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  “I need more time.” He shakes his head. “I’ll let you know when I hear something—”

  “So I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”

  “Is there some reason why you can’t trust me now, Espisido?”

  I don’t answer. My problem never was about trusting him. “Fine.”

  “Tomorrow at the latest,” he says. “I can promise you that.”

  He steps aside, and I push my way past him without digging any further and leave the pub. With Arno, sometimes it’s better to be in the dark.

  I wake up sprawled over my sketchbook and waste most of the day avoiding my ringing cell phone. In the end, I miss out on at least two jobs. A few sips of whiskey and I forget why I need the money.

  Almost.

  Alone, I head to Mulligans after midnight, and the roar of music and laughter swallows me whole the moment I enter the barroom. It’s a full house tonight. Most of the crowd hovers around the stage, fighting for a glimpse of the main show. If Darcy’s on, I might as well toss her a wave before asking for another favor—Domi needs clothes that cover her ass.

  I look up. Shit. The woman approaching the pole is not Darcy; the features are all wrong. Messy, brown hair. Pale skin. Body barely covered by skimpy black lace...

  I turn away, but it’s too fucking late. My jeans feel tighter. The itch beneath my skin bites a little deeper. My fingers shake. It takes me three tries to lift a cigarette from my pocket as I push my way to the bar counter. From behind it, Domi tosses me a smile, but the moment I reach an empty stool and sit…

  I turn around, driven by the same impulse that has me dragging on the cig so hard that I choke. She’s already into the start of her set, and her eyes find mine in an instant. I inhale another puff like it’s an antidote to her poison—but the longer I watch her, the more she floods my veins. She moves slowly, finding the hidden pulse within the music until her entire body is in motion, like gasoline drizzled on a flame. Just when the tempo starts to build, she heads for the pole.

  I don’t want to watch her climb onto it, but I do. She’s got the crowd in the palm of her hand. The same one she’s gliding down to the swell of her ass before she fingers the hem of a lacy, black thong. She tugs on the strap, and my throat lurches at the sight of creamy, pale skin underneath, marred by scars. Tainted with secrets. A heartbeat later, the material is in her hands and flung carelessly into the crowd. Some bastard grabs it, waving the damn thing through the air, but she barely spares him any attention.

  Her eyes are on me as she reaches for her bra. She easily peels the material loose, slowly…slowly. In one quick motion, she lets it slip from her fingers.

  Like my control. It hits the floor along with everything else.

  My cig hangs limply from my lips as I take in her full breasts swaying when she swings. Her hips glisten as she gradually winds herself down from the pole without seeming to notice or care that she’s naked. That hungry eyes are watching her. That her indifference only makes the jeers louder.

  She doesn’t even stop to gather the dollar bills flying in her direction on her way off the stage. I’m already on my feet, pushing my way through the crowd. I catch flashes of her in bits and pieces. Heaving shoulders. Pale skin.

  She opened the stitches. My brain clings to that excuse as I barge into the dressing room. She’s alone this time, standing in the corner and tugging on a pair of black shorts, still topless. Her fingers freeze when she spots me, her ass still bare.

  “I…” My throat goes drier as I fumble for any goddamn excuse. “I need to check the stitches—”

  She flings her arm out without turning around, and I can see for myself that the wound is intact. But I keep moving, ignoring how she backs up with every damn step I take. She’s flush with the wall beside a vanity when I finally manage to dig my heels into the floor.

  “I’m sorry… I…”

  “Are they torn?” She extends her arm, and my fingers find her skin, circling carefully along her wrist. Up to her elbow. Higher, to her shoulder. More.

  I should pull away. Selfishness must be another Vialle family trait. The rush I feel… It’s like inhaling on a cigarette—the icy, familiar burn, the fear that I might choke if I take too much too fast. The numbing clarity that comes after. One hit of her splits my fucking brain in half. I inhale raggedly and don’t even realize that I’ve pulled away until her free hand grabs mine, clenching tight.

