17. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Dominic

I've slowed down on my contract work lately as I've gotten busier at the club, and I think I'm starting to feel my age.

Gianna and I have been working the casino and nightclub circuit for a few days now, trying to dig up leads on The Cobra, but each night, all I want is to be back in my own bed as soon as possible.

The business associates here are all way too chatty for me, and no one seems to understand that our line of work is dangerous. The bathrooms are constantly filled with men talking about their target hits, what they had for lunch, or whose wife was pregnant.

No one in Chicago would ever be that upfront about their work. Maybe doing dangerous work at the beach makes people go soft.

I didn't come here to make friends; I came to get a job done. And I've always worked better in silence.

"Find out anything new and exciting?" I ask Gianna as I escape from a gaggle of cigar-smoking old men who were boring me with their tall tales of their glory days.

"Actually, I might have," she says to me, excusing herself by saying that she needs me to take her to the ladies' room.

I note that she's drinking iced tea again. She hasn't had a drop of alcohol in weeks, from what I can tell. At first, I thought she was just trying to remain clear-headed due to the job, but now I'm wondering if there's something else going on.

"Why aren't you drinking?" I ask her as I lead her dutifully to the bathroom.

She pats my forearm appeasingly. "Don't you worry about little ‘ol me," she says to me with a wink before heading into the bathroom.

When she's gone, I check my phone to see if my business contacts in Chicago have anything new to offer me for my manhunt. I ignore some annoyed texts from Vince who apparently didn't appreciate the cost of the little cottage I rented for Gi and I.

I don't have time for his petty concerns. I'm working and he should be grateful after threatening me and Gianna on the day he realized we were hooking up.

"Okay, sorry," Gianna says to me as she emerges from the bathroom. She smooths her silky dress over her curves, and I admire her by leaning back a little.

She seems to be getting curvier lately, and I am finding that I approve of the change wholeheartedly.

"So, what did you find out?" I ask her as we wander toward a quiet corner where we won't be overheard.

I hear some men cheering as they win at the Roulette table, but I barely glance their way. No one who is here tonight is truly dangerous. These are all small-time criminals and not the type who would ever imagine trying to take out a man like me.

"One of those ladies over there told me that her husband knows The Cobra. I guess they do business together. She seems to think that it's a silly nickname that doesn't mean anything, but that's neither here nor there."

"What kind of business is her husband in?" Dom asks me, glancing back at the gaggle of youngish women who are giggling and ogling him.

I wave at them with a big grin and then look back at Dom. "She says they have a box-making factory in Chicago, but they live out here in Atlantic City. She said that her husband meets with ‘some guy named after a snake' once a month."

"Hmm," I say thoughtfully. "What's her last name?"

"," Gianna tells me and rolls her eyes. "What a stereotypical mob name."

I chuckle a little. She's not wrong. Most of the people who live here in Atlantic City are old Italian money, but the trashy kind.

Jersey isn't really the kind of area where top-tier mobsters spend their time. Chicago has always been the main headquarters of most of the active crime families who are still living in the US, but it is helpful that this woman seems to know something about our guy.

Moving business outside of Chicago would help to keep the other mob families from catching on. It's something I might do myself if I was interested in businesses like prostitution or running drugs.

"A box factory is just as predictable as that name, but some old tricks still work," I say to her. I pull out my phone and look up box factories near our location. There's only one, and it's called Gallo Boxes and Fabrication. Bingo.

"Find them?" Gianna asks me.

I hear the ladies calling for Gianna to come back and sit with them. I turn around and wave at them by wiggling my fingers in a silly way and they all blush and titter.

I turn back to Gianna. "Interested in helping me stake out the factory?"

She stretches up to kiss me and I'm careful not to dislodge the light blonde wig she has used to cover up her brown hair as I kiss her back. "If it means spending time with you, I'm down," she says to me, her voice husky with desire.

"It's a date," I tell her, already thinking about logistics. This is the first solid lead that we've had, and I can feel that we're getting somewhere. "Now, tell those lovely ladies that I need you to come back home with me. Right now." I squeeze her round butt meaningfully, and she giggles.

"Give me just two shakes of a lamb's tail," she says, pressing another kiss to my lips and then hurrying off to tell the ladies at the little table goodbye.

I wish that our lives were different. I want so badly to tell Gianna how I feel, but what would be the point? I can love her all day long, but I can't keep her safe.

I might not even be able to keep seeing her after this is all over. I'm sure her family wouldn't approve of us being together after I hid her away from them for so long. Certainly, my friendship with William will be over.

I watch her kiss the cheeks of the girls at the table and then wave goodbye to them all. As she rejoins me, I nestle her against my side and bring her with me as we leave the club.

***

"This is cozy," Gianna says to me as she tilts back her car seat and ties her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head.

I smile at her a little, but don't take my gaze away from the factory across from us. It doesn't look like the kind of place where anything interesting ever happens, but I should know just how deceiving appearances can be.

