His chest moves against mine with his heavy breathing. All those years of cigarettes are catching up. But still not soon enough.
I hold my chin a degree higher. “Tell me I’m wrong,” I challenge with raging fear. There’s no getting rid of it or wishing it away. But I don’t let it control me. Not any longer.
“I can get you both. I have information that will put you ahead of Con and his partners.”
The rings of his pupils bleed into his irises, turning them pitch black. “What could you possibly know?”
“They’re uniting with the Northern Alliance. The men of Genesis. You want what they have and I can get it for you.”Don’t oversell it. Keep cool.
His fingers are back at my throat. “Where do you have this information?” His eyes are wild.
“In a safe with the maître d’.”
“Meet me here in twenty minutes. That gives you time to get what you have and get there.” A card is shoved into my hands. “You have what you say you have, I won’t kill them. But you’ll still be coming with me. You’re lying and I’ll kill all of you.”
I’m not stupid enough to believe he will not kill my men.
He releases me and picks up the cracked phone. I watch him dump it in the wash basin and turn on the automatic water spout.
Shit.
“Run, little prey. Twenty minutes is all you have.”
I edge against the wall and bust out of the bathroom only to run into three bodyguards. One looks dirtier than the next and I’m not talking actual dirt and grime. If there is something lower than snakes then the freezing death vibes coming off these three are that.
I dash into the nearest elevator and check that I’m not being followed. I get off on the second level and run back down the stairs to the first floor.
I check the hallways and wait until there are no members in sight before falling out the back door and into a dark alleyway. It’s cleaner than you’d think with only a few dumpsters dotting the yards of cement between me and either end. Fuck it feels like they cross roads are miles away.
Plan A. “A taxi. Then Club Genesis and sanctuary.”
There is no plan b. There’s a light at either end of the alleyway and another one directly over me. Surprisingly it doesn’t offer enough glow to reach much past the tips of my boots. It’s not the darkness I’m afraid of anymore, it’s what it hides that scares the shit out of me.
And the glow of a cigarette.
The shadow lumbers in my direction. “Did you really think I’m that stupid?”
“I’d hoped, you deranged piece of shit,” I spit out.
And then a gun goes off and it’s not mine.
Fifteen
Con
“If you don’t catch up to that cab, the next bullet out of my gun will be for you.”
When Laila’s call came in about fifteen minutes ago, I thought it was another nude picture to tease us with.
When her scared voice came through the speaker followed by a man who can only be one person, we all dropped our business with the men of Genesis and came running.
“We can’t lose her. We need to get to her.”
Chicago traffic at this hour is murder. Everyone is getting out of work. We arrived in time to see her stepfather shove her heaped body into a taxi and zoom into traffic.
“Con, you either shoot the driver or make him go faster. Two options, brother. I will not lose her.” Dante’s knife is in his hand. Instead of rolling the blade of his knuckles he has it tucked into the palm of his hand ready to strike.
“Calm the fuck down. She needs you to be sane, not randomly killing innocents.” I answer him in our native language.