  I expect her to break the remaining fingers in warning. She seems like the type. Instead, she forces them open, turning my instinctive fist into a grasping claw. The pad of her thumb grazes my palm, and she stares at it as if she’s counting each and every individual line and crevice.

  Our gazes meet over the mirror’s surface of the nearest vanity, drawing me closer. One step. Two. Three. She doesn’t let up until her ass meets my hip, the back of her head is against my shoulder…and my hand is on her breast.

  She holds it there, lightly enough that I could pull away. I fucking should. I can’t. I don’t. My fingers curve instead, sensing the heat running beneath her skin, driven by the rhythm of her pulse. I feel the gasp that catches in her throat, brief and broken.

  My other hand finds her hip. My fingers have a mind of their own when they flatten against it, splayed and searching, feeling the firm bones and delicate skin. I’ve drawn nudes before, but never anyone like her.

  She’s art, scribbled and marked over in a million barely visible scars. One on her lower back catches at my fingertips, just beyond the edge of a series of tattoos—black symbols I vaguely recognize as belonging to the Russian alphabet, Cyrillic. It’s another detail of her I steal away. Like the fact that, going off the dark curls I glimpsed between her legs during her show, she really isn’t a natural blond.

  Does it matter? Something warns me that it does. Every bit of her seems to add up to one indiscernible picture—Little Miss Yellow. I could draw her using just that one shade and never lose any detail. But it isn’t long before my brain turns to more than sketching.

  “They’re still intact,” I tell her, pulling away. “The stitches, I mean.” I head for the door without looking back and keep moving until I’m in the alley behind the bar. I lean against the nearest wall, pull out a pack of cigs, and light four of them up one by one. I inhale them all down to nothing, flicking the ashes at my feet.

  I fish out another cig and flick the end of it with my lighter. It’s been a long time since I chain-smoked a whole pack at once. But why quit now? I’m already halfway there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chloe

  I’m about to head downstairs to help Francisco open when the burner phone in my pocket rings. Unease pools in my stomach as I fish it out. For Grey to call so early, something must be wrong. He works fast, but not this fast.

  “What kind of shit are you playing here, Parker?”

  I wince. The fact that he’s shouting proves my suspicion correct.

  “What happened?” My throat feels tight, my palms slick. For good reason. If Arno decided to play some sick game at my expense, Piotr would be the last person I would need to worry about. “Did you run the number?”

  “Yeah, I ran it,” he snarls.

  “And?”

  “And are you sure you got that number from Mackenzie? You saw Arno Mackenzie with that gun?”

  “Yes…” That part was the truth, at least. “I saw him with it. Whose is it?”

  Grey sighs so heavily into the phone that all I hear is static. “That gun belongs to a cop,” he breathes out a second later. “A thirty-year veteran of the force. The soon-to-be fully instated chief of police, to be exact. You know the guy. Richard Van Hallen. Someone who I know for a fact isn’t dead.”

  Shock runs through me like a lance, and it takes me a second to remember how to speak. “You’re kidding me…”

  “I wish I were, Parker,” Grey admits. “That gun was reported missing almost six months ago. Apparently part of the whole mess with Vincent Stacatto’s murder.”
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  Vincent Stacatto, an Italian mob boss infamous for human trafficking. His murder happened right before my transfer, exposing a corruption scandal that went all the way up to the top. Things before had been tense, to say the least, but they got much worse after Stacatto went down.

  “What would a gangster be doing with that gun?” I ask. Arno or otherwise.

  “I think a better question is—Why leave the goddamn serial numbers on it at all? That’s sloppy. Or…”

  “Or it’s a bad sign,” I say, picking up his train of thought. “Someone’s setting a trap.”

  “You always were quick on the uptake, Parker,” Grey admits and laughs gruffly. “Whatever this is, I don’t like it. In fact…I’m not even going to go to the brass with this. Yet. You lie low and see if you can find out more. I’ll continue to cover your ass here.”

  “How?”

  He grunts out another coarse laugh. “As far as they know, you’re on vacation—the emergency, undocumented kind.”

