Page 6 of Vow

At least, to them.

Snaps had been a bit of a distraction that forced Andino to hold the steering wheel tighter, and look out the windshield. Not so much so that he didn’t notice the sign on the side of the club, though.

FOR SALE, it read.

Andino did a double-take just to see it again. To be sure he hadn’t missed it, or read it wrong. He hadn’t, apparently.

Safe Haven was up for sale.

Well, fuck.

• • •

Terrance threw back his fourth shot of whiskey since Andino had walked into the man’s quiet club. The place wasn’t open—not until well after dark, anyway—but this was where the Capo did the majority of his business. At least, in the daytime. Like a lot of them.

“And even your crew is getting shit?” Andino asked.

The Capo nodded, and set his glass down to the bar with a loud clink. “Yeah, ‘cause this is where they come to check in, and shit. The Calabrese know who all of them are. Some of them were followed … nothing happened there. Just to scare ‘em, I think.”

“And the others?”

Terrance let out a sigh, and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Two Calabrese enforcers beat the hell out of the guy who looks after my guys on the streets. I guess they got in to a verbal thing on the corner, and they followed him home. That was the first real aggressive act. After that, they started showing up here.”

Andino’s brow lifted, and even he needed to take a drink for that one. Damn. It seemed like the Calabrese were really starting to grow a pair of balls. Then again, with their father dead, there was no one to hold the Calabrese brothers in line, so to speak. Kev Calabrese had taken over for his father, as far as Andino knew … he’d always been a fucking shit.

Not that the younger brother, Darren, was much better.

“They just come here, take a seat, and make themselves known,” Terrance said. “Flexing their fucking muscles, you know?”

“But it’s uncomfortable.”

And rude.

“Very uncomfortable,” Terrance agreed. “I can’t afford to be having official attention on my club. You know how much money and product I move through here. I’ve had to cut that down a bit since all this started up just in case an incident does happen, and the police get called in. I don’t need the fucking cops digging through this club, and finding all the stuff I have hidden in the back rooms.”

Yeah, none of them needed that.

The bigger problem was the fact now the Calabrese were starting to cause issues for business. Not just the Marcellos on the street, or in a personal way, but actual business. That meant money was being lost, and no man was going to take that lying down.

Certainly not Dante.

Nor Andino.

It needed to end.

“This will be fixed soon,” Andino assured.

Terrance nodded, and reached for the whiskey bottle again. “Hope so—I’m too old for a fucking street war. Not sure I got it in me, you know, even if it is those goddamn snakes.”

Andino chuckled, and smacked the man on the back as he stood from the barstool. “You’re barely over forty. You’re fine.”

“Says you. This life ages you.” Terrance passed Snaps, who’d been quietly watching them from beneath a table, a look. “Like dog years, or something.”

Wasn’t that the fucking truth?

“I’ll pass all this along to Dante.”

The Capo agreed, and that was that. Andino said his goodbyes, finished the last bit of his one glass of whiskey, and whistled for Snaps to follow him out of the club. Andino was no sooner out into the cold March air and had the club’s front door closed behind him than the bullets started flying.