Page 26 of Man of Lies (Vendetta Kings #2)
Chapter Twenty-Six
SILAS
I was drifting in a light catnap when the elevator chimed. Mason was asleep on the floor, reaching up to keep his hand wrapped around mine, the stubborn bastard. My palm was sticky with sweat, but I didn’t feel the need to move.
I cracked one eye open as a tired-looking Dominic stepped through the door, paper coffee cup in hand. He paused at the entrance, taking in the scene with a disgusted curl to his lips, like he’d just discovered a piece of shit on his shoe.
“Smells like sex in here,” he muttered into the rim of his coffee cup as he took a sip. “Don’t know why I even bother. Nobody listens to me anyway.”
“You want me to clean the leather?” I asked dryly, pitching my voice low to avoid waking Mason.
“I’d rather burn it,” he replied, the edge of his smirk barely visible in the dim light leaking around the blackout curtains. But his eyes were grim when he looked at me. “We need to talk.”
Dominic didn’t waste a second. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his tailored shirt, flicked it open with a practiced ease, and wordlessly headed toward the balcony, like he knew I’d follow without question.
Carefully, I pried my hand from Mason’s, wincing as I braced my side with one hand and forced myself upright. The stitches pulled, but I’d taken enough damage to know when pain meant something more serious. The shot had gone straight through, carving a chunk out of the muscle in my side, but it had missed anything critical.
With less than twelve hours left before we lost our only lead on the trafficking ring, I couldn’t afford to let it slow me down.
My head was swimming when I got to my feet, but the pre-dawn air cleared the fog as I stepped onto the balcony. I was still in my borrowed cotton boxers, and the morning washed over me like a fresh start, gentle and warm against my bare skin.
It was the first breath of peace I’d felt since all this started, and I took it deep.
It felt like a lifetime since everything went sideways, but when I thought about it, it couldn’t have been more than a few hours. Dawn was just breaking, a crack of white light on the horizon, smearing the sleeping streets in blue and gray. The muffled thrum of distant traffic was starting to pick up, and the scent of exhaust and old fry grease tickled my nose.
I glanced at Dominic, leaning on the railing beside me with a cigarette dangling from his lips, taking in the view like he saw an entirely different town than I did. I couldn’t help but wonder what had driven him to exchange Eden’s green, open spaces for this—concrete and garbage and a sky that looked like it’d never seen a break.
Dominic glanced at me from the corner of his eye, squinting through a stream of smoke. “How you feeling?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you pretending you care?”
His chuckle was laced with genuine amusement, like that was the first good joke he’d heard. “I don’t. But Mason does, and that matters.”
I slid him a skeptical side-eye, but he wasn’t looking at me. He stared into the distance, detached and isolated, like a king who’d grown bored of his kingdom. The top button of his collar was undone, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, but the weariness in his posture didn’t make him look weak. Even with the shadows under his eyes and the obvious lack of sleep from us barging in, he was poised to handle whatever came next. Guys like him were always ready, even when the hours stacked against them.
“All these investigations in my parish,” he continued, flicking ash from his cigarette, “are wrecking my bottom line. I want you out of here, but not in a body bag. Mason would never recover from that.”
“You know something.”
It wasn’t a question, but Dominic treated it as one. He finally turned his head, eyes flashing with that same cold, calculating certainty I’d seen when he nearly ran me off the road. “Oh, I do. You dodged a bullet—figuratively speaking.” He took another drag of his cigarette, smiling grimly. “If you’d gone through with that meeting last night, you’d be gator food right now. Mason’s interference saved your life.”
That’s when it hit me—there was no way Dominic could’ve known about the meeting Mason interrupted unless he’d gotten the information from someone there. Someone close. And it wasn’t Gator or his men. It wasn’t any of the people I’d been keeping tabs on.
Sylvia.
The realization was so obvious, it felt like a slap in the face.
“Sylvia,” I muttered under my breath. My eyes snapped back to Dominic, and I caught the flicker of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “You’ve been using her, haven’t you?”
“No more than you,” he acknowledged, cold and a little too amused. “She only talks to people she trusts, or people who have the power to do something for her. You might be the former...but I’m the latter. She despises Gator, and I’m in the position to make him suffer. I’ve kept him around because he’s been useful in moving my product. But he’s brought too much heat into the parish. It’s time to clean house.”
