Page 76 of Mine

“The catch is you’re in, and really, you’re in whether you wanna be or not, so I would take the damn restaurant and set up your life and be the guy Rigel Masada wants you to be.”

But what did I want?

“This guy I met in Vegas, he said that because of Conrad, I had choices.”

He shook his head. “I told Rigel about Conrad. He told me he doesn’t care. He’s not afraid of one man; he has an entire family backing him. You’ll like him. He’s in Miami now. When he gets back, he wants to meet you, and Landry.”

“You like him?”

“He’s not erratic. He doesn’t want to do everything, he just wants to concentrate on what makes him money. And he was merciless with Kady. I liked that.”

I nodded.

“He wants you to be the guy the cops talk to, the guy everyone talks to. It can’t be me; I’ve done too much, am way too dirty—but you, you’re squeaky clean.”

“I’m a runner,” I disagreed with a laugh. “I’m not that clean.”

“Oh come on, you don’t even own a gun.”

I held his gaze.

“From where?”

“Connie.”

He nodded. “That makes sense. Give it back to him, all right? You’ll have muscle from now on. Gino and Pavel will—”

I shook my head. “I’ll ask Conrad.”

“You can’t afford to pay him day in and day out.”

I shrugged. “I think I can, and he likes the idea of the restaurant too.”

He exhaled sharply. “You’re gonna be in charge of the house, the runners. It’s your place now, Trev, you get that, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I’m stepping up to do the parts we don’t wanna talk about, and Rigel, he’s doing the heavy lifting.”

I understood. “Drugs?”

He squinted at me. “Fuck no. No drugs, no whores; those were my rules, and that’s where I think Adrian fucked up, trying to get in there. Guys bigger than us have been doing that shit for way too long. You don’t even want to start that fight.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. I agree. What’d Rigel say?”

“Rigel’s into moving hardware.”

I nodded. “Guns.”

“And cars and black market shit.”

“But no drugs? Are you being naïve, or he said?”

“His father said. No drugs, no prostitution, and no alcohol.”

“Oh.” I laughed. “No booze. That’s funny.”

He shrugged. “It’s still illegal, the shit we do trade in. We can all still get killed, busted; any numbers of tragedies could befall us.”