Page 7 of Dragonfly

Considering his wife is still pregnant, that would be quite a feat if I kept him that long. Point taken all the same.

“I thought bad news might be easier to swallow with something sweet,” I tell him. “Not my fault you passed on dessert.”

His brow furrows. “The fuck you mean, bad news? Don’t tell me you made me sit through a whole meal talking bullshit about numbers and how the Breeze business in the Playground is doing only for you to drop this on me now.” A rough sigh as he shifts in his seat. “Lay it on me. Is it Eclipse? Because I told you last month, I can handle Breeze as long as the cops keep their noses out of my club. But that newer shit is killing kids. I won’t have that in my club.”

Breeze started out as a hopped-up version of E, but some of our suppliers discovered that if you cut it with some other pharmaceuticals, it turns into a newer, stronger formula we call Eclipse.

I lower my spoon, letting it clink against the bottom of the glass bowl holding my dessert. “Our Eclipse is clean.”

“Tell that to the three DBs Rolls and his guys have had to do clean-up duty on since the new year started.”

I didn’t say that there hasn’t been a problem with somebody’s supply. I said that our Eclipse is clean. It has to be. A dead body can’t buy more drugs or line my pockets with their money.

I want addicts, not corpses.

I don’t waste my breath explaining that to Lincoln. One of the reasons we went our separate ways all those years ago was because we couldn’t agree on how to make crime pay for us. Back then, he was a brawler who fought for money, and I started out as a dealer for the guy who ran our gang. He went guns. I went drugs. We’ve both branched out since then, but even now, I’m sure he thinks I only wanted a truce so I could push my product on his turf.

And while, yes, of course that’s true… there’s more to it than that.

I want the security having more men at my back can provide, and if that means certain… concessions, that I’ll do what I have to.

Lifting my hand, I snap my finger. Waiting for the signal, Christopher rises up from his table, striding over to mine while carrying the small briefcase he’d kept on the floor beneath his seat.

Lincoln doesn’t blink as Christopher appears. Truce or not truce, he has to know that I have a handful of my men nearby to serve as any backup I might need?—

—just like I spotted at least four Sinners conveniently positioned around the restaurant, barely touching their meals as I joined Lincoln at the table about an hour ago.

Christopher is a loyal soldier. Too gangly and thin to be muscle, and too sensitive to do any wet work, I only took him on because he’s Genevieve’s closest friend. Honestly, he’s her only friend. They met when they were eight in one of Gen’s ballet classes, and my sister earned his loyalty for life when she started to beat the shit out of anyone who made fun of him for wanting to be a dancer like her. By the time was eighteen, he could do fouetté turns like a beast, organize distribution, and even handle my calendar for me all while keeping a surreptitious eye on Gen for me.

I might not have wanted to hire him, but for the last seven years, he’s made my life easier. I have plenty of enforcers. I only have one Christopher, and my assistant hands me the briefcase before vanishing into the shadows of the restaurant.

Flipping open the case, I remove the black gun.

Guns are Lincoln’s speciality. He’s instantly alert.

“Where did you get this?”

I could answer him. Lincoln wouldn’t bat an eye if I mentioned that one of my enforcers had lent his truck to another, had to order a ride on his phone two nights ago, and he just so happened to notice the gun when it fell out of the young driver’s purse. That he took it because the mark on the bottom caught his eye, but that he specifically chose her to be his driver because I asked him to…

Because I know exactly who she is even if I had no idea that she had an illegal gun on her—or why she would.

I could answer Lincoln.

I don’t.

“It doesn’t matter,” is what I say instead.

“Fuck that, Damien. You can’t insist on this Goddamn truce, drop this in my lap, then clam up when I ask you a question.”

I can’t?

Without a word, I purposely glance down at Lincoln’s arm. With the heat in the restaurant cranked up high, he removed his suit jacket, tossing it on the back of the seat behind him. Sometime between the salads being served and the steaks being brought out, he rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, leaving the inked rosary wrapping his meaty forearm on display.

When I first met Lincoln Crewes fifteen years ago, the kid was a devout Catholic. That lasted until about the time he killed Skittery after the old junkie threatened Ava, but he didn’t have that rosary back then. It’s a more recent addition—he probably got it during the years following Heather Valiant’s tragic death when Lincoln and his Sinners firmly became our rivals—and it’s amused me since the moment I first saw it a few months ago.

A murderer who curses like a sailor, worships the woman he considers a saint, makes his money from selling death and women… and he wears a rosary on his arm as he blasphemes.

It’s the small things in life that make me smile, and I would’ve if I wasn’t holding a gun with an unfamiliar symbol on it.

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