Page 41 of The Woman in the Hollow
“Nope. Just told me it was until further notice. Fucking sick of it already. No action around here.”
Action?
What kind of action could they be talking about?
“I don’t mind getting paid to stand around and do nothing.”
“Not me. I’m losing my fucking mind. Wanna get back to the street. Fuck, I’d take the docks over this shit.”
The… docks?
Was he a dockworker?
Hadn’t Dante mentioned something about imports once? And goods were imported through ships at the docks.
It seemed like he’d just taken these guys off their normal jobs—maybe doing security work at the docks—to stand around here, doing nothing.
The streetsdidn’t make any sense to me, though. What street? What did they do to the street? Did someone in the Grassi family run some sort of paving company?
“It’s not so bad. Free coffee. Free food. Plus, got that hot chick in the sweater to look at.”
Well, that was kind of nice.
“Just look, though. You heard the boss,” the other guy said.
What’d Dante say? Or did they mean Domenico?
“Dunno. Might be worth the ass-kicking to get her under me.”
Okay.
That was more than enough.
Granted, all the guys Dante employed were attractive. But I didn’t want strangers thinking about me that way.
The men’s voices drifted as they moved further away.
I got back to my cleaning, wondering if the docks angle was something I could look into more.
I’d wrapped up my research into the dummies, concluding that if such a realistic, large-sized one existed, it cost a fortune and was sold only to people in the know.
Was it possible one of the Grassis was in the movie industry? Sure. Especially since I heard that a local military base had just been turned into a movie studio.
But still.
It wasn’t sitting right with me.
I wanted to look deeper into the Grassi family as a whole. And Dante in particular.
“Hello?” a voice called, making me jump so hard that I knocked over the creepiest of all the creepy dolls. Not one of the ones bought at the Halloween supply store. Oh, no. This was a vintage creepy doll that was likely some little kid’s toy at one point, before they realized it wanted their soul.
Its face was already cracked and glued back together, but I held my breath as I glanced down at it, hoping I hadn’t done any lasting damage.
“Hazel, what are you doing?” Dante asked as he made his way through the maze of creepy decor to reach me.
“Oh, uh, hey. What are you doing here?” I asked, shoving the creepy doll back into her spot, no worse for the wear.
“I was looking for Dom.”
