“You fucking snake,” Dante spat. “I’m gonna kill you for this.”
“You and whose army? I set this deal up months before you even thought of it. No one round here even knows who you are, and you think they’d do business with you?”
“It’s my supply. All the links, the contacts. All mine.”
Martell tilted his head. “Are they? When was the last time you made a call? Handled a mule? You got lazy, D. And no one cares anymore. You’re through.”
He started to stand. Dante made a crazy grab for his arm and missed.
Martell straightened, and for the first time, seemed to notice Luis. He tossed him the package and pointed at Dante. “Plant this on him and dump him somewhere. Do that for me and I’ll consider us done.”
“Done?”
“Yeah. I know you don’t want to roll anymore, and I’m cool with that if you make things right with the trash.”
Luis snorted. “I don’t have the means to dump him anywhere. He ditched the car miles away.”
“Even better. It was stolen. Leave him in it.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“I’m not trying to help you,” Martell retorted. “I don’t give two shits about the fucking Pope brothers or whatever. Just do what I’ve asked, before these guys finish what they started—”
He broke off as the big man who’d searched them suddenly cursed at the CCTV he was monitoring on an iPad.
“What is it?” Martell demanded.
“Police,” the man said. “They come. Two minutes.”
How the hell he knew that, Luis had no idea. They must have cameras every fucking where.
The room began to empty out through a door Luis hadn’t clocked. It was concealed by a black curtain and somehow led to daylight.
Martell ghosted through it, leaving his bargain basement drugs behind.
In Luis’s hand.
The rest of the room cleared, parrot and all, and panic hit Luis square in the gut. The police were coming, and he was holding enough coke to put him away long enough to have middle-aged spread by the time he got out. Add in that Dante had a bullet in him, and they were both royally fucked.
Run. If you leave now, you can get away. But as hard as Luis tried to make himself move, nothing happened, and it took him far too long to realise his treacherous heart wouldn’t let him leave Dante alone and bleeding on the snooker club floor.
A shout ripped, unbidden, from Luis’s chest. He punched the wall and wrenched Dante’s coat off, flinging the sweaty leather away before he thought better of it and crouched to drape it over Dante’s shivering form. “I fucking hate you.”
Dante chuckled, flat and breathless. “I know. And I get it now, so you should go, now, before they get here.”
“You know I won’t leave you like this, so don’t pretend to be a god damn martyr now.”
“I’m not. I mean it. Leave the package and get the fuck out of here. That way, you’ve given Martell what he wants and got rid of me all in one. You can’t lose, brother.”
Luis had been losing his entire life, ever since genes and DNA had gifted him Dante and their waster mother as his only family. Dante’s words washed over him as he tracked the sound of the approaching sirens.
Dante gripped his arm, fingers digging in hard. “Fuck’s sake, Luis. Just go. I’m fucked anyway, and you don’t deserve to get caught here.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. Just like I left you all those years ago. Get the fuck out of here.”
Dante’s blood was seeping into Luis’s jeans and the hem of Paolo’s sweater. He was in no danger of dying, but the sight of it made Luis’s stomach roll and his heart clench with fear. The more blood he had on him, the more conspicuous he became. If he was going to run, it had to be now.
“I—”
Dante shook his head. “Don’t. Leave me here and I’ll get help quicker. Go, Luis. Now. Run.”
Luis backed up and staggered to his feet. Blue lights were already visible through the escape door the others had left open, narrowing his options to the front or the fire door on the side, if he could even find it.
With one last look at Dante, he turned and fled into the dark club, chasing an instinct that led him past a defunct bar and into what looked like a storeroom. He tripped over an empty box. In the gloom, he threw out a hand, and it hit the cool metal bar of a fire door. This is it. Luis listened hard for the sound of footsteps behind him, but even with adrenaline-sharp senses, he heard nothing but the roar of his own heart.
Fuck it.
He pushed the bar down.
The door opened with a whiny screech that reached even Luis’s ears. He cringed, bracing himself, and squinted into the daylight. The door had opened onto the bustling pavement. He stuck his head out, glanced swiftly in both directions, then melted into the crowd, head down, hood up. He followed the flow, jaw clenched, gaze darting, steeling himself for a heavy hand on his shoulder. To be tackled to the ground and cuffed.
But it didn’t happen. He walked and walked and walked until he found himself alone in a city that wasn’t his home without a clue what to do next.
21
Luis had been gone, again, for less than a day by the time Paolo lost his shit and went looking for him. The recurring theme of him banging on unanswered doors with no fucking clue was driving him up the wall, but somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Maybe if they hadn’t fucked, it would’ve been easier. But they had fucked, and it had been the final puzzle piece that now tied Paolo’s soul so entirely to a man who came with a camel’s back of baggage.
He had no regrets, though. Just a razor-sharp fear that wouldn’t fade until he knew for sure that Luis was okay.
There was no answer at the bedsit. Paolo wandered the nearby streets for an hour, hoping that Luis would appear, as he so often did, around the next corner, but eventually, he gave up and returned to the bedsit to wait.
The exterior door was still broken. Paolo slipped into the old house and felt his way back to Luis’s door. He knocked again for good measure, but there was still no reply.
Luis’s front door was made from the cheapest wood and secured by a lock that looked like it had come from the Argos catalogue. Paolo was no gangster, but he knew the credit card trick as well as any face from the neighbourhood. He slid his maxed out Mastercard between the doorframe and the lock and forced the lock back into the door with a quiet click. The door swung open a half inch. Paolo pushed it the rest of the way and quickly flicked the lights. “Anyone home?”
No reply came, but with Luis’s damaged hearing, silence didn’t mean much. Paolo shut the door behind him and listened for signs of life. There were none. He ventured further inside and found the bedsit as empty as Luis’s fridge.
Defeated, Paolo sank down onto Luis’s meticulously made bed, then jumped back up and turned the lights off to preserve Luis’s electric tokens. Darkness swamped him, in more ways than one, and he shivered against the draughty chill of the bedsit. Jesus. How does he live here?
It was a rhetorical question, but the answer came to Paolo all the same. Because he has to. Without Toni and Nonna, where would you be?
Paolo wrapped his arms around himself, tipped his head back against the wall, and chased the bliss he’d found with Luis less than twenty-four hours before, when he’d been buried deep inside him and Luis had whispered sweet, desperate pleas in his ear. Paolo had never fucked anyone like that. Had never been so consumed by pleasure and emotion that, when it was over, he could barely remember the details, only how it had felt. How it still felt. His body thrummed with too many feelings to catch, but most of all, it was awe and wonder. Luis was so fucking beautiful he made Paolo’s soul ache. I miss him.