Ryan (Mallick Brothers #2)(16)

"Then where is she? I want to see her."

"Why?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Because she's my fucking friend. Because she got beat up and she's not in her apartment. The apartment, I might add, that she hasn't left in years."

"She's at my place," I supplied, my voice empty.

"Why the fuck would she be at your place, man? She doesn't even know you. She sure as fuck doesn't know what you're involved in."

"She knows what you're involved in and she seems alright with that. As for the other point, she does know me. Bought me a Christmas present and everything."

He looked taken aback at that, his mouth falling open, two lines forming between his brows. "She's never mentioned you."

If I wasn't wrong, and I rarely was, he had a thing for her. Not just a 'she's my safe house for my drugs and I want her alive' thing or even a 'we grew up together' thing, but an actual thing. He wanted her. That was why he had touched her when he came in. And, knowing her as he seemed to, he must have understood her recoil from him.

Fucking unrequited love shit.

I almost felt bad for the fuck.

Almost.

But the woman he supposedly loved was in my goddamn apartment with her face fucked up because of a situation he put her in.

"Yeah, well, I'm a new development in her life."

His face genuinely fell at that information, taking it the way I meant for him to take it even though me and Dusty, as a thing, were still in the very beginning stage. "You mean what I think you mean?"

"Probably. And seeing that isn't even a goddamn little bit any of your business, we'll move on from it. Who do you work for?"

The tension came back at that as his chin angled up. "Don't think that is even a goddamn little bit of your business either," he threw my words back at me.



       
         
       
        

Well, if he didn't want to do it the easy way...

I dropped my arms and closed the few feet between us, hand curling around his throat and slamming him back against the wall, his face in almost the same position the guy who beat Dusty's was, the deep red, almost black dried blood on the wall evident of that fact.

"It's my mother fucking business when a woman I care about has her face smashed up because of the drugs you got her fucking involved in. And because I know all the players in this town, I know you're just some lackey for some bigger bad. So cut the mother fucking bullshit and give me some goddamn answers or I can show you exactly how the Mallick family got their reputation in this town."

My voice had been low and savage, anger usually being a cool thing inside me, cold enough to freeze you over.

And, if he knew my family, he damn sure knew my threat wasn't an empty one.

My hand eased on his throat and he sucked in a breath before speaking. "You know I can't give him up."

"Like fuck you can't," I snapped, impatient. I wasn't entirely sure that Dusty wouldn't start looking for me at some point. I didn't have all goddamn day to get the information out of him. "And you don't exactly have a choice, Bry."

"The product is gone, right?" he asked finally as my hand released him and I took one small step back.

"And you're out ten grand. How the fuck are you going to explain that to your boss? Is telling me who he is really the worst fucking thing you can do today?"

"You don't understand," he said, shaking his head, sliding to the side and moving toward the kitchen where he reached above Dusty's stove and grabbed a glass then went to her freezer and pulled out vodka she kept there.

So, her aversion to him touching her aside, they were close. He knew where the cups and the booze were and felt comfortable helping himself. Suddenly I wondered if maybe the two had been more than friends at some point. It would explain his thing for her and the fact that he had stuck by her even when everyone but her uncle seemed to give up on her.

"Then help me to," I suggested, watching as he poured three fingers worth of vodka and took it in one gulp.

If it was a three fingers of vodka in one throw kind of issue, then it was serious shit. I felt myself stiffening, wondering who the fuck she could have possibly been wrapped up with.

"I don't work for Lex if that's what you're asking," he said, meaning the most vicious sonofabitch in all of Navesink Bank who was well overdue for a seriously long, drawn out, torturous death. Lex dug his hands into a little bit of everything in our town and took cuts from some of the smaller-time operations, keeping them under his thumb, not allowing anyone else to rise up in the ranks and take him out. 

"I know you're not working for Lyon since all he does is stockbroker drugs. Don't tell me this is as fucking lowdown as Third Street."

