnie’s desk I’m sprawled behind is garish. All the curlicues and carvings, the deeply polished wood, the heavy price tag I know it came with. Even though it’s not a real collector’s piece. Though it has been around longer than Vinnie. It hasn’t existed that much longer. It isn’t worth what I suspect he spent on it.
But he wants to be a man of substance; he wants to elevate.
I can see he takes pride in the shit in his room.
There’s only one good piece, a small mirror, the silvered back worn, the glass itself warped. He has it hidden half behind a pot plant. So, I’m guessing it was given to him.
The man is, to quote Oscar Wilde, a cynic. ‘A man who knows the price of everything and value of nothing’…Lady Windemere’s Fan, I believe. Excellent play. Saw it opening night in 1892 in London’s West End.
The mirror’s the only thing of value in here. The rest, cost. Fakes and pieces that only idiots collect.
Then again, Vinnie the Snake’s an idiot.
The thump of the music from his nightclub penetrates, and he’s still fucking whining about extenuating circumstances for his late payment, or something like that.
I stand and dust off my jacket. “Enough.”
Just like that he stops. But the cogs turn and he swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. Then he starts talking again.
“But, Lucian?—”
“Mr. Vale.” I fix him with my darkest stare, and Vittoria crosses her arms and taps her talons against her upper arm.
“M-Mr. Vale…” His gaze darts once more to Vittoria and then back to me. “Please. You don’t understand…”
I laugh softly and shake my finger at him. “Vinnie, you’re a mobster. Let me ask you something.”
“Anything,” he says.
“When people come to you, people who owe you things on certain days, for certain…services, what do you do when they don’t deliver?”
He opens his mouth to speak.
“That,” Vittoria says, “was rhetorical. Stay your tongue if you want to keep it. Or I might at it to my collection.”
He actually steps back, but he keeps his mouth shut.
“Those people,” I say, “don’t end up with all their limbs. Some of them don’t live. No need to tell me if I’m right. I make it a point to have my facts in order. And I’ve been at this much longer than you, Vinnie. So just in case you forgot how things go, I’ll tell you. I grease your wheels and you deliver payments. I told you that you had three days to pay up. Now is your witching hour.”
He doesn’t move.
“I’ll ask once more. Do you know why I’m here?”
He swallows again. Hands clench. Sweat breaks out.
If I listen hard enough, I can hear the beat of his heart, the whoosh of his blood as it moves in his veins.
He’s fucking lucky I fed tonight.
