Page 53 of PortCity Killers

??S E V E N T E E N??

Don stood with his hand out to me. I took it with hesitation, but his smirk had me ripping my hand out of his. I rolled my eyes. If he wanted to be a dick then he could. I walked myself up to the bar, taking my things from Az. They eyed Don down. I snapped my fingers in front of their face, shaking my head questioningly at them, but they just smiled tightly at me.

“Will you be coming back?”

I didn’t bother glancing back to where I could feel Don moving up behind me, “No, likely not. Go ahead and do what you can, if there’s anything missing, I’ll be in tomorrow, and I can take care of it.”

They already knew the basics now, so I wasn’t too worried about them. Az pursed their lips but didn’t say anything else. Don already had a car—more accurately a limo—pulled around back by the time we left the bar. He opened the door for me, resting a hand right above the small of my back.

I couldn’t feel the weight of it, so I assumed he didn’t actually rest his hand there, but it seemed to burn through my clothes as he ushered me in. My thighs stuck to the seat a little as I hopped my way around to the middle of the long car.

“Take us to the ferry, please Voc.”

The man in the front nodded, his sharp dark eyes shifting between us so fast it was hardly there. Being so close to Don though pushed me into overdrive, watching every little movement, like he would fucking pounce any moment.

“We’re leaving PC?”

“Yes, we’ll be having dinner at the house.”

“And you don’t live in PC?”

He looked so relaxed, legs spread, and shoulders back, but there was a vibrating energy around him that made me hot and flustered, itching under the skin.

He didn’t seem to share in my discomfort, just smiled at me, his eyes flashing with a warmth that I thought might be something closer to predatory. “We can’t live within the city limits; it would go against the treaty.”

“Treaty?” Bryce had mentioned a truce between Valentina and Vosco, but he hadn’t elaborated past that.

“With Vosco, yes.” He nodded, “You know that PortCity is neutral ground, yes?”

I shrugged, “I’ve heard it said, but I don’t know much about what that means.”

Don eyed me, “Really?”

“I don’t make it a habit to overhear the inner workings of things that are not my business,” I said, maybe a little too defensively. “Collin was a shit head, and he was pretty adamant about people not speaking about the going ons of business unless you were contributing to it.”

“And you never contributed to it? It is a stroke of luck indeed that you found the information you did to save your brother then.”

I stiffened at his tone, but did my best to throw my shoulders back like he did. Un-fucking-rattled.

“Yep.” I popped the ‘p’, staring straight at him. His lips curled up, a single brow raising along with it.

His look said he didn’t believe me one fucking bit, but instead of the fear I expected to feel, my stomach fluttered with something much more pleasant but no less overwhelming.

“Well, PortCity, when it was originally founded, was its own entity. People couldn’t come in and out the way they can now, but when the industries began flooding in, they of course brought with them the destruction of most of the smaller businesses. As you see, only a few founding families still remain while other businesses have dissolved into co-op type businesses. Families like mine, with businesses like mine-”

“Mafia?”

His brow raised, this time in a ‘don’t be dumb’ look that did just as much for my body as the first one had.

“Yes.” He cleared his throat, but didn’t look uncomfortable so much as he looked...pensive. “We came in and to fill in the missing spots where PortCity was beginning to fail. Families like Vosco’s did the same thing until the streets ran red with their little blood baths and battles of dominance. It became out of control, frankly. The treaty was agreed upon by the Vosco’s and the Giovenni’s. The two families collectively came together temporarily to stop the displays here in PortCity with the goal of cleaning it up enough to still be of use to us, this at the cost of relative peace between the two families when we went our separate ways.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

He sighed, like it was an old conversation he was tired of having. “The treaty is reasonable to both parties, but it means the families have been at a standstill for decades. Neither one of us can take more property within PortCity without risking retaliation, and that means our profits can’t increase the way they should, and we can’t further diversify the business. It’s tedious to say the least.”

I didn’t think he would elaborate, so I changed the subject, “So you live off the coast somewhere?”

“The Hills.”

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