Page 16 of Working for the Mob

“I can’t take that,” I said. The last thing I needed was another debt to this man.

“Thank you,” Lucy said, and grabbed the bill. “I can show her around town.”

From the look on Art’s face, I could tell that he had reservations about Lucy’s ability to do anything. However, he merely shrugged.

“Make sure you show up at Miss Dunham’s on Monday morning. Seven sharp.”

I looked around the room to write down the instructions, and took a mental note that we needed a pen and paper.

“We’ll be there,” I promised, and he nodded.

“I have business to take care of,” he said. “I will let you two become comfortable.”

He left after another nod. An empty void filled in my chest after he left, as if all the air in the room had rushed out. How could the absence of the rudest person I ever met fill me with this much loss?

“So what do we do now?” Lucy asked. “This is the only dress I own, and I’m not showing up to Miss Dunham’s Monday morning looking like this.”

???

Stripped down to our slips, Lucy and I scrubbed every inch of the cottage we could reach. I needed to do as much as I could before the caffeine high ran out.

We opened the windows to allow in a crisp breeze. While I focused on the kitchen, Lucy tackled the bathroom’s sink and tub.

The gas range’s burners needed some attention as well as the inside of the baking oven, but the sink looked clean enough. I found the detached pantry empty, save for a few mouse droppings and cobwebs.

After two hours of scouring every nook and cranny we could, we sat on the clean floor of the bathroom. From Lucy’s crumpled form, she was as exhausted as I was.

“Do you want to go to the supermarket before or after we nap?” I asked her.

“I think we should go tomorrow. I’ll need to sleep until then to get these bags out from under my eyes,” Lucy said, and laid flat on the ground with her head on her arms.

Chapter 5 – Art

“You’re late,” my half-brother said from behind his desk.

Night had already fallen, and the muffled buzz of the full speakeasy could be heard through the wooden walls. It was a Saturday night, so the buzz was louder than normal.

Lance had put his office in a renovated broom closet of a speakeasy. It was in the basement below Miss Dunham’s butcher shop, and the only place in town that you could buy something worth drinking.

He told me that he put it there because he ‘liked to be among his people.’ But I knew it was because he enjoyed looking at every set of gams that walked through.

The downside is that every time he called me for a new job, I’d have to put up with the myriad of inebriated townsfolk.

Three chairs sat in the dimly-lit office, but the two in front of the cluttered desk always held stacks of papers because Lance never wanted guests.

“I had business to take care of,” I said, which was true. I had spent the last few hours tracking down the Valuncia family to let them know that we weren’t taking their deal.

“Did you get it taken care of?” he asked, and I scowled back at him. He knew the business I referred to, but never trusted that I could do anything on my own.

“It’s done.”

“Good. We need to remind them why they stay on their side of town in the first place,” he said, and I knew he meant me.Ineeded to remind them of whatIwas.

“What do you suggest?” I asked, but I knew what had to be done.

We needed to kick a leg out from underneath them. To leave them scared, but not crippled. Enough that they knew we were still in control, but keep their businesses intact in order to allow us to skim off the top.

But that meant that I had to do it again. Do what my father raised me to do.

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