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I wave the hand holding my phone. “Hi!”
She stares at me. “What do you want?”
I shrug and fold my arms. I thought the answer to that was obvious, but who knows what the girl is thinking. After a moment I break our standoff and crook my finger.
Come on down here and play, raven girl.
She shakes her head. “Like hell. You have to go that way if you want in.” She points down at ground level to the heavy oak double doors with their black steel struts. Two men walk around the side of the house carrying semiautomatics openly.
I cup my hands around my mouth. “No, I don’t.”
She stares as though I’ve gone mad. Perhaps I have. Dom certainly seems to think so. Luca just handed me his freshly sharpened knife. I didn’t take that, but I did appreciate the offer, and the support.
Still smiling like a loon, I walk around to the back of my sports car and flip the boot up. Inside is the poorly wrapped body of Tommy Canaveri. Smaller than he was in life, the diminutive gift has more tape than an express parcel. Mind, the gaps annoy my OCD. I lift the package that drips blood everywhere, the drops filling the boot with the familiar stench of a body in its first stages of decomposition.
Whoever cleaned up needs a lesson in manners. Her gift bled all over my floor.
And so I brought it back.
“Rafe, stop!” she shrieks from above me, then disappears though I can still hear her grumbles and she yells to the wind. “For fuck’s sake.”
Ah, she’s coming down to see me. How nice.
Her guards don’t have a clue what to do with me as I cross the road, trailing goop, and flip the body between them. Opening my phone, I press “call” again. But I’m not calling Willow this time.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“I have a dead body on my front porch. Let me get you the address.” I hold the phone and my gun out to the man who drops his, stammering the street address into the phone.
His eyes dart between my handgun and my face, but it’s not me who he needs to worry about today. I’m only here for one person, and it’s not him. Though he should probably be concerned about acquiring a pair of silver bracelets shortly and a cute little cell.
Behind me, the familiar sound of my Lotus revving breaks their attention as Dom completes his part of my plan, and tears away down the street. If all things stay equal, he’ll erase the CCTV footage before the cops arrive.
“Would you mind?” I asked politely. “I have slippery hands and can’t get that inside for her. Unless, of course, you want the police to find a nice dead body on your mistress’s front doorstep your first day on the job. Not the best impression to make, perhaps? Have you got a friend inside their local unit yet?”
The horrified looks that cross their faces tells me they don’t.
Rule one: be prepared. I don’t need to be a Boy Scout to know that one.
Willow’s two men are so intent on the job I gave them to fill their empty hours—they can thank me later—that they don’t see me disappear between the building next to hers, and slip into the shadows as the first police car drifts around the corner of the block and pulls up, bullhorn blaring, sirens flashing, guns cocking.
But I’m at the back of the house by the time all that happens, and according to no one at all was I part of this scene. I do, however, have another part of my plan to enact.
I round the corner at the back of the house, finding the one man I know is on my wife’s payroll there, sitting on a wrought-iron chair, cleaning his gun. A gun that’s in pieces before him. How fortunate.
“Diego.” I smile without humor, my facade of a crazy, pleasant potential ex dropping to reveal who I am inside. Soulless. A void.
“Gallo. She won’t come down to see you.” Diego frowns as the sirens become louder. “What the fuck did you do?”
“Returned a present. Buyer’s remorse and all. I didn’t like the packaging.” I scratch my temple with my gun. “It leaked.”
His eyes widen. “You motherfucker—”
“Enjoy your cell,” I call softly, shaking off the few drops of Tommy’s blood that cling to my fingers.
“Rafe, I swear to fucking God…” Willow barrels from the house, a nice shiny serrated knife in her hand, and swipes at me. With intent to kill. The blade swishes through the air where my throat was a moment before.
Now I know who killed Tommy.
