Page 67 of Refrain

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ESPI

“You gonna ignoreme all fucking week?” Arno spits out while pouring himself a shot. He overfills the glass, and the liquid sloshes over the rim, tainting the air like gasoline. “How many times do I have to fucking say it?” He downs the shot and grimaces at the taste. “I’m fucking sorry.”

“I hope this means that I won’t have to fight Jose for the title of your best friend forever.” I step farther into his office and nearly trip over a trail of empty bottles.

It’s like he spends more time in this damn room than he does at his own place, not that I can blame him. After all this time, he can’t bring himself to sell that house. He can’t even empty out her room.

“Don’t even fucking joke,” he snarls, already pouring himself another shot. “You know me. I wouldn’t go to that piece of shit without a good fucking reason—”

“I would like to think so.”

Arno isn’t one to hold grudges. Jose, on the other hand, doesn’t just cling to a vendetta. He cuts it into pieces and hangs it on his wall.

“Let’s just say I took a gamble and got more than I goddamnbargained for,” Arno says, his jaw clenched. “I found a gun at the warehouse of the cartels that got hit. I figured some idiot from the other side dropped it, and a good trace would lead back to a dealer at least. Maybe I could neutralize this new threat myself.”

Suddenly, Dante’s warning reads loud and clear. “And?”

The dark look he shoots my way prefaces the gravity of the answer. “The gun belonged to a cop.” He doesn’t bother explaining just how he found that out. “It wasn’t a lead. It was a plant.”

“You’re serious?”

“Damn right,” Arno agrees. “They’d find that fucking gun, and it wouldn’t just end there. They’d have ‘just fucking cause’ to open up an entire FBI investigation. They could arrest and interrogate at random. Whoever is behind this isn’t just happy with burning shit down. They’re leaving a sniff trail for the goddamn Feds.”

I almost swallow the question that springs to my tongue. “You…you think it’s Dante?”

Arno shrugs, tearing a hand through his hair. “He wouldn’t be that stupid to bring that shit down on me—not so close to the fucking Gardai.” But he doesn’t sound very convinced of that.

Am I? My head spins with the new information, but at least one mystery might be solved by this shitstorm. “Is that why you’ve been acting so weird lately?”

“Part of it,” Arno admits. He knocks the next shot back and chases it with a swig directly from the bottle. “About the Russians… You deserve to know why I really sent you there. Not whatever bullshit I told you before.”

“You mean youaren’tlooking to muscle in on the human sex slave trade?”

Arno’s had his fingers in some shady shit, but never that dark.

Yet.

“Fuck no,” he says, “but have a seat. You’re not gonna like the real reason, and I don’t need your fucking pity.”

“All right.” I take the seat across from him and try to keep an open mind. More drugs? Guns? Something worse? With Arno, you never know just how deep the rabbit hole will go. “Lay it on me.”

He swipes at his mouth with the back of his hand and eyes the wall behind my head. “You remember what happened to Mack?”

“Mack?” It’s a weird change of subject—his ex-partner who ran an underground fighting ring. “Mack got stupid. Tried to fuck with the Syndicate. Either he got ghosted, or he skipped town.” According to the rumors, anyway—which Arno never corrected.

Until now. He scoffs and takes another swig of liquor. “Mack. You really think that fuck would just walk away and letmehave all of this?” He gestures around to the peeling wallpaper. The chaos from the main barroom reaches us even here, a distant pulse through the trembling walls. “Fuck no. That bastard wouldn’t run. But whatever happened to him, you can bet your ass he had it coming.”

“So, what happened?”

Arno breathes out and tears a hand through his hair. “You know that shit with Vinny Stacatto?”

“It’s not like I can exactly forget.” My fingers flex at my sides before I manage to clench them into fists.

“Ah, fuck.” Arno notices my hand and grimaces. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Look, Dante didn’t want you to know, but Mack’s the one who turned you in. He offered you up to that sick fuck on a platter. Everything.”

Given Mack’s history with Arno and Dante, the news isn’t exactly a surprise. I uncurl the fingers of my left hand and eye the ones remaining on the right. A ruthless criminal, Mack was never my favorite person. I still wouldn’t have pegged him as a goddamn traitor, no matter the payoff.

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