Page 72 of Crescendo

“Espi.” I’m already on my feet, but Arno places a hand on my shoulder and shoves me back down.

“You think I wouldn’t make sure he’s okay?” He scoffs. “He was already out runningerrandsfor me, but I made sure that he knew what’s up. When he’s ready, he’ll join us here.”

When he’s ready.I grit my teeth and somehow manage not to wrap my hands around Arno’s neck until he tells me where I can find the kid. Instead, I cut my gaze to the back of the room, where one of Mack’s punks is still guarding the door to the “clinic.” Unease is a useless emotion. I don’t like to feel it, and I clench my hands into fists, craving the vicious surge of anger in my blood to replace it.Anger,I understand. Men like Mack react to it better than any other fucking language, written or spoken, anyway.

“Dante.” Arno’s watching me, uncharacteristically tense.

We’re no longer in his domain. This is Mack’s territory. His property. His rules.Myquickly thinning patience. It doesn’t take this long to simply bandage a wound. My gaze returns to the door and I scan the stoic expression of the man standing beside it.

“Dante thinks the woman could be of use. If she’s on our side,” Arno says to Mack, picking up the thread of conversation.

That’s right. Apparently, the three of us are supposed to be planning something. Bullshit. Dogs don’t plan. They steal. They scheme. They react on pure instinct.

“We... Dante?” Arno reaches for me when I stand up, but his fingers graze off my shoulder as I start across the bar.

My eyes are on the door while I shove past asshole after asshole, not caring who the fuck I have to jar out of my way. The man by the door perks up when I get close. He glances over my shoulder to where I know Mack to be and nods once.

“I can’t let you—” he starts to say, his posture tensing and stance turning hostile. His lips move, and words keep churning from his mouth, but the buzzing blaring through my skull drowns them out.

It’s like my brain separates from my body for a second. I’m merely a machine, cold and empty. My footsteps slow before I enter the man’s personal space though. Maybe I even mean to turn back.

Then I hear it. I hearher, even above the buzzing. Faint. Desperate. Pleading.

“Dante!”

All I know is that I laugh first. The dumb bitch is calling for me. She thinks I actually give a damn. That I’ll come to her rescue. She thinks I’d care. She thinks. Shethinks.

I don’t think; I react. My fists go flying, striking flesh, bone, and wood. I register nothing but pain surging through my knuckles. I see red. I taste it. When I blink, I’m standing inside a narrow room with a black chair in the middle and a row of counters lined with vials of drugs. I spot her instantly; she’s sprawled over the floor, crawling for the door.

Her eyes widen when she sees me. Then she sticks one hand out, the fingers shaking. “He...he drugged me.”

The fuck he did. Her words are already running together.

When I take her hand and pull her upright, her entire body jerks like a kite on a loose bit of string. I let her stagger against me, her hands pawing for purchase over my chest. Behind her, the man named Sammy cringes back against the wall, clutching at his left shoulder.

“She stabbed me! The fucking little cunt stabbed me—”

“Now, Dante.” The voice gnaws on my thickening rage, injecting clarity back into my brain. “This is no way to make new friends.” Mack stands just beyond the doorway, shaking his head whiletsk-tsk-tskingthrough his teeth. “We’re all family here.”

Ignoring him, I focus my attention on the man huddling in the corner. “What the hell did you give her?”

Sammy jumps. One of his hands starts to claw at his wrist, the nails raking the skin. “J-just a little something to take the edge off—”

“Heroin,” Mack says without a fucking ounce of shame. “Nothing lethal. Just enough to make her docile.”

Docile.I force a dark chuckle from the back of my throat as I skim my gaze over Stacatto’s battered and nowhighwoman. Her eyelids flicker, the hazel irises swirling. She’ll be docile, all right. I have to press my hand against the small of her back when her knees buckle.

I swallow hard, shaking my head to hear above the fucking buzzing. “Why?”

Mack shrugs. “To make it easier to send her back to Stacatto in a body bag.”

I laugh. It’s only when I see Sammy cringe into his corner that I realize the sound comes out more like a growl. Trust Mack not to have read the fucking CliffsNotes.

“Arno tried that.”

Mack’s expression flickers, and suddenly, the bastard’s harder to read. “Arnodid,” he admits. “But I’m not above using other methods of persuasion.”

“Other methods?”