Page 49 of No Longer Mine

Don clicked his tongue. “You sure you don’t wanna just take them out here?”

I pressed my lips together. “No, I need to know who his boss is. He came from nowhere, nothing, and now he’s trying to run an entire empire in my family’s district. I don’t think so.”

“He’s taking a call,” Benson’s voice came through the speaker again, and I watched as Tony waved his hands around wildly. He wasn’t happy with what was going down.

“Can you tap into it?”

Benson hummed on the other end. “No, not without them noticing.”

I swore. “Okay, we might have to go back to square one. If we scare him tonight, he could go into hiding again. That’s the last thing we need. I don’t want to drag this out.”

Patience was a virtue I never fucking had. But tonight? Tonight, I needed it. If we spooked Tony, he’d vanish again, slipping through the cracks like a cockroach.

I clenched my jaw as Don pulled the car away from the warehouse. The temptation to pull him out of his safe little hidey-hole right now was strong. But that wasn’t my game. Guns, brute force—those were for desperate men. I wasn’t desperate. I was patient. Calculated.

And Tony? He had no fucking clue he was being hunted.

“Keep an eye on him,” I told Benson. “I want to know his routes, where he sleeps, where he eats, and where he thinks he’s safe.”

Benson hummed in approval. “Already on it. He’s paranoid, but he’s sloppy. Changes locations, but he always goes back to a handful of places.”

Perfect.

I leaned my head back against the seat, letting the streetlights flicker across my face. “We’ll wait until he gets comfortable again. The moment he thinks we’ve backed off, we remind him that he doesn’t get to breathe easy.”

Don smirked, gripping the wheel a little tighter. “Slow suffocation. I like it.”

So did I.

Three Days Later

Benson tracked his movements to three main locations—an upscale penthouse in Midtown, a rundown motel in Queens, and a brownstone in Brooklyn. He never stayed in one place for too long, but he always came back to them.

The first night, we just watched.

The second night, we made him feel watched.

We killed the power in his brownstone for exactly thirty minutes. Just enough time to make him sweat, to make him think.

The third night? I left a little message.

Tony liked to visit a high-end cigar lounge in the Financial District. He had a private humidor, always stocked with expensive Cuban cigars. Benson made sure the locks weren’t an issue, and while Tony was out, I slipped inside.

I didn’t take anything. I didn’t trash the place.

I just left a single cigar clipped at the end, resting on his favorite ashtray.

It wasn’t touched. It wasn’t lit.

It was just waiting.

He took the bait.

Benson had eyes on him the moment he stepped into the cigar lounge. The second he saw that clipped cigar waiting for him, untouched, perfectly placed—he panicked. Panicked men always make mistakes.

I stood in the alley of the lounge, shrouded in shadows, the night thick and suffocating. It smelled like rain, like city grime, like the lingering scent of a man who knew he was running out of time. The back door creaked open, and I stayed perfectly still. Tony stepped out, looking over his shoulder, his breath ragged, shoulders hunched. He thought he was being smart, slipping out the back instead of using the front entrance. I smiled to myself. Smart men knew when they were being hunted. Stupid men thought they could outrun the inevitable.

He wasn’t going to see me—not yet. I wanted him to feel this. To soak in the paranoia I was feeding him, to let it seep into his skin and sit in his bones.