Page 84 of The Right Garza
In an effort to show no weakness, I clamp down on my bottom lip and eat the pain. He drags me from the room and out to the main area of the penthouse.
The penthouse that sits at the highest floor of the W casino and hotel in Las freaking Vegas.
And this point, I’m not even scared anymore. I’mpissed.
Over by the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the strip, the toothpick-thin, English-language-butchering cuntface mumbles into his phone as he paces back and forth. “Okay, yes okay” … “No, only one of them I have” … “No, we search car. Her car. Nothing, there was in it nothing” … “What, now?” … “No, please just give me time and let me—” … “Stefano, just let me—”… “Hello?”
He drops the phone from his ear and grits out, “Fuck!”
“Slim, you scum of the earth,” I half-shout. “I’m gonna need you to explain this shit to me.”
Slim turns from the window face to us, and the sheer terror on his face frightens me. See, Slim is not a gangster. Not even remotely. He’s a slimeball who loves the finer things in life, so he cheats and employs unfair methods to get it. He’ll join whatever organization he needs to for worldwide protection and has a handful of henchmen on the payroll, but kidnapping and hardcore crime are not his MO. I know that. It’s why I stopped being afraid once I realized where I was.
Slim is acheater, not a fighter. But that unhidden fear emblazoned on his face right now is enough to have me petrified again. Ifhe’sscared, then that means I ought to be, too.
He crosses the room to me, cocks his head to the side, and in a quiet voice, asks, “Where is it, Lexi?”
“Where’s what?”
I don’t see it coming. My head snaps to the side and my cheekbone throbs as pain spreads across my face.
“THE MONEY!” he bellows, his strange accent the heaviest I’ve ever heard it. “WHERE THE FUCK IS THE MONEY?”
Water springs to my eyes as an instant effect of the perforating pain from the backhand he gave me. “What-what money, Slim?”
“Lexi, stop it. Stop play games with me. There is no time for it,” he grits out, though there’s a slight shake to his voice. “The money. The five million you and Ellie rob of me.”
“Ellie?What…” I trail off and shake my head, confused as all hell. “Slim, I haven’t seen Ellie since I left Vegas over four months ago to pay off a debtsheput me in.”
Searching my face with restless eyes, he spits, “Youlie.” He withdraws a cell phone from his pocket. “It is here. All texts of you tell her what to do. Bitch dumb forgot her phone.”
I’ve never been more bewildered than right now. It’s like I went to sleep and woke up in an alternate universe. The laugh that I emit is humorless and ephemeral. “You have texts of metellingher what to do? You mean, like her boss?”
His glare is like granite as he taps around the phone screen a few times before lifting it for me to see. A thread of text messages spanning over three weeks between “Lexi” and Ellie, plotting how to break into Slim’s safe. There’s even one of “Lexi” giving her the code to the safe. The last exchange was: “Got the cash. Where should I meet you?”
To which “Lexi” replied with the address of the house in Pasadena.
“That bitch…” I curse under my breath. She completely set me up. Someone who, mere months ago, I put my life and freedom on the line to save. What on earth did I ever do to her to make her do this to me?
With a defeating sigh, I hang my head in disbelief. “Ellie didn’t ‘forget’ her phone, Slim. She left it on purpose. To lead you straight to me so she would have enough time to get away.”
The color drains from Slim’s face. “What is it are you saying, Lexi?”
“Did you look at the number under ‘Lexi’?” I ask him. “Did you try calling it?”
His features crinkle into a frown as he taps around on the screen a few times. And then his eyes squeeze shut as he mutters, “Fuck.”
“Boss?” the henchman behind me prompts.
Slims throws him the cellphone, and I glance over my shoulder to see the henchman frown at the screen, before his bushy eyebrows shot up. “This is Alvin’s number.”
“It is,” Slim says. “So I guess this mean we know now he will not be come back to work from visit to his ‘sick aunt’, yes?”
Yeesh. This man seriously needs to work on his English.
“Are we talking about your bookkeeper Alvin?” I ask him.
When he begins pacing wildly, I take it as confirmation.
