Page 36 of Dirty Mafia Sinner
What’s worse? Knowing you’ll never again see someone you’re obsessed with, or having the opportunity to do so vanish in the blink of a name?
I want to seehim.
I need to see him again.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I pause in the middle of a city sidewalk.God, did I make a mistake in running?
“Are you okay?” someone asks.
No. I was headed toward okay and beyond, until he exited my life.They all do, don’t they?
“Yes,” I lie. “Just hot.”
“Well, don’t stand there in the sun, honey. Best find a building with AC.” She walks off, probably headed toward cool comfort herself.
Sweat coats my forehead, and the envelope sticks to my hand. Deconstructing what transpired inside the trailer right now is counterintuitive. A cold iced tea and twenty-thousand BTUs of air-conditioning will clear my troubled thoughts. I can deal with the fresh dose of heartbreak later.
I reach the back end of our building and, because it’ll cut an additional block and a half off my walk, key in the code to the emergency door.
Instead of the cool AC I left behind, I’m greeted by an unwelcome blast of hot air. What is wrong with Ciro? Anyone, with any common sense or consideration, would run the air-conditioning during a heatwave. Everyone knows more energy is used if the AC is shut off then turned back on, and it’s more cost effective to leave it running.
Not bothering with the lights, I take a few moments to decompress.
Something crunches beneath my heel, but it doesn’t register until I place a hand on Ciro’s desk, and touch paper … papers … plural.
No. Hedidn’t.
I flick on the lights and decide right here and now I’m going to crucify myex-boss, straight after I quit.
Months of organization, and now papers are scattered everywhere. The desk, the floor, even by the door. His office is complete and utter chaos. Did he have to dump every file and cover every surface, floor included? What on earth was he looking for?
“Ciro?” I croak, spitting mad.
No more. I’mdone.
I head first for the kitchen, and then the garage, crossing the large foyer to get there.
At first, I don’t see them. Six men circled together. Chins lifted and eyes focused on something above. I stop in my tracks, my attention immediately lifting to the steel rafters.
I blink.
Ciro hangs by his neck on a rope looped over a beam, his battered body swinging back and forth, back and forth.
Beaten. Dead.
Murdered.
By these six men.
“Oh my God.”
The men turn toward me.
A man with a huge scar on the left side of his face shoves the man next to him. “Stupid kid. You said the place was cleared.”
“It was,” a man my age, about twenty-one but with a goofy, baby-faced expression that makes him appear younger, protests. “She came back…”
I don’t wait to hear the rest. Spinning, I reverse course and take off toward Ciro’s office.
