Page 48 of Dangerous Men (Fortune City Mafia #1)
SEBASTIAN
Viper is in the lab cleaning his tools when I finally track him down.
He’s humming to himself while he works, deftly unpacking his case and laying his instruments out on the metal table, where they glisten under the bright lights.
Well, most of them do.
A few are so coated in dried, darkened blood they don’t reflect the light at all.
“Hey, Doc,” Viper greets me, not looking up. It’s not intuition or some preternatural acuity that has him correctly guessing it’s me when I enter our little sanctum.
I’m the only other one who comes down here. This isn’t a place for people like Alec and Ashton. This isn’t a part of our business they like to look too closely at.
“How’d it go?” I ask Viper, keeping my voice neutral and unconcerned as I lean against the tiled wall.
“It went.” Viper grins. One by one, his instruments go into a white gallon bucket, which he carries to the industrial sink. “Seneca is ours. ”
“No issues?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” Viper chuckles.
He hums to himself as he opens a jug of haemoscrub, an enzymatic cleaner made for dissolving blood, and scoops some into the bucket.
Hot water comes next, and after they soak, he’ll spend the next hour or so carefully scrubbing every one of his tools clean.
Viper may be crazy, but at least he follows my rules for a clean and orderly torture.
“Sterling has another job for you,” I say, keeping my face blank and tone even. Practiced. “But it’s an easy one.”
I hope I’m imagining the almost imperceptible way Viper tenses. I must be, because his tone is completely unchanged as he asks, “Oh? What job?”
“Anthony Reicher,” I tell him, giving no other information.
Anthony has been a pain in our side for months, a mid-level thug constantly needling us with small acts of disobedience. But he’s so low on our radar that he’s been little more than a nuisance, a small ignorable annoyance we haven’t bothered to deal with.
And just this morning, someone sent Anthony a whisper through back channels that it was time to up and run. He’s had a long head start to buy us time.
A perfect distraction.
Viper laughs.
“What did Anthony finally do to piss off the big man enough to get me involved?”
I shrug, even though Viper can’t see it. The movement is casual, unconcerned. It’s the shrug of someone with nothing to hide, no secrets to keep. It’s perfect.
“Don’t know,” I lie. “But Sterling wants him gone. As soon as possible.”
Bait.
That’s what Alec wants. He wants to buy a little more time to ease Sydney into our world. He sees her as too breakable right now, too fragile, to handle Viper, just as I had. But…
I’ve seen it. Little flashes of what lies beneath her innocent exterior. She’s not as weak as she pretends to be, not as pure of heart, no matter how much she wants to think she is.
“Consider it done,” Viper tells me, reaching into the near-boiling water to pull out one of his tools and start his cleaning. I turn, moving toward the exit, when Viper adds, “You can tell the boss I’m giving it my full, undivided attention.”
His laughter follows me out and into the hall.