Page 39 of Burn this City

“A friend or pet?”

“What?”

“Answer my question. What does a guy like you have to do with a woman like that?”

“You talked to her?”

“I did.” Rausa cracked a half-smile. “And I’m curious.”

Oh God.“I helped her out. She attached herself to me, God knows why. I don’t mind her. We’ve become friends, but she knows nothing. She thinks I’m a consultant.”

“Shit.” Rausa chuckled. “You’re pretty good, but clearly addled.”

“Did you threaten her?”

Rausa stood. “After we played submarine, you scoffed at the idea that it was actually the nicer option. But it was, because the alternative would have been to send a couple of men to pick up sweet little Beth at home and bring her to a nice, quiet place with good soundproofing. Then transmit the video for us to watch together live. Four or five mean guys can break a woman like that down in a couple hours at most.”

With her history, one guy could break her down in half an hour or less.Jack’s stomach clenched so hard he felt ready to throw up at the suggestion, and his face grew numb. “You don’t have any fucking idea what she’s been through.”

“Life’s a bitch, Jack. We both know that better than most.”

Yeah, maybe. They surely weren’t good Samaritans. Neither of them would have gotten where without stepping on people to make money. Both of them needed to be respected, and that could easily involve teaching somebody to be respectful who hadn’t been so inclined at the start. But people like Beth weren’t a threat to anybody. The best Jack could have done was help her back on her feet and then cut off all contact. And yet not even twenty-four hours before, he’d been willing to pull her into all this darkness. Where she would have met sharks like Rausa. And all to save his own neck.

Jack gathered himself, breathed deeply a few times to test his lungs. It hurt, and there was a tickle in his bronchi, but the worst of the coughing seemed past. “But you’re right. I’d rather you do this shit to me than to her.”

“What? You want to spend a couple hours getting gang-raped?” Rausa said it jokingly, but there was calculation in his eyes.

Jack swallowed. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“I do. But you should remember that, yes, I’m playing nice right now, but not for a lack of imagination or resources.” Rausa reached for his belt, freed the multi-tool from its holster and unfolded it.

“Why play nice? I’m a dead man, surely. And we both know I’m not going to haunt your conscience. Especially with all the dying that’s going to happen on both sides when your war starts. The dying you’re apparently itching for.” Shit, he was getting angry, and he was way too exposed to backlash. “Listen, you can still turn around. You can still stop this.”

“And you’ll sit across from me at the negotiation table and remember how I almost killed you a few times?” Rausa placed one side of the multi-tool precisely against the zip cuff that held the restraints around Jack’s wrists. “And pretend nothing happened?”

“If that’s what it takes.” Jack tried to meet the other man’s gaze, but couldn’t quite. He had no idea how he’d live in the same city as Sal Rausa after everything that had happened. If he survived this in spite of the odds, the first thing he’d do was call Beth and tell her to leave Port Francis and the state, to change her name and her appearance and never try to call or contact him ever again.

The second thing he’d do was activate Plan B and prepare his own retirement. It would involve some play-acting for Andrea’s benefit and the rest of the organization, and a couple days in a hospital to recover from a “heart attack” or similar—he was pretty sure he could talk to a friendly doctor about how to appear unfit for work. That way, Andrea wouldn’t think he’d sold him to the Feds or worse. Except of course, Plan B looked shaky at best now.

“Maybe I’ve come to respect you, Jack Barsanti. You’re old-fashioned as fuck, but you’re smart and strong.”

Jack blinked, shocked that Rausa would say such a thing. Then again, he could be magnanimous because he held all the cards. Easy to talk up an enemy you could easily dispose of. It meant nothing. Still. Maybe he could use it somehow. “Leave Beth alone. Please. Even after I’m gone. Leave her in peace.”

“Dying man’s wish?” Rausa snapped the plastic in two places and picked up the cuff when it fell. He stuffed it into his thigh pocket, but kept the multi-tool in one hand.

“I guess. When you kill me, obviously I won’t care anymore, but—fuck, please. She’s never harmed anyone.” Appealing to Sal Rausa’s softer side felt like begging a tiger, but maybe that “respect” he claimed to feel gave Jack a foothold.

Rausa’s eyes darkened. He holstered the multi-tool and pressed the metallic button down with a soft click, then sat down on the bed and placed a large strong hand flat on Jack’s chest, fingers splayed. “You can take this the wrong way, Jack, but you’re really fucking hot when you beg.”

For a few heart-pounding moments, Jack was completely speechless. Nobody had ever dared touch him like that. Well, not true. There had been an incident when a man in a bar in Las Vegas had groped him—luckily he’d been alone, so all he’d done was turn around and push the guy away. There had been other unsubtle moves from a number of men over the years, but Jack treated them with the same indifference as he’d always responded to women. Though with women at least he didn’t have to worry about witnesses thinking he’d somehow invited the attention. If any of his men had doubts about Jack’s masculinity, it’d never been whispered loud enough to hear.

This now, this … he didn’t have a frame of reference for this. The same man who’d threatened the one innocent on the planet that Jack cared about, the same man who laconically called drowning “playing submarine” and promised to kill Jack after all of this was over, just touched him like this, demonstratively, provocatively. More than that, he’d halfway untied Jack before he did it. The same who casually told him he fucked his capo but also shook with rage when he’d talked about his dead wife. As cunning as Rausa was, his emotions were … raw. Pure. Powerful.

All his life, Jack had learned over and over again that emotions were a weakness. The old consigliere had offered only one piece of advice: don’t ever blink. And in prison, if he’d shown fear or weakness, or just how much those walls had been closing in on him, everybody in there would have seen it, smelled it on him. And the same back when he’d been a capo. Had he lain awake at night and tied himself in knots about making one of his big plays, the gambles and schemes that had recommended him as consigliere in the first place? He sure as hell had. Other made men could fuck and snort and drink that tension away, but Jack had always known the moment his senses blurred, and his control slipped, that darker truth about him could come out, so he never let it happen.

“You’re really fucking hot when you beg.”

Ears ringing, he rolled fully onto his back, hands lifted so they didn’t touch Rausa’s. It was hard to breathe underneath that touch. His body responded to the contact, the heat, the promise of pleasure, even though Jack tried to hold onto the fact that “the promise of pleasure” was really only an absence of fresh pain right now. If he did invite more of this, exploited what seemed like attraction from Sal Rausa, could he gain any control of the situation? He knew from his job that a lot of men got themselves into trouble for sex.

---