Page 37 of Carnal Wagers

“What message?”

The toes of my boots crunched over his. His breath—a mix of tobacco, liquor, and old mint—was as off-putting as the cowboy mustache tickling his dry upper lip. His gun pressed to my stomach with a direct shot to my liver. I smirked and leaned in closer, the barrel digging into my abdomen.

“The kings of Boston take the shite out for free.”

One little swipe of my clawed blade underneath the wrist holding the gun, and I severed his ulnar artery. Loss of strength in his fingers was immediate. Much faster than the scream bubbling up his throat. I caught that with a plunge of my blade through his neck. In three seconds, tops, he was dead, and his body collapsed with the clatter of his gun.

Like a well-oiled machine, Arthur knocked the second man unconscious, Brody rushed the third Colombian, and Paulie wrestled the man’s gun away. It was all over and done in under a minute, without the smallest flutter of excitement in my bloodstream.

I held out my hand to the conscious Colombian. “Your phone.”

Despite his bared teeth, he wasn’t thick as a ditch. Joaquin Sosa’s number rang through less than a minute later.

“Ya está hecho?” I put his hoarse smoker’s voice on speaker.

“Now, you saying something like that, it makes me wonder how to take it.”

“O’Leary, my friend, that you?” The head of the Urabá cartel cleared his throat with a rattly cough. “You have my money?”

“Always.”

“Then to what do I owe the honor?”

“Courtesy call. Your man killed one of mine. So I killed one of yours. A nephew, I think. Thought it best to let you know. Disrespect can’t go unanswered. I’m sure you understand.”

“You should have called me before, my friend.”

I crouched in front of the man caged between Brody and Paulie the Skipper and tapped my bloody blade to his cheek. He recoiled. My own phone buzzed in my pocket.

“I don’t ask permission. It’s interesting you think I would.”

“We’re business partners, Cillian. Nothing personal.”

“My men. My town. My business.” I wiped the rest of the blood from the blade on the Colombian’s other cheek, then closed the knife shut.

“Remember, I own you.”

“Now, that’s bleeding cheeky of you.” I slapped the Colombian’s shoulder for effect, enjoying his wince. These boys weren’t half as hardened as Sosa liked to pretend. Cruel, sure. Greedy, absolutely. Hardened? Not these ones.

“I should tax you another five percent.”

“You should be thankful your access to Boston remains open.”

“You don’t have the balls, my friend.”

“You want to test that theory?” He didn’t answer. “My city, my rules. Stay in your lane, Joaquin, or we’ll have the craic doing it for you. Let that be a promise.”

I hung up the phone and tossed it at the Colombian, whose arms were locked behind his back. The phone bounced off his chest and fell to the old, patchy vinyl flooring with a crack. Again, my own phone vibrated.

“Clean this up, would you?” Paulie smacked the Colombian upside the head as Brody dropped the bag of cash at his feet.

Then we filed out of the room. There was a strong likelihood that the Urabá cartel was about to become the problem I had foretold when they bought out my father’s debt seven years ago. It only surprised me that Joaquin Sosa took this long to challenge us.

“We need to put a complete stop to their contacts,” I said as we stomped down the stairwell.

Our agreement following the debt settlement stated that they had access to Boston so long as we facilitated all sales. At the time, they needed our distribution network, and we needed the cut. Truth was, with a monopoly on their distribution, it gave us an advantage as we expanded. When Sosa realized his fuckup a couple of years ago, the cartel started buying the silence or compliance of officials and law enforcement in an effort to gain a foothold in Boston outside our influence. We’d been dismantling their efforts piece by piece through blackmail and coercion, but not always fast enough.

When we made it back to the car, Brody immediately connected his phone to the keyboard he kept in the door pocket and lost himself in his research and anything new our hackers sent over. When he compartmentalized his focus like this, nothing and no one existed anymore but getting the job done. I envied him that ability.