Page 131 of Disgrace

John was collecting the items he had been asked to hand over coming into the jail when a familiar detective saddled in beside him. He only knew who the detective was because the guy was giving his best effort to put Andino behind bars for a twenty to life sentence. He was also the same asshole that had been the one to release John as he taunted him about his cousin.

He shoved his phone, wallet, and a roll of cash into his pants pocket, all the while, ignoring the detective. He wasn’t speaking first. Made men didn’t talk to cops of any sort if they could help it.

“No greeting for me today?” Detective Rosencauld asked with a shit-eating grin. “Not even a go fuck yourself for good measure, John?”

“What do you want?”

John checked the time on his watch, and then headed for the entrance of the jail. Rosencauld followed close behind at the same time, never missing a step with John. It was both amusing and annoying.

“Your visit with Andino didn’t last long. Your cousin didn’t have orders to give today, or what?”

“I don’t take orders from Andino,” John replied, opening the doors and heading out into the mid-October day.

Taking over his own organization as a boss meant John answered to only himself, which was something he hadn’t realized he needed in the grand scheme of things. It was simply easier when he was the one calling the shots for his own people.

Not that the Calabrese fools made it easy.

“Is that because he’s family, or …?”

“That’s because none of your fucking business,” John said.

Waiting at the side of the road was a black town car. One of John’s enforcers—one of several men he had brought over from the Marcello side to help control the Calabrese organization—waited with the door already open to the car. Smoke puffed from the tailpipe, telling him the man had kept the engine running during his visit.

“Have a good day,” John said to Rosencauld as he slipped into the back of the car. He went to close the door, but the detective grabbed it at the last second. John gave the man a single look—promised violence silently for stepping in his way. “Do you have something else you need?”

“Just one thing, John.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

“No matter who steps in to try and shut this investigation down, I am not going away. Papers can go missing, and witnesses can recant, but I’m still going to be here at the end of the day. Don’t forget it.”

John only smiled. “Keep reaching. You might actually grab something. Heath.”

At the call of his name, the enforcer stepped in to crowd the detective away from the car, and further from John. Heath was a bull of a man—as wide as he was tall, and all muscle, too. He slammed the passenger door shut, and stood in front of it until Rosencauld backed off entirely, and headed for the jail again.

“Fucking asshole,” John muttered.

But his mind had found that goddamn detective to be something worth thinking about, apparently. His focus zoned in on the things the man had said, and everything he suggested. Even as Health climbed into the car, and chatted away while he drove, John was still laser focused on a few passing comments from Rosencauld.

No matter how many times John tried to shake the comments, or forget the man who really couldn’t do anything to him or Andino as long as everything went right, the thoughts wouldn’t leave.

It wasn’t even so much the detective as just everything about this whole situation in general. Andino didn’t know, but John had been working to get his cousin out. He didn’t stop—from morning until night. He was sleeping maybe three hours a night, and running all goddamn day, too.

He didn’t feel it, though.

Not exhaustion, anyway.

It was everything else that he felt too much of lately. It was everything else that kept his attention obsessive, and unwilling to let him go. He had been taken out of the deep swell of depression, and thrown into the hyper-focused, fixated state he was now.

That probably should have been a sign.

• • •

John’s gaze zoned in on the clock as voices echoed around him. Leaning back in the kitchen chair, Siena moved around the arguing men like their raised voices and irritation didn’t bother her in the least.

She dropped a kiss to the top of John’s head as she passed his chair at the head of the table. It was the only thing to break his focus away from the clock, and the countdown he had begun silently in his head.

“Coffee?” she asked him.