Page 65 of Dagger in the Sea

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“Turo—”

“Go interrupt Luca’s bodyguard over there and have him take you to Gennaro and Miguel. I need to talk to Luca. I’ll come find you right after. I promise I won’t be long. You stay with them until I get back to you.”

She took in a tiny breath, teeth scraping that swollen bottom lip again. “Okay.” She left me, her heels clacking on the restaurant veranda tile. She talked to Luca’s bodyguard, and he raised his chin at me. I gestured toward the bathroom, and he nodded at me and led Adriana into the crowd.

I headed toward the back of the restaurant to find Luca. One loud voice. Luca growling in his rough English, his tone unmistakeable. He was livid. “Who do you think you are, you piece of shit?”

“Let go of me,” came a heavily accented reply. “Eh! Stop!”

I darted into the men’s room. Luca had the skinny dark guy in the cheap suit up against the wall by the sinks, a hand cuffing his throat. “You don’t tell me what to do, I tell you what to do,” Luca’s voice sneered. “Where are you from? Albania? Moldavia? Georgia?”

“Athens!”

“Fuck off.” He tightened his hold on the guy’s neck, his hard gaze darting to me and back to his victim. “This is a private party. How did you get in, past the guards?”

“A friend of mine, he cleans here. He let me in.”

Luca got in the guy’s face, his brow a fierce ridge. “I warned you before to leave, but you didn’t listen. You have no right to even lick my shoes.”

“You—”

In a swift snap of movement, Luca shoved the guy down on the floor, his foot on his chest. Luca went off in Italian, yammering away, kicking him once, twice, three times, the blood gushing and spilling from the guy’s face.

“Lick it, lick my shoe.” Luca’s foot hovered over the guy’s face. Luca kicked him in the side and shoved his other foot over his face once more. “Lick!”

The guy raised his head, his tongue hanging out, inches from the sole of Luca’s expensive leather shoes. A flash of black from the stalls had my hand going to my holster, but I wore no holster, had no gun.

Fuck.

“Behind you!” I yelled.

From his back, Luca brandished a gun, aiming at the man rushing toward him from the stalls.

“Move and you die,” Luca spit out. He kicked the other’s guy’s face and lifted his chin at me. I jammed my foot into the guy’s chest, keeping him down as he groaned, bled, his head lolling.

Luca shoved his gun into the head of the other guy, pushing him onto the floor to his knees next to his buddy. “You’re lucky this is my brother’s party and I don’t want to fuck it up for him with your blood making a mess all over this fancy bathroom. Who sent you?”

“N-Nobody.”

Luca’s voice seethed. “Tell me who you work for.”

“I don’t work for nobody, okay? We heard about this party, we came to sell. Many people here—rich people.”

“And did you sell anything?”

Two shaking fingers rose. “Two only.”

“That’s too bad.” Luca took a step back and bashed the guy in black across the face with his gun, and the guy collapsed onto the tiled floor in a heap.

Luca sniffed in air and tilted his head, stretching his neck. He went to the bank of sinks, turned on the faucet, pumped out soap and washed his hands, inspecting his face in the mirror. “You left Adri for me? I’m touched.”

“I spotted him earlier.” I rifled through the pockets of both men, found baggies with packaged pills and powder and handed them to Luca. “Saw the two of you arguing, then saw him in here.”

“Motherfucker was trying to sell his shit.”

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