Page 7 of Confession (Constantine Brothers #2)

SIX

Quinn

“You gonna tell me what the hell happened last night?”

I look up from the gun I’m cleaning. Sasha is standing in the doorway of the security room in her black fatigues and a tight white tank top. Her dark braid hangs over one shoulder. She’s eating a muffin.

I’m sitting on the couch, plaid sleeves rolled to my elbows, with four guns in pieces on the towel-covered coffee table. At Sasha’s question, I shrug and ram the brush into a barrel. “It was a setup.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I don’t know what you’re fishing for,” I say, even though of course I do. And Sasha knows that I know, so she saunters in and drops into the computer chair, manspreading.

The monitors behind her show views of the house’s exterior and perimeter, all of it quiet in the bright afternoon light. The house has no interior cameras, so I don’t know where Vitali is.

“You’re hiding down here,” Sasha accuses as she peels down the muffin’s paper wrapper.

“I’m working. Someone needs to.”

She doesn’t take the bait. She works her ass off and everyone knows it. “Good muffin. I like the sliced almonds with the lemon. You make these?”

“Lucas did. I don’t bake.”

“Too gay for you?”

“You’re an asshole, Natasha.”

Sasha hates her full name and can often be distracted by it, but not today it seems. She watches me like a cat watching a mouse as I set the barrel on the towel between its slide and recoil spring.

She pounces with, “Am I supposed to pretend it wasn’t tense as shit in the car last night?”

I wince. The scene is painfully alive in my memory, almost as bad as the disaster in the alley.

Sasha driving, Vitali in the passenger seat, me in the back—and the silence thick as shit between us.

I had to put most of my focus on controlling my breathing so it wouldn’t be loud.

My stomach was roiling, my hands were shaking, and I was sweating like it was 120 degrees in the car.

I escaped the instant we got home, and no, I did not look at him. I couldn’t. I know what I’ve done. I’ve blown up the best thing I’ve ever had. This job. My place here. Him.

It’s over.

I can get away with shoving him, but pressing my lips to his …

There’s no way he mistook my meaning. I kissed him, or almost. He’s going to fire me. He’ll be too uncomfortable to keep me around.

I start wiping my hands on a towel to hide how they’re shaking. “Vitali didn’t like the way I handled the situation at the strip club, and I didn’t like that he subverted me. We don’t always agree.”

“Quite a disagreement for you to be hiding down here.”

I throw down the towel. “I’m not fucking hiding. This needs to be done.”

I am fucking hiding. Obviously.

“Hm.” Sasha tears off a piece of her muffin and pops it in her mouth.

“Can you fuck off? You’re blocking my view of the monitors.”

“You don’t need to see the monitors. That’s what the alarms are for.”

My temper flares so hot and so suddenly that I feel it flood out through all my limbs. I close my eyes and try to breathe. I need her to go away.

“Mickey turned up in the harbor,” she informs me. It takes a second for my brain to override my body. Sasha waits until she sees I’m tracking then adds, “He should’ve come to Vitali the second the DiMaggios approached him.”

“Well, he won’t make that mistake twice.”

Sasha huffs a laugh. “You’re so much colder than people think you are.”

I shrug. “He endangered Vitali.”

The moment stretches, and I brace myself for her to circle back to the car ride, but she says, “You’re off tonight. He’s already tagged me for Eclipse.”

Relief wars with panic. He’s avoiding me too. I knew it. He’s uncomfortable. He got kissed by a gay man.

Two fucking years I’ve managed to control myself. Two fucking years of hiding my attraction to him, my obsession with him, my absolute fucking need to be around him. It’s been two years of torment, yes, undeniably, but it’s a torment that I do not want to lose.

But I have.

I’ll be cut off. Thrown away.

As that reality fully sinks into me, it settles into a space that I realize has always been there, waiting for it. This was inevitable. I’ve always known, deep down, that this would end.

I know what I am and where I’m from. I know that I don’t belong here.

My throat is so tight that I have to clear it before I can manage, “’Kay.”

I go back to cleaning the guns, focusing on my work so that I don’t have to look at Sasha. I hear the intake of her breath like she’s going to say something. I brace for it, but she changes her mind. She gets up from the computer chair and leaves without a word.

I just keep cleaning the guns like I haven’t destroyed everything.

I know I have to face it. I will. I just need a few more hours to prepare myself for what that will mean.

And I have a piece of business to take care of first.

***

“Hello, Leo.”

Pedano spins to face me, staggering slightly because he’s drunk. I’m sure he’s had a bad day dealing with Alesso. Light from the wharf paints his slack face orange.

“You,” he slurs, grabbing for his gun.

I crack the crowbar across his elbow. He screams, which means I have to work fast. I hook his neck with the crowbar, yanking him into the shadow of the building. I punch my knife into his gut. I yank it out and punch it in again and again. His cries fade. He collapses.

He’s still alive as I roll him over to grab his wallet from his back pocket. I open it and steal the cash to make this look like a robbery. Alesso will know the truth, but he won’t be able to prove it.

“You’ll go down,” Leo wastes his last breath telling me.

I already know that. I’ve known that since I was fifteen years old. But the irony is that it’s not the past that’s going to destroy me. It’s that one brief moment when, for some fucking reason, I seemed to think that I could have something that, obviously, I can never, ever have.