Page 18 of Explode
Riley
Itwasanothertwodays before Georgio Bianchi agreed to meet us.
Two days of giving Miles the silent treatment.
He’d pissed me off.
Epically.
When the meeting with Kimmy, Ernie, and Graham ended, and I’dtold them what I needed from each of them, Miles and I headed home. I was riddled with guilt over giving the order for Miles to kill him despite the fact I was sure he would have sold the recording to the highest bidder the second he could.
It was then Miles confessed that Colin was never going to survivepast the night regardless of my decision.
Colin wasn’t lying. Someone, namely one of the assholes whocollected him,hadplanted the device on him under Miles’ orders. Apparently, Miles had hacked Colin’s bank records and found that his debt had spiraled out of control, followed by a series of visits to a well-known loan shark. Miles was convinced Colin would have gone straight to Hendrix or Max the second he left the meeting with the sole intention of selling the information.
Instead of leaving Colin and not bringing him in for the meeting, Milesthought it would be a fan-fucking-tastic idea to give me a little test. A test to see if I had the minerals to order a man to his death.
And guess what?
I passed.
As well as giving him the silent treatment, I spent two days wishing I’dgiven him more than just two black eyes when I pounded his face.
But when the news came that the Bianchis were willing to meet us, Ihad to get over it.
We’d asked to meet Georgio on neutral grounds, but his responsewas that if we wanted to meet, it had to be on his turf. The other stipulation was that we came alone and unarmed. Miles did not like it in the slightest, but accepted when Georgio gave his word that we would walk out of his grounds unharmed on this one occasion.
Turns out Georgio Bianchi was interested in what I had to say.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to offer from our side?”Miles asked as we crossed the border into Forest Point, the land the Bianchis owned. It was at this point our entourage, made up of Ash, Tank, and Dan left us to go on alone.
“I guess more money from the sale of weapons and drugs?” I replied,although it was more of a question because the truth was, I had no fucking clue what to offer the Bianchis to make them hold off.
“That won’t be enough,” Miles said, rubbing his thumb over his bottom lip.
“What do you suggest then?”
He shot an annoyed look at me, before returning his eyes to the road. “You know, if you hadn’t given me the silent treatment for the last two days, we could have discussed this.”
“Well, if you hadn’t been a dick and set me up, I wouldn’t have givenyou the silent treatment,” I huffed back, glowering at him.
“You needed to make that decision, Riley. You can’t shy away fromyour responsibilities anymore. Whether you like it or not, you are now the head of the Wolfe family, and the decisions on who lives and who dies rests with you.” When I opened my mouth to reply, he shut me down. “Look, we can discuss this later, right now we need to focus on this meeting.”
Urgh, he was right. Everything we wanted to do depended on thismeeting going the right way, and if Georgio didn’t agree, his men would storm Hollows Bay before the end of the night and claim ownership, and everything we had worked towards would have been in vain.
Kai’s death would have been in vain.
“Fine,” I grumbled. I wasn’t anywhere near done with berating Milesover his shitty test, but it could wait.
For now.
“You could owe them a debt,” Miles said, turning the car onto a roadwith very neatly trimmed oak trees.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s like a favor. They do something for you, you owe them one,”Miles replied, as if it should have been obvious.
“That’s the best you can come up with? Fuck sake, Miles, I can’texactly go in there and say,‘Oh, hi George. Can ya do me a favor and hold off destroying the gruesome twosome, and I’ll owe you one. Cheers pal!’”
