Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
There wasn’t much else in her purse.
Some hand sanitizer, a collection of hair ties that she likely needed for working in a restaurant, a bottle of aspirin, and a piece of chalk. Like… an actual piece of chalk. Which seemed to make no sense.
Judging from the contents of her wallet, she lived a couple blocks over from where she’d been shot. In a neighborhood where I would feel a little uncomfortable walking in the middle of the night. Which made me wonder why the hell she hadn’t taken public transit or a ride or something. She had the money on her to afford it, that’s for sure.
It was something I would have to figure out.
Because I had a feeling that the Costa Family was going to have some sort of lasting relationship with Whitney Carlton. Whether either of us liked that fact or not.
See, we executed people without much thought.
But those were people in the life.
We didn’t take out innocents.
Sure, yeah, there was a time when we lost the old ways, when we became primitive and barbaric, when men no longer cared who they hurt or killed.
Those were dark days for our reputation.
Lorenzo was making sure we didn’t have that stigma attached to us anymore.
So we didn’t murder women who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw some shit they were never meant to see.
The way I was looking at the situation, the only solution was to pay her for her silence.
No one was going to like the situation. It was complicated and expensive and would require some oversight for a long while, someone always around to make sure no one’s lips were getting loose and spilling secrets they had no business sharing.
Sighing, I flicked on the TV, waiting for the news to cycle around again, and watching the coverage of the shooting with a knot in my stomach.
Because these were tricky times for criminals.
Not only did we have to worry about security cameras these days, but cell phones. Some random asshole ducked behind a car or hiding in the shadows, recording everything that went down.
“Execution-style—“ The news anchor was saying as Cesare came walking into the room, tucking his phone away.
“Why bother with that shit?” he asked. “Just heard back from our friend on the force. They don’t have shit. Way he sees it, they aren’t going to go out of their way to spend too much time trying to figure out who took out gang members. Too much other shit going on these days.”
That was good news.
I guess I was still a bit old-school with the way I liked to gather information.
The world had changed a lot in the years when I’d been away. Different connections had been made, new methods of gathering information had been enacted.
I was going to be playing catch-up for a while, it seemed.
“So what now?” Cesare asked.
“Now, we wait.”
“For her to wake up,” he concluded.
That, yeah.
But also to see if she caught an infection. To see what Lorenzo had to say. To see if she would agree to silence.
There was a lot of waiting to do.
I was good at waiting.
Cesare, not so much.
“You could run out and get her some food for when she wakes up. She’s going to need to eat after all that blood loss.”
It bothered me not to be able to do transfusions in this sort of situation.
But what could we do?
We weren’t the Red Cross.
We didn’t have people lining up to give blood that would go to waste in three to six weeks, no matter how optimal storage solutions were.
During times of a lot of duress, I’d talked Lorenzo into setting up a program where the top-level guys came in and gave blood once or twice a week to keep on hand in case shit went south and we needed it.
But for lower-level guys or innocents caught in the middle of our shit? Yeah, we were out of luck.
All we could do was hydrate them, feed them, and give them iron, then hope their bodies could make it work.
“I could do that,” Cesare agreed, nodding.
“Good shit, not crap,” I told him. “And electrolytes,” I added.
“Got it. Anything for you?”
“Coffee.”
I had a feeling neither of us would be getting sleep for a while.
With that, he took off while I continued to flick through the news stations until they eventually gave way to infomercials before the morning news cycles started up.
Then it was time to check on her, and I found myself at once both too eager and oddly hesitant because of that eagerness.
But no matter what was going on in my head, or other parts of me, I had to go in and test her for her temperature.
Then there she was.
Awake.
Freaked the fuck out.
Those warm brown eyes of hers watching me with the same sort of look a small prey animal stuck in a trap looks at the person circling them. With fear and suspicion. Even though that person was trying to take care of them.