Packing Heat(10)

“Ernesto’s boys caught someone. I want one of my guys in on this before shit gets out of hand.”

I grunted. Vince was my boss in the mob, one of the highest-ranking guys in the whole organization. He was on the opposite side of Ernesto, another high-ranking boss.

“Fine,” I said. “What am I getting into?”

“They caught a Spider.”

I paused. “You’re fucking kidding.”

“Not kidding. Get your ass over there and find out what’s happening.”

“Got it.” I hung up the phone. A second later, an address appeared in my texts.

“Fuck,” I muttered as I walked back to the table. Jessica looked up at me expectantly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I have to go.”

“Really?” She frowned.

“It’s work.”

“The restaurant business has weird hours.”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “Come on. I’m calling you a cab.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll get an Uber. You go.”

I narrowed my eyes and sighed. I hated to fucking get pulled away like this. The only thing I really wanted was to sit back down and finally close this deal, but I knew I couldn’t.

We’d never gotten a live Spider before. They always managed to get away or to kill themselves before we could take them. The Spiders were fucking insane fanatics, and they terrified a lot of the guys.

Not me, though. I understood what they were about. They wanted to destroy one thing, and one thing alone. Human trafficking was their enemy, and I couldn’t really blame them.

“Good luck at work,” she said.

I walked over to her and bent down. Instead of kissing her cheek, I pressed my lips against her ear.

“Think about me tonight when you get home. I know you’ll be frustrated. Think about me when you slip your fingers deep inside that pussy. Think about what I can make your body feel.”

I stood up and she blinked up at me. I smirked and then turned and left without another word.

Fucking shit. My cock was hard as hell as I called a fucking cab. I wanted to get back in there and taste this girl, but I had a job to do.

The cab came, and I gave the guy the address. It was in the old warehouse district, and I already knew which place it would be. It was an abandoned building the mob sometimes took people to, people they needed to question very intensely.

Nobody the mob brought there ever left alive.





5





Cassidy





He just disappeared, just like that.

After all that flirting and buildup, he had to leave for work. That drove me absolutely insane, but I wasn’t going to let it show. I wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. He’d love that I really was frustrated, and he’d never forget about it.

Instead, I finished my glass of wine and sighed. I had no clue what the hell I was doing with a guy who clearly worked for the mob. I had tried to get him to talk about it, but I was sure he had seen right through that. I’d been a little clumsy about it, and Rafa was clearly not an idiot.

More than that, I didn’t know what he wanted from me. He said he just wanted to sleep with me, but he’d taken me out to dinner first. If this was just some booty call, I didn’t know why he brought me to such an impressive place.

He talked dirty, but he also seemed completely engaged with me, like I was the only important person in the world. It was almost flattering, and it really drew me toward him.

When I was done, I ordered an Uber on my phone. I flagged the waiter to pay, but apparently the bill had already been covered.

Rafa was an impressive man, as much as I hated to admit it.

I got into the Uber and it sped me back home. Once in my apartment, I got into my comfy clothes and sat down on the couch to spend the night watching crappy TV and thinking about my stupid decisions.

Dasha was one of those stupid decisions. I shouldn’t have let her go, but I’d thought she had told me enough to get me started.

As it turned out, she hadn’t told me anything. There was no information on the Spiders anywhere. I’d figured I had just missed it in all my research, but as I started going over everything again, I realized that there simply was nothing about them.

Nothing online, nothing in print, just nothing. It was like they didn’t exist.

And yet she had said they were doing some serious work to save women in the city. If they really were attacking whorehouses and saving sex slaves, how hadn’t I heard about it?

It had been so stupid not to press her. But Dasha seemed intense and scary, like she really was the warrior she said she was. I had no real reason to doubt her other than the fact that it seemed totally crazy for that to be the truth.

I sat there watching television for the whole night, idly scanning the internet for any information on the Spiders, already knowing I wouldn’t find any. The night slipped by, and before I knew it, the clock said it was midnight.