I nod my understanding. I know exactly what that means. If Rafe’s talking to my replacement—the only guy half as good as me—that means my time’s up. Rafe’s planning to take me out. If Gio is to be believed, anyway.
I wait to feel surprised, but I don’t. I guess in the back of my head I knew this was coming. It had to. The first time I fisted my hand in Laurel’s hair and guided her mouth toward my cock, I opened the door to this eventuality.
“Who all knows?” I ask, calmly.
“Rafe, me, and Theo. That’s it. For obvious reasons, he didn’t want this getting around.”
Oh, the reasons are obvious, all right. It’s not good business to kill the man who helped you get to the top. Conveniently, the only people who can verify this story are the one telling it, the one who might want to kill me, and the one who would replace me.
Well, now I have one more fucking thing on my to-do list today.
“Who is he sending? Freelancer?”
“Theo. It’s his tryout.”
“Huh.” That’s a little more convincing. Theo does good work. If Gio is sitting here telling me this, he knows I have to kill him now before he kills me. Why feed me one of our better guys when he could have easily convinced me he was hiring a freelancer? It’s not the way things are always done, but Mateo sent a freelancer to kill Ben, and now that he and Rafe are chummy, I would have believed he decided to go the same route. It’s cleaner, and this is personal, not business. You send your own guys when it’s business, but when it’s personal and you have as much money as these fuckers have, you can afford to hire your own cleaning service.
Since I’ve heard all I need to hear, I brace my other hand on Skylar’s back and stand. She coos at me like a little fucking angel, and I wish I didn’t have to give her back.
Of course, if I take Gio up on this offer, I’ll have Laurel and a baby I won’t have to give back. I won’t even have to share. Rafe will be dead, Laurel will be mine, and there will be zero threats to my happiness. After we have that baby, I’ll put another one in her. I’ll have her in my bed every single night. I can have it all.
All I have to do is turn on Rafe, and since he turned on me first… well, it’s worth considering.
Eyeing me as he takes the baby, Gio asks, “So, what do you say?”
“I need a day or so to think on it. Run through it. I need to know who’s on board and who I’ll have to deal with. I’m gonna have to replace Theo. There’s a lot of work to do. I’ve done it once, but it wasn’t easy. We do it this time, we need to do it better. We need to clean house so shit like this doesn’t happen again.”
“I think you’ll be surprised how many men are on our side,” he tells me, with confidence. “It won’t be as big a job as you’re imagining.”
I straighten, glancing down at the baby on his chest. He doesn’t hold her right. She’s still little, but he should know how to hold her by now.
“Let me tell you, Gio, I appreciate everything you’ve said to me today, but you need to know, I don’t go for the Morelli bag of tricks. I don’t like being lied to and manipulated. Me and Rafe have never had a problem before Laurel because he didn’t pull shit like that with me, and I would hate for you and me to start out on that foot. If anything you’ve said to me today wasn’t exactly the truth, just a little bending of the facts to piss me off at Rafe, now is the time to tell me. Once I walk out that door, it’s too late.”
Gio shakes his head firmly. “No lies, Sinclair. I know how you like to be treated. When you’re working for me, you’ll know you’re working for someone who respects what you bring to the table, and you’ll damn sure be treated as such. There are no hungry dogs on my crew, and you? You’ll be leading the pack.”
29
Sin
I’m pretty fucking tired by the time I load the last trash bag full of Theo into my trunk. I don’t like to leave bodies back there longer than necessary, but damn, I’m considering parking the car in the garage tonight and dealing with this shit tomorrow. Not sure it’s worth the smell though. I’m probably gonna have to deal with it and just get by tomorrow on two hours of sleep again.
He put up a hell of a fucking fight, that Theo. Made me feel even worse about having to kill him. Thankfully, he was young and
single, so at least he won’t have a family mourning him. Probably a mom out there somewhere, but she should have raised him to have better judgment.
Nah, I’m not being fair. This isn’t Theo’s fault, it’s Rafe’s. I’m misplacing blame, getting pissed off about shit that isn’t worth getting pissed off over. The problem is, Theo verified what Gio said, and that means a man I considered a friend a couple weeks ago really was planning to have me killed. If he knew about the night I mauled Laurel on his couch, I’d probably understand, but since he doesn’t, I’m pretty fucking salty about it.
It also probably means Rafe is fucking Marlena, and I don’t know how I missed that. I’m tempted to follow him tonight and check, but I have bigger fish to fry.
Tonight, I follow Gio. He’s more watchful about that shit, more paranoid, but if I’m going to jump ship and turn my back on Rafe, I need to make sure the ship I’m transferring over to is solid, especially if I’m bringing Laurel and a baby with me. Laurel might be pissed at me for killing Rafe, too, and that’s going to be annoying to deal with. I can already hear her bitching at me that I didn’t have to do it, that I could have just moved to Chicago with her. She’s so fucking sure Mateo’s wife is the Underground Railroad that would bring us to fucking sanctuary, like Mateo and Rafe aren’t cousins, like they aren’t friends, like he’d ever take my side against his own family. I don’t know much about Mateo’s wife, but I do know Mateo, and I have a hard time believing any woman has that ruthless asshole under her thumb. Especially some tiny blonde who looks like she popped out of a fucking Disney movie.
Sorry, Laurel, Chicago isn’t a solid plan.
Gio might be, though.
I’m not going to have long to make a decision. Now that Gio has shown me his hand, there’s only a brief window before I can get on board with any kind of credibility.
I’m in fucking luck though, because Gio heads to Rafe’s restaurant for a meeting with a few men. I text Virginia to let her know I need her to pay extra attention to Gio’s table tonight, tell me what they talk about. While I wait for her to text back, I set up my little mobile surveillance center. An iPad with Marlena’s apartment pulled up on the screen, a second one with the map open, my tracker on Cassandra’s car moving across the screen as she heads to wherever she’s heading tonight.