Cruel Lover

Fuck. There are other men here. I want to kill Dan and Leroy just for being in the same room as her.

I need to keep it together. A sudden move right now and I’ll spook her, like a fawn reacting to a hunter coming out of the mist. I’m the intruder as far as she’s concerned, and I can’t deny I want to mount her in my fucking hunting cabin.

I shake my head, trying to keep it together. “I was hurting when I said that. I’ve wanted to apologize every day since we left high school.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

My heart clutches. Standing here in her presence, I feel like lowlife scum. She’s an angel. My angel. When I think of her I see her face illuminated from above like one of the paintings my father likes to collect. She’s a gift from God and I’m the devil’s right-hand man. The things I’ve done… I’ve been a soldier since I left school. Ten years in the trenches of Detroit’s gangland. But right now I’m regretting every cut, every broken bone.

I’ve ended men’s lives, and she’s sent straight from heaven to judge my sins.

“You told me to stay away from you,” I tell her. “You told me to never come near you again. Every day without you was torture, but rather that than cause you pain. But I am sorry, Malta. I’m sorry for the way I acted, I’m sorry that you thought I didn’t care.”

She stares in response, shifting from one foot to the other like she can’t decide whether she wants to hate me or forgive me. I get it, and I’m not about to rush her. But now that I’m so close, now that she’s acknowledged my presence, I’m not sure I can go back to being her silent shadow.

“So what’s the plan here?” Dan says, and I growl as I turn my attention on him, baring my teeth. He raises his hands placatingly, but if he knew what was good for him he’d be leaving us alone to figure this out. “Hey, I get it, you two have some sort of history. Any second now you’re going to start reciting poetry or some shit. But her old man has debts that haven’t been settled.”

I guessed that Winston was involved here somewhere. I’m not blind, I’ve seen him hanging around this part of town. I didn’t know he’d run up a gambling debt in this shit hole, but I’ve seen similar things before. That attempt to live a life free of any vices, free of any sin, often leads to trouble. There has to be a pressure valve somewhere, and it looks like gambling was his. Under normal circumstances it probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but he couldn’t let his reputation be tarnished, so he had to seek somewhere like this, somewhere he could be anonymous.

“Sell me the debt,” I tell him. “I’ll give you fifteen cents on the dollar, same as usual.”

The Volos family buys debts all the time. There’s even a fund specifically for it that I can access without anyone asking questions. We buy the debt for less than its worth, then extract what we can from whoever owes it. So long as we get back more than we paid, it’s worth our while, and the original owner gets a payout without having to do any of the nasty stuff.

It’s win/win.

I’ll use the fund, write off the debt, then have a quiet word with Winston Green, give him plenty of time to pay it back but a stern warning about getting his daughter involved in the future.

“Can’t do that, Oz.”

“What the fuck do you mean? Fine. Twenty. Final offer. What does he owe you?”

“Look, Oz, you know me. If it was up to me, I’d do it, even give you a discount for old time’s sake, but it isn’t.” Dan shrugs his shoulders, and he sounds like he’s being reasonable, but he’s starting to piss me off. All I want is to get Malta’s perfection out of this hellhole. “Look, truth is I don’t own this place any more. What do you call it, under new management? This guy, the new owner, he tells me all debts are to be settled in full or in kind, no sales. Has a real stick up his ass about it, we get what we’re owed or we look weak, apparently. This big shot is not the kind of person you want to upset, you know what I mean?”

I narrow my eyes. “You sold this place? I find that hard to believe.”

“Me too,” he says, and huffs out an irritated breath. Clearly there’s no love lost between him and his new boss. “More of a hostile takeover, you know? Some out of town mob lord or some shit, got his own private army he brought with him from New York. What do I have? Fucking Leroy? You just overpowered him with your pinkie finger.”