Page 96 of Savage Roses
Men I don’t know but have seen before—the faceless, nameless nobodies who do the Neptune Society’s dirty work. They’re dressed primly in suits and ties with expressions that give nothing away.
They watch as I approach them. I stop only a few feet away, wrench the photo from my pocket, and toss it at their feet. The winter air catches it, slowing up its descent, letting it drift to a gentle fall on the ground.
“Your photo,” I say with audible loathing. “My acquiescing to any requests ends here. You sickos have the wrong idea if you think you’ll be able to get me. Go ahead, leak whatever you have on my father. I don’t give a damn. It won’t make me bend to your will.”
A hideous man with a jagged scare on his cheek stands in the center of the other two and appears to be the spokesman. “You don’t want what we have to get leaked to the public.”
That’s true, but I refrain from telling him that.
“I don’t care,” I say.
“You do. You care very much,” he replies. He steps forward to pick up the fallen photo with long fingers, his nails chewed up. “What if I told you we’re willing to make a deal with you? In exchange for your membership?”
“Why does my membership matter so much?”
“You know why.”
“So you believe because you blackmail the others in high places, you can do the same to me?” I ask coolly. “What ifItoldyou, I won’t back down? I don’t give a damn what deal you’re trying to make. He can shove that deal where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“Is that really what you want, Ernest?”
The voice comes from behind me. The lackeys confirm this with their attention shifting to someone beyond my shoulder. I decline to give whoever it is any form of deference by turning around to acknowledge them.
Instead, I stand firm. I let him come to me—and he does, the unhurried pad of his footsteps sounding from behind until he’s completely in view.
Three more men.
Two, I recognize. The third, I do not.
Leandro Crotone might be ages past his prime, but he carries a certain cache about him. A relic of his time, he’s what we in the criminal justice field call an ‘old school mobster.’ He never goes anywhere without a snazzy suit, usually slate gray and pinstriped, and he’s often seen with a hat perched atop his bald head, the sparse gray hair he still has on the sides peeking out.
When he enters a room, you notice. He does so with an air of certainty earned over many years. Respect isn’t to be asked for, it’s to be given.
Unfortunately, I don’t play by Mafia rules. Old school, new school, any school in existence.
As far as I’m concerned, they’re equally as reproachful.
He comes to face me with Lucius Mancino and the unknown man on either side. His face sags with age, wrinkles slashed wherever possible: along the sides of his mouth and around his eyes, lined on his prominent forehead. He wears an expression that’s permanently admonishing, lacking satisfaction in a way that likely makes people want to please him all the more.
Then there’s Lucius Mancino, a fast-burner in the criminal world. Fat, squat, and unpleasant to look at, he’s risen up the family ranks faster than most. He’s pulled off a marriage to Leandro’s one and only daughter, and in turn, gained even more prestige. That’s still not enough for him—a desperate hunger lives in his beady eyes as he stands by his boss-turned-father-in-law’s side and watches me like a vulture ready to pick apart a carcass.
But it’s the last man that truly seizes the spotlight.
Tall, broad-shouldered, pale, with dark hair as dark as his suit. He possesses an unblinking gaze that’s a strange swirl of oceanic colors. Somehow, he’s even more unsettling than Crotone and Mancino, whoever he is.
“This is the worst mistake you’ve ever made,” I say, matching their moxie. I take up a hell of a lot of space too. I stand as a king among them, unintimidated despite being outnumbered six to one. “The moment I leave here, I will be opening an investigation on your club, your family, and everything in between.”
“That won’t be happening,” says Leandro smoothly. “Perhaps you are still confused. The Society has graciously agreed to meet with you. It’s important you understand the arrangement going forward.”
“What arrangement?” I spit. I glare at each one of the men standing before me. “You thugs have gotten away with more than you ever should’ve. It ends tonight. Right now.”
With my patience run out, I set off toward the roof exit. They don’t wait more than a few footsteps before proving once again how barbaric and ruthless they are.
“Hello?! Who’s there?”
A female voice crackles over radio transmission. The staticky sound aside, there’s a frazzled element to her tone of voice.
“Hello!?”