Page 107 of Crescendo

Seeing her stripped of that illusion isn’t any better than watching her hide behind it. It isn’t until I hear the mattress shift behind me that I realize I’m standing here, glaring at the wall. My head hums. My fingers flex, on fire. My jaw aches. I want to punch something. I want to fucking pummel.

But it’s not that little bitch I want to destroy. Trust the fact that only the threat of her precious, beloved Vinny is enough to makeDannyrip her pretty little mask off.“I want him dead,”she’s said. For just a second, I join in on her little fantasy; I’ll kill the prick myself if only to see how she’ll react without being haunted by her quest for revenge.

After Arno, and Dino, and Mack...

I’ve had enough of fucking revenge.

“No! Wait!”

Her voice stops me dead in my tracks before I even register heading for the door. My hand is on the knob, already in the process of wrenching it open, and when I glance over my shoulder, she’s on her knees.

“N-no.” She shakes her head, sending that black hair flying. “No one else... I don’t want to go to anyone else.”

She’s telling the truth this time. It’s too damn bad that what she wants doesn’t really fucking matter.

I enter the hallway and slam the door behind me. In five minutes, I’m out of the garage, marching toward the bar up ahead. Inside, I find Arno sitting on a stool at the bar, but he’s not drinking for once. He glances over his shoulder as I cross the room but doesn’t greet me. Overnight, he’s reverted to the shitty little punk I met in the streets, cursed with the stigma of being Dino Mulligan’s bastard.

“Where’s your little toy?” he wonders nastily when I take the stool beside his.

I feel my eyes narrow. “Fuck her.”

“I’m sure you have, more than once,” Arno sighs, but before I can react, he lifts his free hand above the counter, revealing the bottle he had hidden on his lap. He shoves it in my direction, and I rip the cap off and take a sip without even looking at the label.

It burns. It’s shitty, cheap vodka, but it washes the taste of her from my mouth.

“Feels like old times,” Arno says, glancing around the bar, his jaw set. “You and Mack fighting each other for scraps. The cage. All we need is Dino dangling the meat over your heads and it could be the good old days again.” There’s a hard note in his tone that I don’t miss.

The “good old” days weren’t very good to Arno. His father may have been a stone-cold criminal, but he didn’t do the fathering too well to the kid who actually carried his blood. Scrawny and weak, Arno wouldn’t have lasted a day in the cage. It was only after Dino died that he grew claws of his own and honed his own bite.

“Something’s up,” I suspect, noticing the way Arno curls his hands into fists. He isn’t one to dwell on nostalgia for the hell of it. The puppy only brings up the past when he’s itching to beat out a new future in pain and blood. “What is it?”

“Mack.” Arno snatches the bottle from my grip and downs a fourth of it in one go. “The bastard... He’ll take it all. Stacatto’s empire. What remains of the Saints. Everything. And I...I fucking handed it to him.”

I grab the bottle before he can take another swig, but I don’t drink from it myself. I stare down into the dark liquid instead, watching it swirl within the glass. In this lighting, it’s the same color as her eyes. Those fucking eyes. All that’s missing are the hints of green and specks of gold.

“It’s not too late,” I say, but I don’t elaborate.

Arno can build his own damn kingdom. “Scared little kitties” don’t do well in groups once they get released from the pound. After this is all over, I’ll find some place to lie low. Some way tocarve out a new name for myself, away from the cage or the violence—and I try not to give a damn as to where Stacatto’s little whore might factor into that.

“It’s not too late,” I repeat, slamming the bottle down in front of Arno—and, this time, he doesn’t reach for it. “Mack’s not the only one with ‘friends.’”

Arno chuckles. “You make some connections in prison?”

“Something like that.”

Arno doesn’t react when I stand. It’s only when I hold my hand out that he has the nerve to look interested.

“Got a phone on you?” I ask.

Shooting me a wary look, he reaches into his pocket and pulls a cell phone out. “Yeah. Why?”

I don’t answer, and he slaps the phone onto my palm anyway. I toy with the keypad as I cross over to an empty section of the bar, just out of Arno’s earshot. It must be busy at the police station this early. I sense that the dial tone is about to cut over to voicemail when a tired voice finally answers.

“Fourth Precinct.”

“Can I talk to...” I inhale sharply and spit the name out. “Dick—Richard—Van Hallen?”

There’s a slight pause from the other end, and I can hear papers being shuffled.