Page 17 of The Wicked

My gaze moved toDevil,and my stomach curled. Was this a feeling of irritation—or anger—or was I simply reacting negatively to the countless cigars I had smoked today?

“Should I proceed?” Casmiro asked, and I nodded once, my gaze shifting to the short one again when I caught movement from her end. Her face was pulled up in a tight frown, her posture rigid as Casmiro stood up to retrieve whatever case file he had put together about their first task.

I tuned him out, choosing some time alone in my own head to study these people, starting with the one who claimed to speak for this… band of thieves: Zahra Faizan, a twenty-six-year-old woman whose mouth spoke before her brain filtered the words, a woman whose eyes remained impossible to read. Her looks were deceiving, with a diamond-shaped face, and curly dark brown hair cut below her jaw; careless and uncared for, she looked too innocent for the character she portrayed.

It disturbed me. Her appearance. Her face, her hair—if my mother were here, she would have whipped out a brush and styled the hell out of it—though the color suited the warm undertones of her light brown skin and sharp brown eyes. Thatpointed nose and those full lips—her gaze caught mine, and her frown deepened, her upper lip turning up in an irritated snare as she raised a brow as if to ask why I was staring.

Quite fascinating.

The fear I saw the other day was gone. It made me question if that emotion had been fear or defeat. Over the years in this business, I’d learned that there was an extensive line between those two feelings.

“Marino?” I caught myself, blinking before looking away from Zahra to Angelo, who wore a cautious look on his face while Casmiro stared with slight concern.

“What?” I asked them, discarding the cigar.

“Oh.” Angelo cleared his throat. “You were supposed to update me on Dion Juan Pablo’s next visit to Lazzo Blu, but I never heard—”

“In three weeks. It should give the girl’s shoulder time to heal so it won’t raise suspicions.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her raise her hand like she wanted to ask a question, and this was a classroom. “The name’s Zahra, in case you’ve forgotten. I know old age can be a bitch.”

I paused.

Annoyance and irritation had me clenching my jaw.

I looked back at her. “Don’t force me to make the unpleasant thoughts running through my head a reality.”

She dropped her hand. “Maybe when you start addressing me by my name, you won’t have to harbor unpleasant thoughts, or kill me, which would eventually result in you killing us all, and then who would help you with whatever you need to get from Dion Juan Pablo, who, mind you, isn’t going to be at Lazzo Blu, but at Eden, because he probably knows people like you would want to pay him a little visit, hence why everyone who isn’t us would think he would be at Lazzo Blu.”

“Hold on; you know Dion Juan Pablo?” Casmiro asked.

“Uh…” the Upper one said. “He’s kind of like a publicfigure? You lot know what the gram is, right? He posts everything about his life there. We also happen to know through the gram that he is gunning for control over state affairs in Turin, and of course, we know it’s for the Pablos, and they’ll most likely handle private affairs; the people don’t know that though, hence why there’s massive support from them because he markets himself as a people person.”

“Dion is also a very cunning and foolish man, getting high on his drug supply,” Devil added, “while boning for the power at the high seats, just like Marino is. And we know how difficult it is to breach his walls.”

“For your people, not for us,” Zahra completed.

Then there was silence, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock behind me, as we all watched each other until—

“And we killed his dog.”

“Oh my fucking God, Milk,” Dog said.

“You just had to contribute,” Zahra said.

“Why would you say that?” Upper said.

“Fucking hell, Milk,” Devil said.

They all spoke in sync.

“What!” Milk whined in defense. “I thought we were all saying stuff we knew about Dion.”

Zahra groaned. “Not that kinda stuff.”

“You killed his dog?” Angelo asked with confused amusement.

“It was an honest mistake. I sincerely thought it was dog food, and the big guy was giving me theI am hungryeyes.Please feed me, kind lady;what the hell was I to do, leave it to starve?”