Apparently, it could be triggering for the old-school gangsters to take orders from a woman. It had taken a few dead “back up” gangsters before they finally got the point that I wasn’t to be pushed. Zed’s trigger finger was just as twitchy as my own, and he was a deadly quick shot.
"Someone has been breaking my rules, and I want to know what you all know about that." I cast my eyes around the table as I said it, and the silence that followed was deafening. "Let me elaborate for you, seeing as we're all playing dumb today. Someone has been importing and, I'll guess, selling angel dust within my zones."
Ezekiel's brows rose, his thin-framed glasses moving on his face with the gesture. "That sounds like a supremely bad idea, if I might say so, sir. I assure you, I haven't seen or heard anything of the sort in my area. Sounds like someone wanted to diversify their portfolio." He cast his eyes over the other gang leaders, giving pointed looks at Cass, Skate ,and Vega. Their gangs were the ones who ran the most recreational drugs.
Archer just kicked back in his chair, watching everyone with guarded curiosity. I knew he didn’t have anything to do with it, but he would want to know what was going on, if only to keep his family safe.
Then again, considering I'd previously handed him a forty-nine percent share in the import-export company that facilitated literally all of the drug trade in Shadow Grove, maybe he had heard something I hadn't.
"You already know everything I know," Cass rumbled, his hand balled in a fist where it rested on the table. "I actually had the balls to own up when I found out about angel dust in Shadow Grove." He arched a brow across the table at Skate.
"Screw you, Cass," the rival gang leader spat back at him. "One of these days you'll kiss Hades’s ass so hard your head will get stuck up there."
"You wanna pretend there's no dust floating around Wraith territory, Skate?" Cass all but sneered the Wraith's name. That was new. He was usually so stone-cold emotionless, but there was real disdain in his tone.
Skate's eyes narrowed as he glared back at Cass. "The fuck would you know about Wraith business? You got spies in my house, friend?"
Cass's lip curled. "I'm no friend of yours." But he also didn't answer the accusation... How curious.
But they could take their Shadow Grove bickering elsewhere; I didn't want this meeting lasting any longer than it needed to.
"Skate, this is your one and only chance," I told him in a flat voice. "Tell me what you know about who is responsible for this breech, or the Wraiths will be taxed for insubordination."
I couldn't always kill people who disobeyed. How would they ever learn if no one was alive to carry the lesson forward?
Archer, at the opposite end of the table, shot me a sly grin. He had a fair idea what I meant when I said the Wraiths would be taxed. It meant that the cost of imports on cocaine and MDMA—the Wraiths’ primary money earners—would triple in price indefinitely, something that directly lined my pockets and Archer's. It also meant I would take a higher cut of any money they laundered through my businesses during the period of their punishments.
Where death and violence didn’t always motive obedience, threatening their bottom line usually worked.
Skate glared at me, his nostrils flaring with anger and indecision flickering in his eyes. It was a tiny movement, barely even noticeable for how quick it was, but I spotted the second his eyes flicked to the side. Like he was fighting the urge to look at Joseph for permission.
Motherfucker. I knew it.
My instincts had carried me this far in life. They'd kept me alive when the whole world had been against me. I trusted them, but if they ever steered me wrong... well... too fucking bad.
So, acting purely on my gut feeling, I surged out of my chair. Skate started babbling some panicked bullshit, but I wasn't listening to his lies any more. He was no longer in charge of his gang; I'd stake my whole fortune on it.
My jaw tight and my resolve hard, I pulled my gun and fired a single shot. The bullet hit square between Skate's eyebrows, blowing out the back of his head in a splatter of blood and gore. His lifeless body toppled onto the floor as his chair tipped backward. My Desert Eagle packed a hell of a punch, especially in such close confines.
Immediately, Joseph made a break for it—predictable as shit. Zed was quicker, though, firing a shot through the back of the fake Wraith's knee.
Joseph fell to the ground, screaming in pain, and the sound echoed through the crypt in the most fitting way.
Zed paid the man's protests no mind as he grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him back to the table. He nudged Skate's body aside, and Vega's man, Diego, helped by righting the fallen chair again. A chair into which Joseph the snake was dropped unceremoniously and held in place by Zed's heavy hand on his neck.
"Well. It looks like I have a lead after all," I murmured, eyeing Joseph critically. He wasn't the one calling the shots, but I'd bet he knew who was. "Does anyone else have anything to tell me before I get on with this?"
I arched a brow at Vega and Maurice. Cass had already come forward about the angel dust found on his guys, and Archer was removed from suspicion in this.
"Now or never, gentlemen; I'm a busy woman."
Surprisingly, it was Maurice who cracked. "I might have heard something," he admitted with a heavy swallow. "One of my guys was picked up a couple of weeks back by the local PD. They claimed he was carrying dust, but there's no way. Not my crew." He shook his head firmly, perspiration beading on his brow.
I stared at him a long moment, weighing the sincerity of his words. My father had thought it was a cute trick to teach me poker as a seven-year-old, so I'd been reading body language a long time. Some people were harder to read than others, of course, like Cass, who was a closed and locked book. Maurice, though, was a pretty open one.
He also wasn't lying to me. Or he was telling me what he believed to be the truth.
"You think the cops planted it on him?" I asked. That would create a common denominator in all the instances of PCP I knew of. But why the fuck would law enforcement be doing the dirty work for a criminal with a vendetta? It didn't add up.
Maurice spread his hands wide. "There's no other explanation."
Yet.
I gave a small nod. "Next time you keep information from me, Maurice, you'll be joining Skate in my shark tank. Do you have anything else I need to know?" He shook his head quickly, his naturally bronzed skin ashen. "I expect you to send me the arrest details and to immediately contact me if it happens again. Is that clear? You're dismissed."
The leader of the Riverstone Vipers quickly scurried out of the crypt, his plus-one tight on his ass like hellhounds were snapping at their heels.
"Vega?" I tilted my head to the Death Squad president. He had been in his position for a long time, wisely making good choices after my father’s fall from grace and surviving to live the tale. He was no idiot.
"Nothing to tell, Hades. I can assure you, if that shit turns up in my turf, you'll be the first to know about it."
"I'll second that sentiment," Ezekiel offered, adjusting his glasses. "But if trouble does come knocking, my services are, as always, at your disposal, sir."