Page 120 of SINS & Riley
The two of them start circling me. I ease back a step. Then another.
His eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”
“Having a seat. I walked three blocks to get here, then up fourteen flights of steps. I’m fucking exhausted.”
Another step, then I’m where I want to be—at the corner. I drop onto the ledge. “Look, we both know you’re not gonna shoot me.”
“Give me one reason not to.”
“Because your payday dies with me. Andre won’t give you a dime if you don’t produce a body. Between you and me, he's kind of an asshole that way. And if you drop me now, you and dipshit here have to haul two hundred and twenty-five pounds of dead weight down fourteen flights of stairs.”
He glares angrily.
I motion toward the building with a lazy hand. “You’re the genius who picked an abandoned high-rise in the middle of nowhere.”
Declan glances at his guy, then back at me. Brute strength’s not in their favor, and he knows it.
“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. Then louder: “Start walking.”
I smirk. “Make me.”
Another look passes between them, fluently spoken in the only language idiots know: what the fuck do we do now?
Then Declan jerks the revolver toward his lackey. “Get him.”
“Yes, boss.”
The guy looks at me like he’s staring down a tank.
I yawn.
He lunges, reaching for my arm. I sidestep, duck low, and shove.
“Ahhh!” His scream tears through the night, trailing fourteen stories down until it cuts off in a wet splatter.
I turn back to Declan, calm as a grave. His grave. “Good news.” I crack my knuckles. “Now it’s just you and me.”
Remember when I said sometimes people surprise me?
Yeah. He’s doing it right now.
Declan staggers to the ledge beside me, revolver still pointed my way, then whips out a vial and proceeds to do a line of coke off the brick ledge.
“It helps me think,” he explains, like my face gave away the judgment.
Un-fucking-believable.
I let out a slow, meditative breath. “Let me make this simple. If you know anything about Antonio D’Angelo, now’s the time to talk. Do that, and maybe—maybe—I let you live.”
He studies me like he’s actually weighing his options.
“Or?” he asks.
“Or the only way you’re leaving this roof is headfirst, Swan Lake–style. Just like your buddy.”
Declan breaks into hysterics—the manic laughter of the truly insane. He gasps for air between wheezes, face red, eyes wild. “You think you can fuck with me? I’m a Keenan. Lynchpin to the Irish mob.”
He’s not wrong.
