Page 79 of Absinthe Dreams
One of his goons was coming up the hallway, but I got the drop on him, and he raised his hands and his gun to the sky.
“Get in here and have a fuckin’ seat with your boss. Tell whoever’s back there tostayback there. We hear one siren, we take you all out and start on the rest of your worthless fuckin’ bloodline tomorrow.”
There was no need to pull back and cock the hammer on my gun, but it did serve to get the fuckin’ point across that I was dead-ass fuckin’ serious to bro-chacho in the hall.
He called back my instructions behind him into the kitchen as he walked up the hallway.
“It’s all good, Francesco,” Giancarlo said, but he damn sure didn’t sound sure or like anything was alright. So, for as dumb as he’d fuckin’ been, he damn sure knew he’d fucked up this time.
“When did Ruth come around, and what did he offer you?” Axe asked.
“Who?” Giancarlo tried playing dumb and got one-half of a Glasgow smile for his trouble, Axe slicing him from the corner of his mouth almost all the way back to his fuckin’ ear.
Giancarlo started screaming and tried to staunch the flow of blood. I fired one shot into Francesco’s dome, painting the other half of Giancarlo’s face red.
“Try again,” I demanded.
“I got this,” Axe declared. “Go get another one.”
I marched down the hall and turned into the kitchen. A guy tried to raise his gun, and I said one word, “Don’t.”
I heard Axe’s voice indistinct with distance out front, but with the lilt and curl of a question mark at the end.
“Okay! Okay! Just don’t!” Giancarlo cried.
I waved my gun and told the people in the kitchen, “Out this way, one at a time. Leave your phones on the counter there.”
The dude with the gun, I told him, “Drop it in the sink there.” He looked into the sink filled with dirty water, and then back at me.
“Now!” I barked, and the woman crouched by the counter nearby yelped and put her hands higher, terrified.
I couldn’t bring myself to fucking care, picturing our girls’ terrified posture on the screen of Hex’s phone in our clubhouse barely twenty-four hours and some change ago.
The woman went first, then another guy in a cook’s stained outfit, and then the suit with the gun, only this time without his weapon because it was at the bottom of that mess of a sink.
Giancarlo must’ve given the wrong answer to Axe again, because he was out there screaming and hollering. Then the woman screamed hysterically, and the cook tried to hold her back. She got loose and went for Giancarlo, who was screaming at her, the ruin of his face flapping and pouring blood.
“Alessia!” He took the girl into his arms, and Axe asked, “Wife, sister, or both?”
I tried not to snort a laugh as Giancarlo tried to snarl and look intimidating. I shot the other suit in the head.
Alessia started screaming and screaming, the cook dropping to his knees and pissing himself as Axe laughed maniacally.
“We’re almost there.” He grabbed Giancarlo by the front of his hair and slammed his head back against the front of the counter, putting the razor to his throat.
“Where, thefuckare they?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I cocked my gun and dragged the woman by the hair off him as he screamed, “No! No! No! Alessia!”
“Last chance,” Axe declared and looked to me. I started to squeeze the trigger, and Giancarlo broke.
“Look! Ruth came in, played on a bunch of favors we owed him, and paid us a gang of money just to ask y’all to go out on a wild goose chase and act as muscle up in Baton Rouge! I didn’t wanna do it, but my father made the final decision and you know how family is!”
I threw the woman into his reaching hands and blew the cook’s head off, because they sure as fuck had inconvenienced us, and payback was a bitch.
“You go on an’ tell Daddy that we want a word, and every time you look in thefucking mirror,you remember that we werenotthe fuckin’ ones!” I shouted.
Axe looked up at me and then back down. “Wife. Sister. Orboth?” he demanded.
