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RHAIM

I found myself at a place I thought I’d never be again at eleven am on Sunday.

Right outside a church.

I heard the organ on the inside go through the last warbles of Agnus Dei before the doors opened, releasing a few hundred parishioners into the wild—but I was only scanning the crowd for one of them, Milo Ventaggeti—and when I spotted him, he spotted me.

I watched him kiss a woman, presumably his wife, and then head my direction, giving me a gesture that I should walk beside him, that any business we might partake in wouldn’t happen on consecrated ground.

“It’s been awhile, Rhaim.”

“It has,” I agreed. The last time I’d seen Milo had been fifteen years ago when I’d been applying pressure like a motherfucker to a gap a .

45 had blown in the femoral of his right thigh.

If we hadn’t been close to the Doctor’s services and I hadn’t been watching the thing go down, he wouldn’t have made it—a fact we were both well aware of. “You doing okay?”

“Presently, yes,” he said, finally stopping, patting himself down for a smoke before offering one over to me, which I took him up on. “Although ask me again, when you’re through.”

“I promise this’ll be easy. I just can’t be seen working the corners anymore.”

“You’ve got a business to uphold. I get it,” he said, giving a slight nod.

And he couldn’t actually complain—the firefight we’d been in that night had given him control over the warehouses he needed for his labs to run.

After that, he bought out Nero’s interest in his game, and the men had walked their separate ways, Nero into Corvo’s legally approved profitability, and Milo into maintaining his control over the club circuit.

He’d been a ruthless dick at first—I had heard rumors, and I knew he had to be—but right now his situation should’ve been prime.

He didn’t give a shit about opioids or meth, and cocaine and party drugs were going nowhere but up.

“I’m looking for a certain dealer. Services college-aged brats.

Maybe works for you, but also maybe works for someone shifting harder stuff—” because I couldn’t imagine that Nick wanted me to kill a dealer whose only crime was selling his daughter MDMA.

“Goes by the name Bix, like he’s a cartoon character or something. ”

Milo shook his head, and I believed him. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“For someone it will,” I said. “And if you ask around for me, we’re even.”

Milo let smoke curl out of his mouth in a long exhale. “Just…ask?” he questioned, his lips curling up. “Or like ask-ask,” he said with emphasis, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“I need them alive—and not afraid of me. I just have some questions for them. So if you could find out where they live, their regular haunts—that’s all I need to go on.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m very much not. I mean, I wouldn’t place bets on them reaching their next birthday, but?—”

“Life’s hard and nothing’s free?” Milo offered, flicking his butt to the ground before stomping it out.

“Pretty much.”

“I’ll let you know. Is this a rush case?”

“Yeah,” I said. He offered his hand out, and I shook it.

“Then I’ll be square with you as soon as I can,” he said, kneeling down to pick up his cigarette butt—and then offer to take mine. I gave it to him curiously, and watched him put it out as well, before keeping both of them in his hand.

“Am I gonna regret giving you DNA?” I asked, and Milo laughed.

“No. I’ve got two pre-teens in Altar Guild here,” he said, coming back up to stand.

“Apparently, by the virtue of me smoking, I’m personally responsible for all the cigarette butts they have to pick up in a five-hundred-foot radius from the sacristy,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Kids, man. I fuckin’ love ‘em—but you’re lucky you never had any. ”

“Sounds like,” I said, putting my hands into my pockets, so he wouldn’t see them fist.

“I’ll be in touch!” he shouted, as he turned, veering for the nearest trashcan.