  Fair enough. I don’t question it, and with a terse goodbye, Grey hangs up. I’m already staggering down the hall toward that infamous room at the back of the bar. When I throw it open, I find Arno inside, slumped over the table.

  He starts when I slam the door behind me. “What the fuck—”

  “What game are you playing? I had them run the serial number on that gun. Turns out, it belongs to a cop—”

  “What the fuck did you just say?” He lurches to his feet, knocking his chair over.

  “And not just any cop,” I continue, unfazed as he advances on my position. “A gun that belonged to the soon-to-be police chief, Van Hallen.”

  Arno blinks and stops in his tracks, paces away. “What’s his name?”

  Something tells me that he already knows the answer before I even say it. “Richard Van Hallen.”

  “Fuck.” He curls a fist and slams it into the palm of his other hand. Once. Twice. Again. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

  He plunges the abused fingers into the pocket of his jeans, and I half expect him to go for the gun, but he withdraws another cell phone instead. A second later, he’s snarling into the receiver.

  “Get the truck and get the fuck over here. Now. You have five goddamn minutes. And you.” His eyes cut over in my direction while he hangs up. “You’re coming with me.”

  He grabs me by my arm. The bad one. I wince as he manhandles me toward the door, but either he doesn’t care, or he doesn’t notice. It takes everything I have in me not to resist as he hauls me down the hallway and out of an exit that opens onto an alley. Not out of fear. Even drunk, Arno doesn’t seem like the type to be easily overpowered.

  I try using logic to reach him instead. “Where are we going? Can I put some shoes on first?”

  He just grunts and pulls me forward, though he loosens his grip enough so that I don’t go falling down the three concrete steps after him. My foot has barely hit the pavement as a black pickup truck swerves into the alley.

  I don’t recognize the driver, but he lunges across the passenger’s seat to fling the door open, and Arno shoves me inside, forcing me to climb onto the back bench. He muscles his way in after me and slams the door.

  “We’ve got to visit an old friend,” he says, but the edge to his tone doesn’t inspire any warm or friendly feelings.

  The driver shrugs. “Which one?”

  “Jose, that sick fuck,” Arno spits out. “Take us to the fucking bike stop.”

  The “bike stop” is on the other side of the city from Mulligan’s, situated between a rundown warehouse and the river. Most of the buildings within the general vicinity are dilapidated, vacant, or overrun with druggies and homeless.

  It’s the perfect place for the lair of a self-professed outlaw king. I recognize the territory from some of Grey’s secondhand horror stories. Everything on this side of the bridge belongs to the El Patrón cartel.

  Something tells me that Arno’s use of the word friend was in the loosest sense. He tenses up the moment we near the property, like a guard dog sensing the piss of another beast nearby.

  Overall, the place looks like an old gas station that once might have serviced the towering warehouse behind it. I assume from the state of the pumps that it’s still in service, though I doubt to the general public. A chain-link fence encloses the space, and in the attendant’s station, two men sneer at their newfound company.

  “Stay in the truck,” Arno tells the driver. “If anything goes down, you get the fuck out of here and bring backup. They try to take the truck? You shoot them in the fucking head.” He wrenches the glove compartment open, revealing an impressive array of weapons.

  Either he’s not worried that I’ll snitch or he’s desperate enough to ignore the caution. He grabs two guns and presses one into the driver’s palm while tucking the other into his back pocket. Then he nudges the passenger’s door open and climbs out. His feet hit the pavement. Then he reaches back and tugs me out after him.

  I’m frog-marched barefoot to the mouth of the fencing. By the time we pass through, one of the men has left the attendant station. He shouts at us, the words in Spanish—the only language I studied in college.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  Arno chuckles, his smile feral. “Hola, ese. Taco fucking Bell. Take me in to see Jose.”

  Standing beside him, I feel like a doe caught in the rampage of a crazed, wild bear tearing through anything in its path. Either he gets us both killed before we get in the door or the display will strike enough fear into the lackeys that they snap to attention.

