Blackbird (A Stepbrother Romance #1)(15)

When I sit up and lean back in the seat the last thing I want to do is drive. Fortunately I don’t have far to go. It’s a short hop into the city, off the highway and back to the parking lot. The bleary-eyed attendant eyes the Firebird warily as I take my ticket and park it. I should probably buy a monthly pass but I’m not putting a sticker on my car. I stick it in my pocket and walk across the street without bothering to look and see if a car is coming, then head up the stairs. I stumble into the dingy little room, slam the door and twist the lock. I don’t bother with the stupid little chain. I kick my shoes into the corner, slough off my clothes like dead skin and flop onto the mattress, then paw around until I come up with about a third of a bottle of Jack. I drink it like it’s water, feel the heat spread through me and hope it’ll dull my senses a little, but it doesn’t.

I drink the rest, too fast. Toss the bottle and it thunks in the corner, clinks against another one. There’s a pile of them over there I haven’t bothered to clean up.

I roll over on my side, and try to sleep.

The mattress is too damned soft. I end up shimmying off of it, onto the floor, grab my bare pillow and tuck it under my head. The hard floor is better, easier to sleep on. My back will be killing me in the morning, but at least I can sleep.

Somebody flips a switch and suddenly there’s sunlight pouring through the windows and it feels like my head is stuffed with pencil erasers. I roll away from the bed onto my hands, get my feet under me and start push-ups. It only makes my head throb more, but I do a hundred in quick succession. If I wasn’t so fatigued last night I’d be clapping with every rep. Get up, grab the pull up bar I’ve bolted to the wall, and start counting, stop counting when I get bored with it and go until my arms and back are on fire. If my head hurt any worse I’d be dead. I look in the small, grimy mirror in the tiny bathroom to make sure there’s no blood squirting out my nose, limp over to the fridge and pull out the bottle of milk inside. I down a cocktail of sinus pills, aspirin, Excedrin, and ibuprofen, wash it down with gulps of milk, eat some cold Pop Tarts and fall back down on the bed.

I sit there for a couple hours, clutching my head. When the pain has faded to merely excruciating, I’m ready to get up and get to work. Clean clothes first, and then the office.

My phone buzzes. I rifle through my shed suit to find it and press it to my ear.

“What?” I snap, yawning.

“Victor. Is that any way to greet your old friend?”

Fuck. It’s Vitali.

Vitali the Hammer.

“Sorry, Vitali. What is it?”

“Early day, yes? How did meeting go yesterday?”

He slips into a Russian accent now and then. It’s weird, jarring when he does it. He does it when he’s upset. He likes asking people questions he already knows the answer to, to test them. I don’t like being tested.

“As expected.”

“How did the girl take it?”

“That’s not your problem. Thorpe is squarely on my side. It’s coming down to a proxy fight. She’ll lose.”

“Yes, you said it would. Give me the names of the holdouts.”

I swallow. “Let me call them first.”

“As you wish. Call me this afternoon and tell me you have succeeded, or give me the names of the holdouts.”

He hangs up. Vitali is only a man for niceties when it suits him, which is mostly when he thinks it’s funny.

They call him the hammer for a reason. He once told me a man’s toes look like grapes after you take a masonry hammer to them.

What have I gotten myself into?

Worse, what have I gotten Eve into?

Before I agreed to any of this I extracted a promise from Vitali that Eve would not be hurt.

Then again, it wasn’t much of a promise, and I didn’t extract it, exactly. When somebody like Vitali promises somebody won’t be hurt, it’s like when they come around and promise your shop won’t burn down if you pay in the insurance money. That kind of a promise.

I’ll keep her safe, I swear.

I start by calling a dozen old men and begging, pleading, arguing, joking my way through to thwarting Eve’s attempts to bring the biscuit company under the Amsel umbrella, and when that doesn’t work, lay down a few veiled threats.

When I call Vitali to tell him it’s a go, I make the conversation as brief as possible. He hangs up on me again.

Dick.

I guess I should be proud of myself. I saved Jim Thorpe’s company from Eve’s claws. I sold them to the Russian Mafia instead. Russian Mafia biscuits. I hope they don’t start putting ground up witnesses in the batter or something. With that done I flop back on the bed.

Air. I need air. It stinks in here. Opening the windows won’t help, it just makes the smell worse. I dress quickly and duck out of the apartment, walk down the street with my hands shoved in my pockets. Two stores down the block there’s a bar. Bad idea. Me plus booze plus crowd equals fight, equals parole violation, equals back to the cell. I walk to the corner and just stand there, ignoring the walk/don’t walk signal. If I stand too long some cop will roll up and ask what I’m doing, so I keep moving. Across Market Street and up 4th. I’m heading in a bad direction. I turn around, start back. The air out here isn’t any better. It’s cold today, colder than yesterday and there’s a breeze off the river, with all the lovely smells you’d expect. I make sure to wait for the signals before I cross, stay in the crosswalk, keep my head down. Last thing I need is to eyef*ck some stranger into a fistfight.