There's a long-standing tradition of hiding dirty business in plain sight in my line of work, and this drab building is the perfect place to hide nefarious dealings.

"I've never worked with company before," I tell her distractedly.

"Never?" she says back. She does a cute little shimmy to get more comfortable in her seat. I try not to let the wiggling of her hips distract me, but my cock has other ideas. "Not even when you were learning to do your…job?"

I shake my head. "Not really. Vince showed me the ropes, and then I was turned loose to do the jobs that were assigned to me."

"Sink or swim, eh?" she comments drily.

I chuckle. "Mostly swim, thankfully." I have to admit that she has a point, though. I hadn't ever really thought about how much Vince had trusted me and at such a young age.

I had barely been shown how to do anything more than shoot a gun before he started sending me out to "take care of" the people he wanted out of the way.

In so many ways, it should be a heavy burden to be natively capable of such violence, but I haven't ever wasted much time thinking about the morality of my job.

It's better not to play devil's advocate for myself. I have enough things to worry about.

"I think I saw movement by that little door under the overhang," Gianna says abruptly, sitting upright in her seat.

I follow her line of sight and see that she was right. There's a couple of men talking in the shadow of the metal overhang. One of them is dressed all in black and seems to have some kind of mask on his face.

What's odd is that it's not the kind of mask I would have expected, like a ski mask or a full-face rubber mask. Instead, it appears to be shaped more like a classic opera mask.

As I'm watching, the men go inside the building and shut the door. I glance over at Gianna. She's drawn as tight as the string of a bow. I think about the next steps that I want to take. I just want her to be safe. Bringing her here was already a much greater risk than we should have taken.

"Gi," I say to her, reaching out to touch her shoulder. I give it a squeeze. "Promise me that you'll stay here. I'm just going to go check things out. Just lay low, okay?"

"Sure," she says back with a jerky nod. Her eyes are still trained on the building, as if she's expecting something more exciting to take place.

I know from experience that anything that is worth knowing about is going on right now, behind closed doors.

"I'll be right back," I tell her before slipping from the car. I pull the hood on my sweatshirt up over my face and slip on the leather gloves that I tucked into the front pocket as I move quietly toward the hulking, rusty building before me.

I stick to the shadows, making sure not to bump into anything or make any extra noise as I'm moving along the walls of the building. There's some kind of machine running inside, which helps to cover the sound of my footsteps.

I try the door that we watched the men walk through and find that it isn't locked. Predictable. Lots of dangerous men are too casual about securing their property. I have two different kinds of security in place at my apartment alone. I can't imagine leaving a door unlocked like this for any reason.

But then again, I'm the Reaper, and these people are likely lowly amateurs who The Cobra is just using to transfer goods from one place to another.

I crack the door open and give it a little push, then draw back into the shadows around the corner. When no one shows up to close the door or see why it opened up, I approach and then slip inside.

The hall on the other side of the door is dark, but there is a single flickering lightbulb a few feet away to illuminate the space somewhat. I hear voices, both of them male. I edge down the hallway until I can hear the conversation taking place nearby more clearly.

"I want to make the trade at the Casino tomorrow," one of the voices says. "I'll do it myself. I just need you to take the product to this location. Our buyer will pick it up there as soon as I've handed off the keys to the container that you're going to stash it in."

The voice sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't quite place it. Something about the person's accent feels fake, or forced to me. It's almost like an English accent, but it's not quite right. I ponder this as the other person responds. This voice is patently, entirely English.

"Righto," the other voice says back. "Happy to do it. Glad to get that gear off our hands. We've been sitting on it so long, you'd think we were trying to hatch an egg."

I hear a derisive snort at this little quip. "Gear doesn't make more of itself overnight," the voice says. "But it would sure be nice if it did."

They seem to be wrapping up, and I back down the hallway and slip through the door. As I jog through the shadows between warehouse buildings to get back to the car, I think about the man in the mask. Why an opera mask? It wasn't practical at all, and certainly didn't hide all of someone's face. Why would anyone pick that kind of mask to obscure their features?

"Find out something good?" Gianna asks me as I get back into the car and turn the engine over.

I nod. "They're meeting at the casino tomorrow to make ‘the trade' which turns out to be a key to a container or locker somewhere which will be holding all the gear…drugs."

She ponders this for a moment. "We need to go to the Casino and figure out who The Cobra is when they show up to offer their business partner the keys to a storage locker or container that is likely going to be full of drugs."

"Smart cookie," I praise her.

"My daddy didn't raise no fool," she says with a little laugh.

Then she sobers as she seems to remember just how foolish everything about our relationship truly is.

We both know that we have no business being together, yet here we are, spending time together not just in bed but also while I'm working. No one else on earth has ever gone to work on jobs with me. She's the first.

I think that's very significant, but I don't have time to ponder it too closely right now. For now, we have a night of spying to plan.