“Yeah, we stopped there first. Katja is with her now eating some breakfast I got them.”
“She got banged up pretty good, but she’ll be fine.”
“How the fuck did this happen?” Dex asked, not really to me but to the fucked-up universe. “Out of all people, it has to be JV. Why the fuck did it have to be him?”
“It makes this messy. True.”
Dex spins on his heels with a look of disbelief. “Messy? This is far more of a mess than you can clean up. You’re good, but not this fucking good.”
His words feel like a punch to the jaw, and it takes all my inner peace to return my attention on what’s left of JV’s body rather than Dex and his dig toward me. I usually work alone, and normally I would wait until Dex left the room to hack at a body, but the man deserves to be disgusted for coming in here and stressing my shit out.
I make a grand show of sawing the thigh in half. I really don’t have to but decide it will be fun for the dramatics.
Surprisingly Dex seems unfazed by what I’m doing. His mind is on the problem and trying to come up with a solution. “How confident are you that no one has any clue that JV came up here?”
“I can clean up what happens after the fact. Not before,” I answer.
“So, there’s a chance that this will point to Rowan and The Whitney?” Dex asks.
“Maybe,” I answer honestly. “But I’m going to hide any evidence that can prove it. You know this.”
“I’m not worried about you,” he snaps. “I know there won’t be a spec of blood or guts left. I know this room will be squeaky clean. But no matter how hard you try, the Lucianos are going to smell this from a mile away.”
“I’m good at covering stench.”
“Vincent will figure it out,” Dex repeats, pacing again. “He’s not stupid, and he has some really good soldiers who will sniff this out.”
“Possibly… But they won’t pinpoint it to Rowan and this room. I’m making damn sure of it.”
Dex stops and watches me finish bagging the chunks of body. “Maybe we should come clean with him. Let him know what happened. If we try to get ahead of it, maybe it won’t be as bad as we think.”
I freeze before I let out a chuckle. “Well aside from the fact that it will be an instant death sentence for Rowan. And I don’t think Daddy will appreciate knowing I spent all night chopping his son into tiny bits and then turned him into ash on the same floor he’s sleeping on.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have done anything to his body until I got here,” Dex says, his eyes narrowing on me.
He’s got some real nerve to second guess me after—
I stand up, hands fisted, and rage sizzling through me. “You know damn well I had to. Putting an innocent girl aside, you really want a fucking murder investigation to happen here? You want them here poking around the thirteenth floor? The Rooftop? And Vincent Luciano doesn’t care how his son died. He died at The Whitney. Under our roof. There would be ramifications for that. Ramifications to Rowan and maybe even her dear friend Katja.” I pause as I see Dex flinch at the mention of Katja. “You know damn well that I had to clean this up my way. The only way.”
Dex releases a deep breath. “You’re right. It’s just that… fuck. This is the last thing I wanted to be dealing with right now. Katja and I just got to a point of being good. Really good. She hasn’t lost her shit on me yet over this, but it’s just a matter of time. She hated that I let these low lifes stay here and…”
“Rats bring more rats,” I say with a nod, knowing exactly how Katja feels about the thirteenth floor and who we allow to do business on it.
“She’s never going to let us live this down,” Dex says with a shake of the head.
“She will as long as we do what we both are good at. We’ll handle this.”
“If it were just you and me involved, I’d agree,” Dex says. “But we have Rowan to think about, and I don’t really think a rich socialite has the strength to do what’s needed to handle it.”
“Which is why we will handle it for her,” I say. “But I think Rowan is going to prove to us that she’s stronger than people give her credit for.”
“If she gets her father involved—”
“She won’t. I already gave her the marching orders for her to follow,” I say, confident that Rowan will follow them—for now.
“And you don’t think she’s going to fuck this up for us? You know damn well that one scared little girl can make our entire plan implode.”