He snorted at that, almost like he was insulted. "No."

"Then who? Because that's all the dealers in this area."

His head cocked to the side at that. "Exactly."

I exhaled hard, looking up at the ceiling for a long second. He was dealing in Navesink Bank for someone who wasn't supposed to be operating in the town? That was the kind of clusterfuck I didn't want to be anywhere fucking near. Because not only did it mean you had a problem with Bry's boss and whoever the fuck stole from him, but it also meant that if Lex or Lyon or Third Street got wind of it, you were in their crosshairs as well.

That was not a place anyone wanted to be.

My family had always worked to stay out of everyone else's business in town. We were on friendly terms with The Henchmen, Hailstorm, the Grassis, and the freelancers like Breaker and Shooter. We actively avoided any contact with Lex Keith. And we had no reason to have any communication with Lyon or Third Street.

It was a survival mechanism to be neutral even if you didn't agree with what other operations were doing. Pops had a good reputation all his life and, as we aged up, we all added to it. But his operation wasn't huge. We didn't have a lot of people outside of me and my brothers. We would never survive some underground war. We knew that so we didn't stick our noses in business that wasn't our own.

There was an exception here or there.

Namely, the shit that went down with Shane and Lea.

But that was an exception because Lea was Shane's and whatever demons she had after her were Shane's problem as well. So he dealt with them and because family was family was family (no matter how harebrained the scheme at times) we helped.

The same rule would apply if Dusty was mine, right?

Only problem being, we hadn't agreed to that. We had barely talked much at all. A part of me was worried about pushing, about putting expectations on her that might stress her out. But to be honest, I saw it going somewhere. Even though it was new. Even though I didn't know everything about her, I was seeing it heading somewhere serious. Eventually. At her pace.

So, for the time being, she wasn't technically mine.

But I didn't see that being a problem either.

I wasn't a shit starter. I never got involved in shit that wasn't good for my family. And I wouldn't be doing it now if it weren't for good reason.

"Where?" I asked as he poured himself another shot.

He sighed, shaking his head as he looked off out Dusty's picture window for a long second before his eyes found mine again. "Camden."

"Oh for fuck's sake," I growled.

Camden? Fucking Camden? The place rated the most dangerous goddamn city in America for years running? With a crime rate six times the national average? Great. Fucking fantastic. Just what I needed.

I exhaled hard, holding onto hope. "Five-hundred pills isn't a huge stash." It was enormous for our town, but as a whole, that was a small chunk of the trade.

"Not if you factor in that I'm one of fifty guys doing this shit."

Fifty.

If each guy had the same five hundred pill stash, that meant that there were twenty-five thousand pills and over half a million dollars in the operation. And that was only per goddamn shipment and distribution. I had no idea how often they got pills in, but even if it was just once a month at that rate, that was a big deal.

Bry's boss, whoever the fuck he was, was not someone I had any business fucking with.

I reached up, scraping a hand down my scratchy stubble on a sigh.




       
         
       
        
"So you get me here," Bry said, nodding.

"Get me a fucking glass," I growled, brain racing.

Bry snorted and turned back to do that, pouring me a heavy shot and I threw it back.

"Alright," I said, wincing at the burn. "Ten grand. I'll make good on that," I decided, seeing it as the only way out of the shit situation.

Bry was shaking his head before I was even done. "He has contacts all around to keep an eye on things. If people start bitching that they can't find 30s around here all a sudden, on a mother fucking party night, then there is going to be some questions. They'd be the kind that come with a lot of bleeding on my part." He paused, looking down at his feet. "Like to say I'm strong enough to keep my mouth shut, but he's a sick fuck and I can't make that promise and Dusty..."

Dusty could pay for his fucking connections.

"Alright, who the fuck knows about you?" I asked, hoping that if he was stupid enough to get connected with some dealer in Camden that he was at least smart enough to keep his less than legal activities to himself.