He swayed so Marcus ordered, “Make him keep his knees.”
Louie dropped his eyes to the man.
Marcus looked to Shirleen but he said nothing.
“Figure that’s my invitation to take my leave,” she muttered, shot him a grin, and said louder, “Time’s right, Marcus, Shirleen’ll be wantin’ to meet your girl.”
Shirleen was a resourceful businesswoman.
She was also loyal as they came.
“I’ll be certain that’s arranged.”
Her grin got wide and white, then she looked to Darius.
Eyes to his aunt, he tipped his head to the door.
She nodded to him, looked through everyone in the room, except the man on the floor she walked right up to.
“Aunt Shirleen,” Darius growled in a low, warning tone.
“You’re a pig,” she whispered down at the man on his knees.
His head swung not entirely in his control to the side in order to look away.
Shirleen stood in contemplation over him for several long moments before she turned and walked from the room, her high heels sounding loud in the open space.
When that sound disappeared, Marcus looked to Nightingale.
“Darius tells me this was you.”
Nightingale tilted up his chin. “Got a new tracker. He’s good. So far, no one’s been able to hide from him. When we were getting nothing in Denver, we set him on it. He found this guy in Montana. Persuaded him to share his story. That being, Smithie gave Jimmy Marker the guy’s name from credit card receipts. Marker rolled up to his house with some squads, so he knew your woman pressed charges. He was twitchy, not sure how she’d play it, so he was also on the lookout. Before the boys could get into position, he took off out the back. He waited until the coast was clear, got as much together as he could, and left town.”
Marcus gave him a nod and looked to Stark but said to Nightingale, “In future business, you don’t need a second.”
“Luke’s here because he helped Vance do the persuading and he’s feelin’ the need to see this through,” Nightingale responded.
That explained the bloody knuckles.
“Your tracker?” Marcus asked, eyes still on Stark.
“Vance needs clear of certain things,” Nightingale answered.
This meant his tracker was an ex-con.
It was good to know Nightingale was protective. It said a great deal. It was also good to know Nightingale hired with a view to the future, not judging what was in the past. That said more.
Marcus spoke directly to Stark. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Stark was known not to be a big talker. This he proved by not replying but also not moving.
“You don’t want to be here,” Marcus warned.
Stark spoke again without speaking, doing this crossing his arms on his chest.
Marcus looked to Nightingale. “You should take your man and go.”
“I’m feelin’ the need to see this through, too.”
Marcus held his gaze. “Detective Marker is not going to close this case.”
Nightingale did nothing but put his hands on his hips.
“Your father is a cop, your brother is a cop, and your best friend is a cop,” Marcus pointed out.
“Yeah, and none of them are here,” Nightingale returned.
“You’re also not going to dissuade me,” Marcus shared.
“Am I doing any dissuading?” Nightingale asked.
Marcus studied him.
Then he told him quietly, “I’m protecting you.”
A flash shot through Nightingale’s eyes.
Rage.
“I saw that fuckin’ tape,” he bit out. “And just sayin’, so did Vance and so did Luke. So I think you more than anybody get me when I say Luke and me feel the need to see this through.”
He was young.
He was good at what he did, but he was young.
He’d learn.
Rage had no place in what they did, Nightingale’s place skirting the edges of it, Marcus’s right in the middle of it.
You gave in to your rage, you got sloppy.
In their game, sloppy men didn’t survive.
You planned.
You executed.
Then you moved on.
“Let me protect you,” Marcus urged.
They locked eyes and it took some time but eventually Nightingale proved he wasn’t only good, he was smart. He did this jerking up his chin, cutting his gaze through Stark, and he dropped his hands from his hips before he cast a glance at Tucker and strode away.
Stark stared at Marcus another beat before he dropped his arms from his chest and followed Nightingale.
Marcus waited until the sound of the heavy door closing echoed through the room and only then did he look at Darius.
“It’s arranged?” he asked.
“Zano and Townsend are both on board.” Darius walked to Marcus, pulling a gun out of the back of his jeans and offering it Marcus’s way.
Marcus took it.
Darius continued, “They find anything, it’ll be linked to the House of Shade. Everyone wants Shade out. He’s sliding, somethin’ surfaces with this, things’ll get a lot more slippery.”
