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Luca swallows, his eyes getting dark. It’s like I can almost see some resentment there. He’s happy now, leaving the nastiness behind. Then he looks at me steadily. “Okay…”
“I need you to understand why I’m coming out of retirement and offering my services to the Marinos.”
“As what, Colt?” he asks, shocked.
“A hitman,” I growl. “If those bastards take over this city, no woman or girl will ever be able to walk safely in her neighborhood again.”
Luca nods. “So, what happened with you and this trafficked woman?”
I swallow. Shadow whines, almost like he doesn’t want me to say it, but Luca needs to understand how much I hate these bastards. He needs to realize that while I’ll always be my own man, what the Serpentes did will make me loyal to the Marinos.
“Hell, Luca,” I say. “Hell…”
Then I tell him.
Thirty minutes later, we’re drifting through a bad part of town in a cheap car. Luca took it from one of the Marino secondhand car lots, so we’ll fit in around here.
“This is one of their corners,” Luca growls, nodding to the end of the street.
A teenage boy handles the drugs, palming them off to customers, as a wannabe-slick man sits in partial shadow, wearing a leather jacket, the holster of his sidearm showing. Another man leans against the wall, smoking, taking cash from the kid.
“I was going to send some of the boys,” Luca says, “but…” He turns to me, his eyes bloodshot, as if my story has shaken him to the foundations. I know he’s thinking of his daughter. “What’d you think about taking care of these scumbags ourselves?”
“Let me do it alone,” I growl, staring at how the man snatches the cash from the kid—the way the kid flinches.
“Colt—”
“Alone,” I repeat. “There are tactical reasons. Less heat for you on the off chance anybody reports this, and it’ll be good for them to fear me again. It’s a powerful tool. Maybe some of them remember what Colt Walker did to their Family.”
Luca swallows. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say he seemed scared momentarily, but I can’t believe he would be.
“I’ll be right here.”
Pushing the car door open, I ignore Shadow’s whining. He wants to help, too, but I have to do this alone. I march across the street, hands at my sides, not even wearing a holster. No gun. No knives. Nothing but my fists and my pain and the memory of what they did and the resentment, too, because now it affects my and Lexi’s relationship if we’re ever going to have one.
“What you looking for, big fella?” the smoking man says, while the other stares at me from the darkness.
“I’m looking for a couple of sleazebags who use kids to deal shit to junkies,” I laugh, deep and gravelly, “and it seems to me I found them.”
“You want a fuckin’ problem?” The man tosses his cigarette, reaching for his pocket.
What a goddamn idiot.
I close the distance, grab his wrist, and violently wrench it so he lets out a whine like an animal caught in a trap. Spinning him around, I push him toward the other man just as he’s pulling his gun.
I use his buddy’s weight to trap him against the wall, then spin into a violent hook, aiming it past the first man and hitting the leader. I punch him clean in the side of the head, and he crumples like a sack of shit. The other one starts gasping and pleading as I grab the gun from the ground—the prick’s too concussed to use it, anyway—and stuff it in his mouth.
Turning to the kid, I snap, “Ditch the shit on the ground and get out of here. Remember, there are people scarier than these creeps.”
The teenager drops a bunch of saran wrap bundles onto the ground and sprints down the street. I take the gun out of the man’s mouth, shoving him up against the wall so hard I swear I feel his rib cage crack.
“Why was that kid flinching every time you moved?” I ask.
“Please,” the man whimpers. “Oh, fuck. My arm. Please.”
“Why?”
When I give him another shake, he starts blabbering. “Why’d you think?”
I press the gun against his head, twisting the barrel, driving it into his hair and skin. “I need to hear you say it.”
“Please.”
“Say it.”
“Because I hit the kid, okay? Because I have to! This is our life, you fuck. This is our world. This is what we’ve got to do to sur?—”
It’s not my preference to fire a gun without hearing protection, but I do it anyway. I pull the trigger and end this bastard. I don’t want to listen to his reasons, his sob story. He probably did worse than hit that kid, and the Serpents need to know. This city isn’t theirs.
I drag the man’s corpse to the appropriate position and then kick the other man in the face. Then I stamp on his hand. He croaks out in pain, not even making much noise like his body is too busy processing the devastation just wreaked on it.