I didn’t need to waste energy on the details—just the facts. So I pushed past it. “Did she give up who shot me?”
Dominic took a slow drag from his cigarette, the ember flaring with the movement, before he exhaled the smoke in a thick cloud. “I know who’s pulling the strings.”
He said it casually, dangling the information before me like taunting a cat with a piece of string. My jaw tightened. “You gonna tell me who it was or keep playing games?”
Dominic didn’t flinch as I stared him down. He crushed his cigarette against the rail and faced me. “I’m not here to babysit,” he said flatly. “I gave you information once, and you still fucked it up. You’ve got less than twelve hours now. Then the sting in Mississippi goes live, and everything you’ve built up in this investigation goes cold.”
“I won’t let that happen,” I growled.
“You don’t have a choice.” Before I could react, Dominic reached out and pressed the heel of his hand against my bandage—hard.
“ Fuck!” I groaned and shoved him away, doubling over and clutching at my bandage. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m proving a point,” he said harshly. “You’re out of commission, Silas. You’ve been made, and I’m not letting you turn it over to more feds. They’ll just fuck it all up like they always do, and those girls who’ve been slipping through your fingers for a goddamn year? They won’t survive the night. This is my city, Silas. You want to get things done, you let me handle it.”
I belted out an incredulous laugh, straightening up, teeth grinding against the pain.
He leaned in slightly, making sure his words hit their mark. “It’s the only way,” he said. “I’m getting rid of the head of the operation. I’ll do it my way—clean, quick, no questions asked. You need to be ready for the fallout.”
I worked my teeth so hard my jaw creaked. Whoever was pulling Gator’s strings was exactly who we needed. Dominic was right; if this fell apart, we wouldn’t get another shot. And I knew myself well enough to know I’d lose sleep over it for the rest of my life.
“You’re not asking for my opinion,” I said slowly.
Dominic sighed. “I’m used to dealing with people who have different ethics. I know better than to give too many details. They’ll only put you in a tough spot. All you need to know is that I’m taking care of it. Call your handler and tell them the girls will be delivered on time, but the shot caller is in the wind.”
I shook my head, rejecting it automatically. “Out of the question,” I muttered, but it was a knee-jerk reaction. The job was all I had left. Without it, I was nothing. If I let Dominic take the reins, my career would be finished. After the disastrous end to the op in New Orleans, this was my last chance to redeem myself.
But then Marie’s words came back to me, uninvited: “You’re tired, Silas. You’ve lost track of what you’re doing it for. Who you’re doing it for.”
I had no idea when I’d stopped being able to separate the mission from my life. When did this all stop being about saving people and start being about… saving face? Hanging onto something because it was all I had left? All I’d built for myself?
The truth hit me, and it wasn’t pretty. I’d been empty all my life, and that had made it so easy to slip into other people’s lives, lie to hundreds of faces, and disappear without ever questioning the consequences. But the job wasn’t the thing keeping me grounded anymore. The moment Mason walked into my bar, my world shifted. I’d stopped faking my life and started feeling what it was like to be alive. I wanted more than just the constant pull of duty. I wanted… him.
What mattered now wasn’t my career. It was justice. I could force Dominic to hand over the information, and maybe we’d bring in the shot caller, but not without sacrifice. Some of those girls would never make it home. I’d do whatever it took, even if it meant working with the devil himself, to ensure that didn’t happen.
I let out a harsh breath and released the anchor that had been dragging me down for years.
I was done.
“You take care of this,” I said slowly, “and you make sure every girl who's still breathing stays breathing. You hear me? You don’t walk away from this, Dominic. Not with blood on your hands.”
His expression darkened and shifted to something almost pitying. “You think I’m gonna leave those girls hanging?” he scoffed. “This is my parish. You’re not the only one who’s invested here.”
But he wasn’t done. He leaned in close and said in a tone that felt like a deal being struck, “I’ll handle this for you, but you owe me something in return. If I pull your ass out of the fire, you have to make a choice. You tell Mason the truth, or you get the hell out of his life.”
“Deal,” I said tightly.
“Good.” Dominic’s smile was shark-like as he nodded toward the apartment. “Here’s your chance.”
I turned, following his gaze to the glass door. Mason sat on the couch, leaning forward, hands locked between his knees. His eyes were sharp, narrowed in that way he did when he was dissecting every damn thing I said. The grim set of his jaw told me he wasn’t missing a single word, and my stomach dropped.