Page 24 of Kept

The man opens his swollen eyes and looks at me. Marco makes a dramatic show of pulling out a set of brass knuckles for each of us.

“D… don… De Lucca,” the man stutters.

I squat down in front of the man. “You have any idea how deep the pile of shit you’re in is?”

“Dddooonnn—”

“Shut the fuck up, you blubbering piece of crap!” Marco slaps the back of his head, cutting off whatever begging he had planned. It’s our patented bad guy/worse guy move.

“So you’re a grown ass man—you are a man, right? Marco, anyone check to see if this sack of shit is actually a man?”

“You know boss, maybe that’s the problem.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, boss, I think so. Cause I don’t see no reason a real man would be hitting a woman.”

He mumbles something, and I hold my hand up to silence him.

“Anyway, as I was saying. I don’t see any fucking reason for a man to be beating his woman.”

“Me neither, boss.”

“You have any fucking useful thing to say to me, shitsack?”

“Rumors! It’s just rumors!”

“Start talking, asshole.”

“There’s—there’s another family that’s got plans, but I don’t know nothing specific. It’s whispers and shit.”

“Who’s whispering, Jimmie?” I ask.

“I don’t know! I swear.”

“You know what? I believe you, Jimmie. I do.”

He relaxes visibly. It’s basically the same story he gave Marco earlier.

Marco drops two five-gallon buckets in front of him and then comes back with a wheelbarrow of concrete.

“Bbbbuuuuutttt you said you believed me!” he shrieks.

“Oh, Jimmie, I do believe you. These,” I tap a bucket with my shoe, “are because no one beats their woman so long as I’m in fucking charge.”

After we’re done fitting Jimmie for his new shoes and leave them to set, I turn to Marco.

“He say anything else before I got over here?”

“More of the same, rumor this, hint of that. Nothing, ah concrete, so to speak.” He chuckles at his own pun. “Minus one thing, while attempting to both share enough to keep me from killing him for wife beating but not kill him for being a fucking rat, he slipped something and then backpedaled. Hard.”

“Yeah?”

“Rizzuto.”

I stop cold. “What the fuck? You sure he said Rizzuto?”

“You used to be married to his fucking daughter. Yeah, I know what I fucking heard.” Marco scrubs his hands over his face and through his hair.

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