“Is something going to surface?” Marcus asked.
Darius shrugged. Then he smiled.
Christ.
Cold as stone.
A long time ago, Shirleen’s now-dead husband made things very difficult for Vincent Shade. He was holding on mostly because there was always enough crime to go around, and even stupid and completely insane, Shade managed to find his share.
He’d been a nuisance for some time.
Darius was correct, everyone wanted him gone. It was just that, considering he was only a nuisance, no one felt any need to expend much effort to see to that task.
Marcus could not know if Shirleen and Darius had reason to lose patience and intended to deal a killing blow.
And he didn’t care.
He looked to the man on his knees.
“Vincetti’s clean up,” Darius muttered and Marcus knew he was on the move. “Dom and his boys’re en route. Ren is not in the know on this and Vito wants it kept that way.”
“Thank you,” Marcus replied.
“Serious, this piece of shit, don’t mention it,” Darius said as his farewell.
Marcus waited again until he heard the door close.
Then he focused on the man’s eyes.
He was looking up at Marcus.
“Why?” Marcus asked.
“Just finish it,” the guy mumbled.
“Why?” Marcus repeated.
“Fuck!” the man exploded, the force of it making him veer forward so he had to put a hand out to catch his fall. He didn’t right himself but tipped his head back and shouted, “Just finish it!”
Louie pulled him back up to his knees by his hair.
“Fucking finish it!” he screamed, ripping his head from Louie’s hold, listing again but keeping his knees.
“Why?” Marcus asked again.
“We gonna play this game?” the man asked snidely.
“I’m thinking you might not have absorbed this, but this is my game, so yes, we’re going to play it.”
The man glared at him then spat, “Had me ejected.”
“It’s my understanding you put your hands on her during a private dance. That’s not allowed at Smithie’s.”
“She’s a fuckin’ stripper,” he hissed.
Marcus ignored that and he could because he’d learned early how to control his rage.
“You broke the rules, she had you ejected, so you raped her?”
“I know she’s yours. I’ve heard your name. Didn’t know it at the time but I sure as fuck know it now. I also know nothin’ I say is gonna stop what you’re gonna do. Maybe just make it last longer and be less fun, and serious, man, that guy with a beard and his Indian friend weren’t a barrel of laughs. So not that I’m invitin’ that shit, but just sayin’, to
top the joyride I had with those fuckin’ guys, you’d have to get creative. But how about we skip this bullshit and you just fucking finish it?”
Interesting.
Shirleen and Darius hadn’t played with him at all.
Only Stark and Nightingale’s tracker.
This meant Nightingale and his team had no qualms with a variety of aspects of their business.
Marcus set these thoughts aside, studied the man before him for some time, and then whispered, “You can’t answer me.”
The man looked away and Louie used his hair to make him look back.
“Fuck,” he bit out.
“Do you have a mother?” Marcus asked.
“Fuck you,” the man spat.
“Sisters?”
“Fuck…you!” he leaned forward and shouted.
Louie pulled him back.
“You do, so why?” Marcus pressed.
“Because I could, all right?” he yelled. “Because I fuckin’ could and she couldn’t fuckin’ stop me that time, could she?”
Marcus tilted his head to the side. “That’s it? Because you could?”
“Yeah, because I could.”
“So you’re telling me you thought she bested you and your dick is so small, you couldn’t bear that blow so you needed to show her who had the power?”
“Why do you do all the shit you do to wear your fancy suit and have your men at your back?” the man countered. “Don’t stand there thinkin’ you’re better than me when you got me on my knees and you got a gun in your hand I know you’re gonna use. Because for that reason right there, you aren’t better than me, asshole.”
“That’s an interesting, but erroneous, comparison.”
“Whatever,” the guy muttered.
“I’ve never raped a woman.”
“Oh, good. You’re a saint,” he bit back.
“I’ve never ordered a woman to be raped.”
“Whatever, motherfucker, just end this.”
“The games I play, every player knows the score.”
“Jesus, put you in a suit, you’re a superhero.”
