Page 29 of Beni

August gave him a look.

He returned it.

“Hear that?”

Beni turned at Tommaso’s question, listening over the sounds of crying people, and feet crunching against glass. The familiar wailing had him sighing.

“Cops are almost here.”

“We need to head outside,” Tom told the rest of their small group still inside the club. “Stay together, didn’t see anything, don’t know anything, and didn’t hear anything. Got it?”

Nods answered him back.

Beni and Tommaso followed behind the women in silence as they headed out of the club. Outside, he found the Rossi brothers, still snapping shit into their phones, and his twin. Bene leaned against the brick wall of the club, next to a busted window. One of several, it seemed. Apparently, that must have been the main attack for the drive-by. The front windows of the club.

Bene barely even glanced in Beni’s direction when he approached.

“Hey,” he said.

Bene grunted under his breath, more interested in glaring down the block.

“You all right?”

His twin hitched a shoulder.

That was it.

Beni might have been annoyed on another night, but today had been bad enough between the two of them. He’d made sure his twin knew he wasn’t very fucking happy to find out Bene was leaving through their uncle, and not him.

Bene, on the other hand, said nothing.

And now?

Now, he looked pissed.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Beni asked him as the wailing sirens came closer.

Bene glanced his way, but still, said nothing.

“Well? Are you going to speak, or keep looking at me like you’re stupid?”

“I guess I must be something, huh?”

What?

His twin pushed off the wall, passed him by, their shoulders slamming together in his haste, as Bene muttered under his breath, “Whatever, man.”

What was going on?

Beni didn’t have time to figure it out. Flashing lights colored the streets.

Ah.

The cops had arrived.

The murmurs of men in the hospital waiting room lowered to nothing at all when the Outfit boss stepped into the space, his right and left hand men flanking him on either side. It was rare, that outside of a private family dinner, one would get the chance to see the three highest men in the Chicago mob in a room together.

And yet, there they were.