Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“Santo, why don’t you take your girl upstairs and run her a nice tub?” Giulia suggested.
“I think I will do that,” Santo agreed, leading me through the house and up the stairs. We climbed silently. We even stood silently as he reached for my zipper, then slowly peeled my clothes off of me in the bathroom.
He ran the tub, then wet a washcloth to wipe the pasta sauce off my legs before helping me into the water.
He surprised me by stripping out of his own clothes, climbing in behind me, and pulling me against his chest.
“I thought I lost you today,” he admitted, his arms going around me as the water slowly filled in around us.
“You almost did,” I told him.
Sure, it was possible I would have found a blunt or sharp object to fight back with. But it was just as likely that David would have overpowered and strangled me. Or beaten me to death.
“I remembered the emergency button,” I told him. “And your mom got the alert. She beat David with a skillet. Twice.”
“That sounds like Ma,” Santo said, fingers moving absentmindedly over my skin. “She doesn’t involve herself in the business, but if shit goes down, she has always been able to handle herself. She also wields a mean wooden spoon when she’s mad at you.”
“Remind me not to piss her off.”
“Nah, you don’t have to worry.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s already picturing you with my ring on your finger and my baby in your belly.”
“Oh.” My heart felt all gooey at that idea.
“For the record,” Santo said, turning his head to press a kiss to my temple, “I’m picturing that too.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“I mean, I’m really enjoying the practicing for making the babies. Figure we might need a year or two to really… perfect that.”
“That should probably work. We might need to practice several times a day, though, with such a tight timeframe.”
“That’s a smart idea. Just to be sure.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “In all seriousness, though, I’m seeing a future here. I wasn’t planning on saying that so soon. But worrying about losing you today made it seem pointless to wait.”
“I was so angry at him for coming for me here. I wanted to just have our good memories here.”
“Got plenty more of those to build,” he assured me.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I can’t wait.”
Starting right then.
Santo - 1 day
In the end, it wasn’t exactly complicated, but it was more widespread than any of us had realized.
While Aurelio, Nino, and Lucky wrangled David into a chair for ‘questioning,’ Mass and I brought up the footage of the shop.
We rewound to see Aurelio looking around the shop, moving to glance out the window, likely looking for Dasha. She’d been running late.
As I watched, I regretted not waking her up before I left. Sure, something might have still happened to her, but it was less likely that she would be alone for it to happen.
Switching camera feeds, we checked out the inside of the garage.
I saw the exact moment David made the decision to leave, to track down and attack Dasha.
His gaze kept slipping to her empty office, his jaw twitching. Then he was gone.
Going back further, we watched cars come into the bays.
Two seemed legitimate.
Three were gone before a mechanic did so much as pop the hood. What they did do, though, was open the back doors of each of the cars.
The camera didn’t quite catch anything being put in the cars. But any idiot could draw conclusions.
The thing was… it wasn’t like it was just David running an operation. It was all of them. All of the mechanics were involved.
After some light interrogation of David, we got the name of his contact in Mexico and Columbia, found out their arrangement, and learned that Phil had started his little side hustle a few years before.
The shop had been struggling. He’d been falling behind on his mortgage. And, on top of all of that, he had been noticing a decline in his health. It was confirmed by his doctor that not only was it his blood pressure and cholesterol he had to worry about, but also advanced heart disease and a fatty liver.
It seemed like he thought there wasn’t much time nor anything to lose.
When he found out that a couple of his mechanics were low-level drug dealers, he got an idea.
Once he made contacts in Mexico, he sold his beloved vintage Mustang for a couple hundred grand, ordered his car parts and cocaine, and became a drug kingpin.
It scaled up quickly, making Phil decide not only to use his shop to continue dealing, but to reach out to many other drug-dealing organizations across the state.
In the end, it didn’t seem like David deliberately killed Phil.
Apparently, the two of them hadn’t been getting on for a long time, with David feeling like he was owed more than he was getting and Phil freezing him out more and more.