Better she stayed out of this one.
“Really, Reid? A fire?” He turned to face me, anger etched in his tightened lips. “You realize it spread, right?”
“Didn’t burn any of the houses.”
“Almost did. If the fire department hadn’t shown up, it would have.”
“So some abandoned gas station got torched and the lot around it is a wasteland now. What’s it matter?”
“You fired shots.” He said the words through a clenched jaw.
I grimaced and looked away. Aldrik thought it was Jarvis trying to escape—but the dead body had turned out to be some junkie that was sharing Jarvis’s hideout. If Aldrik hadn’t fired on him, then nobody in the city would’ve known we were ever there.
But bullets in a body meant mafia. I wasn’t sure how Hedeon heard it was me in particular, but I guessed he put two and two together. He probably didn’t know for sure, and I could keep denying forever, but I wasn’t going to play that game if I didn’t have to. I wasn’t ashamed of my move—only annoyed I got caught.
“That was a contingency,” I said. “Had to make sure he didn’t escape.”
“And yet he did anyway.” Hedeon’s face turned red and I stared at him with surprise.
“Jarvis is still alive?”
“He’s been walking around the fucking city for the last few days, talking shit about how you fucked up and couldn’t take him down when you had the chance.”
I took a step back and leaned against the door, my heart beating fast. I couldn’t believe the bastard had survived that. It was a goddamn inferno, and I heard that at least two bodies were found burned to a crisp.
“How?”
“I don’t know how,” Hedeon said. “He’s got some bad burns on his face and I think he’s in worse shape than he’s pretending, but he’s alive and he’s making a whole hell of a lot of noise.”
I shut my eyes for half a second.
Fucking hell.
For the past several days, I’d done nothing but stay holed up in my place with Cora. Something broke between us that night, some wall that had been built came tumbling down, and we were finally acting on all the tension that’d been growing between us ever since we got fake-married. I took her body, day and night, and made her sweat, made her beg, got her off, and goddamn, it’d been the best few days of my entire life. The girl was insatiable, and although there were still things we hadn’t talked about, issues that I knew would crop up again sooner or later—none of that mattered. We fucked, feasted on each other, and tried to pretend like the outside world didn’t exist.
Now Hedeon brought that little bubble crashing down on top of me.
“I didn’t know.” I looked back up, met his gaze.
“You didn’t know.” He sneered at me. “The fuck have you been doing lately?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“With what?”
“Nothing. Cora. Just— nothing.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’ve been busy messing around with your new pretty Leone wife, haven’t you?”
“Hedeon—”
“You don’t get it.” He took a few steps closer. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so pissed. “The Leones are livid. They’re going to take her back from you, you do realize that, right? They said no violence, and yet you go ahead and light a goddamn gas station on fire.”
“I was trying to be subtle.”
“Oh, yeah, real subtle. You burned down a fucking building.” Hedeon threw his hands up. “They’re talking about war with us now. They’re talking about ending our alliance. The police department is pissed, the mayor’s livid, senators are running left and right—you realize how much shit we’re dealing with?”
“I was trying to make it look like an accident.” I took a deep breath and let it out. The shit had truly hit the fan and now I had to clean it up. This was my mistake, my miscalculation, and I’d never get back in with the crew if I couldn’t figure out a way to fix it. “I’ll take care of Jarvis.”
Hedeon snorted. “Goddamn right you will. At this point, it’d be worse leaving him alive, stirring up shit.”
“You can count on me in this.”
He took a couple steps closer, his eyes narrowed into slits. “I used to think that was true,” he said, voice soft and almost calm, “but now I’m not so sure.”
“I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
I met his stare and we stood there facing off for a long moment until he finally nodded once. “Make sure that it doesn’t.” He walked to the door and I stepped aside as he pulled it open and stood on the top of my stoop, gazing out at the city. “I know where he’s staying. I had some guys look into it.”
“Send me the address.”
“It’s already on your phone.” He looked back at me. “Do it fast and make it clean. No collateral damage. He’s got to die.”