Page 68 of The Dravenhearst Brides
“I’ll be fine.” He offered a smile and tossed the revolver on his empty seat. “Look after that for me, will ya?”
She was sure he meant it to be reassuring—the implication he didn’t need the gun—but she preferred he take it. Just in case.
Merrick moved to the back of the car, opening the lid over the rumble seat. He grunted and lifted out a heavy crate. Glass bottles tinkled within. He doubled back for a second crate.
Margot could hear everything clearly in the open-top roadster. Merrick’s stilted footfalls as he walked. Thethudand clinking of glass when he dropped the crates to the dirt. The ominous slam of two doors from the Duesenberg. The racking of a tommy gun—Margot both sawandheard that one. She watched, eyes wide with terror, as a shadowed hulking form laid the deadly firearm across the hood of the Duesenberg.
Two men crossed into no-man’s-land to meet Merrick, strolling casually, hands in their trench coat pockets. The taller one wore a fedora and shoes soshiny they gleamed bright in the light of the moon. The squat one—Margot nicknamed him Beefy—slipped a pack of butts from his pocket and extracted one. Cupping his hand around his mouth, he thumbed a lighter for a spark.
“Antoni.” Merrick inclined his head to the man wearing the fedora.
Margot stifled a gasp, recognition dawning.Toni. The man she’d encountered outside the rickhouses a few weeks ago. The one Julian had run off the estate.
“Evening, Merrick,” Toni drawled. His sharp gaze flicked past Merrick’s shoulder to Margot, dragging up and down her stiff form. “Out for a midnight drive with the missus, huh? How romantic.”
Beefy chuckled and blew out a long drag, smoke curling skyward.
Merrick toed the nearest crate, rattling the bottles within. His voice came out gruff, all business. “Here’s the hooch. Your usual. Cough it up.”
Toni reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick wad of scratch. He started counting—a bit theatrically, in Margot’s opinion. Her shoulders tensed, gut clenched with worry.
“So what’s her name?” Toni asked, nodding toward Margot. “Heard through the grapevine you’d finally sold out for wedded bliss. Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
Merrick said nothing.
Toni extended the wad of bills but jerked back when Merrick reached for it. “I asked you a question. Her name.”
Merrick scowled. “She’s nobody. A farm girl from the Bluegrass. Real pretty,” he emphasized the last words, as though they meant something deeper.
Margot’s breath grew shallow. Like a hunted rabbit.
Beefy laughed, blowing smoke again before speaking. “That ain’t what we heard. We heard you snagged yourself anheiress.”
“Greenbrier, I believe is her family name?” Toni added. He flicked his eyes to Margot, sharing the joke.
Merrick chuckled. “A Bluegrass heiress is no comparison to Chicago money, to the empire Capone built. I’ve been keepin’ my appointments, haven’t I? Nothing about this situation has changed. Now pay up.”
Toni fanned the money, tapping the stack of bills in his opposite palm. “I don’t think so. Seems the terms have changed.”
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“Everything is a negotiation,” Toni said. “You don’t need our money anymore. Gone and got yourself a rich, respectable wife, you did. What you need now is our silence. And Cosa Nostra silence comes at a high price.”
Beefy cracked his knuckles.
Cosa Nostra…dear god, the Italian mafia?Margot had heard all she needed. This wasn’t going well. Terrified or not, she would have to do something.
The menfolk were focused on each other, busy posturing like the arrogant peacocks they were. Slowly, very slowly, Margot slid her left hand across the seat, fingers closing around the barrel of the revolver. The weight was solid and reassuring.
Just a Bluegrass farm girl,Merrick had called her. Why yes, in fact, she was. And every Bluegrass farm girl worth her salt knew how to shoot a gun. Her father had first handed her one when she was ten years old. The mechanics were simple—
Point, shoot.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Beefy jabbed a finger into Merrick’s chest, breathing cigarette smoke down his neck. “We could shut you down. Get you arrested…”
Margot quietly opened the car door and swung her bare feet to the ground. She was pleased to find her legs, though jittery, held strong.
Merrick whipped around. “Margot, get back in the car.”