  So far, it’s the latter effect. The two men share a look between them, and the one closer to us breaks away toward the warehouse. I assume we’re meant to follow when Arno marches in his wake, dragging me alongside him.

  With every step we take, something inside my stomach clenches up. The air here smells similar to what haunts my nightmares. The stench of decay. Of hopelessness. Whatever dark corner of hell spit out Vlad and Piotr apparently had a few other monsters running loose.

  The man leading us to the warehouse’s entrance is sporting the same guarded expression as one of the bouncers at Moe’s, even though his attire of a white T-shirt and jeans differs slightly. He comes to a stop before a battered metal door and knocks on it once. It opens, held by a man wearing a flannel shirt splattered with a dark substance. It’s oil.

  I think. I hope.

  “Let’s get this fucking over with,” Arno mumbles as he shoves me through the doorway first.

  I stagger inside, catching myself against a firm surface. A wall? It’s made of concrete, harsh and uneven beneath my fingertips. I blink to make out more of my surroundings and catch sight of a narrow hall before Arno grips my shoulder and drags me closer.

  “What’s this?” a soft voice calls from what appears to be a larger area beyond the short entrance.

  I blink when we reach the threshold of the cavernous space. It must have served as a cargo bay during the building’s official use. Now, it appears to be a makeshift den where a shirtless man is lounging on the floor, eating cereal out of a bowl.

  The relative harmlessness of the scenario is undercut by two chilling realizations—one, the man is “lounging” on the body of a prone figure lying on the ground—make that chained to it. There’s so much blood surrounding the body that I can’t tell where it ends and the poor soul begins. Or even if they’re alive despite the carnage.

  The man sitting on the victim’s back doesn’t seem to mind the mess, however. His ass rests comfortably over their spine, his legs splayed on either side. A bowl of Fruity Pebbles balances on a rent section of back, and he calmly takes a heaping spoonful. The movement draws a moan from the body—they’re definitely still alive.

  “Arno,” the dining man says cheerfully. He’s beautiful. That’s the second striking revelation.

  With caramel skin and a flawless complexion, he’s the golden angel to Espi’s ivory. Insanely long lashes flutter against his cheekbones whenever he lowers his
eyes to his meal. A dark thatch of closely cut curls covers his head, framing a face set with strong, breathtaking features that appear deceptively innocent when paired with the blood on his jeans.

  “Is there a reason why you’re interrupting my breakfast?” he wonders beneath a thick Spanish accent.

  “You could say that.” Arno’s callous shrug is as close to a sign of respect as anyone’s likely to see from him, I assume. “We need to talk.”

  “Talk…” The other man frowns at his cereal bowl and then sets it aside, unperturbed by the pool of blood occupying the same space. He wipes his hands on his jeans and then stands in a single fluid motion. He’s tall. Nearly as tall as Arno, but the slight height difference doesn’t tip the scales of power in either’s favor.

  This man, he must be Jose. Only now does it strike me that I have heard of him before, just by another name. We called him “The Shredder of the Cartel” around the precinct. It was the nicest term to describe what he did to his victims.

  The horror stories clash with his smiling façade. I’m almost fooled by it—until the moment he comes to a stop inches away from Arno and meets the other man’s gaze directly.

  “You come into my house, unannounced…” His tone deepens, revealing a hint of the danger lurking underneath. “You interrupt the lovely breakfast I was having with Julio here. For what? To talk.” He throws his head back and laughs.

  It’s a beautiful, charming sound that serves as a violent contrast to the way his hand shoots out and finds my neck. White explodes behind my eyelids. I can’t breathe. His grip is the only thing holding me upright as he yanks me closer to him and out of Arno’s reach.

  “Pretty friend,” he says while my eyes stream and my lungs constrict.

  My heart surges, desperate to panic, but an old familiar instinct keeps it at bay. It’s been years since I’ve had to anticipate the violence, but my body remembers how to react. Stay still. Hold your breath. Count…

  It’s the only way to keep from blacking out too soon.