Page 39 of Dirty Pool

That was important.

He needed to get it out before he couldn’t. And also, he thought to add as his tongue felt too thick in his mouth, “And don’t tell my father shit, Sal.”

He didn’t want Dante to worry. Didn’t he have to learn to handle himself? He couldn’t have his father coming down here to cause issues just because Michel got in a little bit of trouble. That’s not how this was supposed to work.

“You’re a shit, you know that?” Sal asked.

Michel would have laughed.

Except he couldn’t.

The whole world went black again.

• • •

“No work tonight, huh?” Sal crossed the VIP floor, leaned across the booth as he took his seat, and clapped Michel on the cheek. He grinned as the music in the club turned up a notch. “After last week, I think you earned some time off.”

Michel chuckled, and shoved his friend’s hand away. “At least I don’t look as bad as I did.”

“But do you look any better?”

He gave Sal the finger from across the booth.

Fucker.

“I wondered why you called me in if not to work,” Michel said, relaxing a bit in his seat. That wasn’t particularly easy to do lately. Despite the fact that the Irish hadn’t bothered him in a week, and he heard nothing from that side of things, he still found himself constantly looking over his shoulder. “Are we just drinking?”

Sal nodded, and waved two fingers at the server who was designated to the VIP section of the club. “And celebrating, Michel … four shots, tequila for all of them.”

Michel’s brow lifted.

What were they celebrating exactly?

“Tequila—do you want me to be alive in the morning?”

Sal laughed. “It’s good for the soul. Teaches you the meaning of life, cafone.”

Michel doubted that.

Tequila reminded him of death in the mornings.

Except he knew better than to refuse a made man when one offered him a drink—that was considered a great offense to their hospitality, whether you were also made or not. So, Michel said nothing else and took the two shots of tequila when the server brought them around. He wasn’t even legal to be sitting in this bar still being only twenty, but that never seemed to matter to anyone in these mob-owned joints.

Story of his life.

He tossed back those two shots for himself, doing his best not to immediately throw it right back up because holy fuck, tequila was awful. That was the only thing his mind could scream as the liquor burned the whole fucking way down his throat.

“Another—”

Michel stopped Sal before he could really get going. There was no way he was going through another round of shots with that garbage. He’d watched Sal drop back a quarter of a bottle of tequila on a good night, and Michel was simply not that brave.

“So what are we celebrating, anyway?”

His question did the trick to distract the man, anyway.

Sal grinned his way again. “I had to wait, you see.”

“Wait for what?”