Page 30 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

I give him a version of the loyalty lecture I gave to the other guys as Storm drives us through the night, silent as a mountain.

“Some people think they’re better off telling me what I want to hear when I ask them questions,” I say to the boy. “Some people think it’s safest to stick with their original story, like maybe they lied at first, and now they’re thinking that hiding that lie is the only way out. Like once they’ve gone down that road, they have to stay on it.” I pause here, nice and long. “Those people are all dead.”

The kid nods. Storm tied the gag; I can tell from the lack of twists. Orton always twists a gag up like a rope.

I pull out a blade and slice the thing off. The story pours out before I can get to the zip tie binding his wrists. As I suspected,Zedd thought he’d take advantage of the chaos surrounding the leadership change to cash in, and he strong-armed this kid into playing along, using money and a threat on the kid’s dog as his carrot and stick.

Ten minutes later, Storm’s shoving Zedd into the back seat with us.

Zedd puts the situation together pretty quickly and starts blaming the entire thing on the kid, which is very convenient and just more proof of his guilt.

Zedd denies it all the way to the Palisades. We park and walk to the edge of the cliff. I make the boy watch me put a hole in Zedd’s face with my nine. Orton shoves his body over the edge and down into the river.

I turn to the kid. “Any questions?”

He shakes his head energetically.

Orton lights a match, lets it burn down to the end, and then throws it over the cliff and into the river after him. The match symbolizes extinguishing a life. Tossing it into water cleanses the sin.

Supposedly.

We drop the kid off at the run-down building where he seems to be squatting.

“Your brother would have killed the boy, too,” Orton says when we’re back on the road. “And the boy knows it.”

I grunt.

“And now he’s yours. You’ll have his loyalty now.” He turns to me there in the back seat. “You came for the vengeance. You stayed for the power trip.”

I give him a look. “How much do I have to pay you to stop saying that?”

He’s grinning. “You took the throne, and you like it.”

“For now.” That’s all I’ll commit to. I never wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps long term, but I do like the power and all the rest of it.

“You send the girl home?” he asks.

“Yeah, but she’s on the hook for two weeks.”

Orton straightens, surprised. “You hired her for two weeks?”

“Yup.”

He falls silent in a way that saysno comment.

“What?” I demand.

“Just not like you, that’s all. To want a repeat performance.”

“I saw her, I wanted her, I took her. Now I’m keeping her a bit.”

He toys with his relic ring now, looking thoughtful. The ring has tiny hinges on the side where it once opened, though it would’ve been long since fused shut, concealing its contents inside.

I don’t do relationships—at least not in this decade—and I never fuck the same woman twice. Orton likes the people around him to be predictable.

I fix him with a hard look. “Got something to say?”

“It’s just not like you.”

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