“The point I’m trying to make is, she was an innocent woman walking through a parking lot not having any idea someone was going to commit a violent act using her body to do it. And what I’m trying to understand is how you could be that someone who’d commit that violent act using an innocent woman to do it.”
“I mighta got my bell rung pretty fuckin’ good by those two fuckin’ assholes, but I’m not missin’ your point.”
Simply out of curiosity, Marcus asked, “Have you done this before?”
“Never taken it all the way.” He suddenly sneered at Marcus, showing him a set of bloody teeth, of which three were missing in a way Marcus knew they’d only been recently lost. “Your girl was my first.” The sneer faded and a different kind of ugliness replaced it as he shook his head. “But no bitch disrespects me. No bitch. I had my way of communicatin’ that, and I don’t give a fuck I’m on my knees, I got no regrets. A bitch has it comin’, that’s just the way. You’re too weak to get that, not my problem.”
At that, Marcus heard from behind him Brady pull in a hiss of breath through his teeth.
This was not because the man on his knees had insulted Marcus.
Or, not entirely.
It was because Brady had three younger sisters and two shit-for-brains parents that got their asses incarcerated, one three weeks after the other, leaving an eighteen-at-the-time Brady the only one who could look after those girls like Marcus’s sister had done, or let them hit the system.
He’d decided to look after his sisters.
Fortunately, he’d found Marcus not long after and Marcus helped him do that.
Nevertheless, for obvious reasons, Brady, like Marcus, wasn’t a big fan of any man thinking it’s just the way if “a bitch has it comin’.”
Down low, Marcus swung a hand slightly out and he felt the heat of Brady’s anger at his back subside.
He’d taught Brady the lesson about rage too.
Marcus focused again on the man.
“She was going to get her lip gloss.”
“Do I care?”
“Her laugh sounds like bells.”
“Again, asswipe, do I care?”
Again, Marcus studied him and he did it for a good length of time.
Closely.
“No,” Marcus finally said, speaking quietly. “You don’t. You don’t care. And that’s it. That’s why you could do what you did. Because you don’t care. I was right. You’re nothing but an animal.”
“You think I’m gonna beg for mercy, I’m not, fuckwad. Again, don’t give a fuck she’s convinced you different. That gash don’t matter. Most gash don’t matter. But her? She’s a fucking stripper!”
The gunshot echoed loud through the room.
The man slumped to his back.
Marcus turned, Brady came to his side, and Marcus handed him the gun.
“You’ll coordinate things with Dom?” he asked.
Brady nodded.
Marcus took that in.
Then he walked out of the warehouse.
* * * *
Sitting in the back of his car, Ronald driving, the phone held to his ear, Marcus heard it ring three times before Smithie answered with, “It’s after four in the fuckin’ morning.”
“It’s done.”
There was silence then, “What’s done?”
“Daisy’s safe.”
More silence before a muttered, “That Nightingale guy.”
Marcus said nothing.
“This does not make me happy,” Smithie announced.
Marcus felt his neck get tight. “How can this not make you happy?”
“’Cause, brother, whatever got done got done without me gettin’ my licks in.”
Marcus let out a breath. “You’re not that man.”
“Maybe you don’t know me too good.”
“I know you, Smithie, and you’re not that man. But I am.”
“Fuck,” Smithie bit out, his way of conceding the point.
“She’s safe. It’s done. We can all move on.”
Abruptly, Smithie asked, “You love her?”
Without hesitation, Marcus answered, “Yes.”
Smithie was back to muttering. “Fuck, now I gotta find a new dancer.”
Marcus smiled into the dark. “She likes to dance, Smithie, but yes. Eventually, she’ll be busy having our children, and my guess is Daisy will feel the need to put all her attention into that.”
“I like you enough to hope you don’t have girls,” Smithie mumbled.
Marcus hoped he did.
“Thank you for being the first man in her life she could trust,” Marcus said.
Again, there was silence.
After Marcus gave him time for that, Smithie replied, “Thank you for bein’ the second.”
Then Smithie hung up.
Marcus flipped his phone shut and turned his head to look out the window in order to watch Denver slide by on his way home to Daisy.
* * * *
“Boss,” Ronald growled.
Marcus stared out the windshield at Lee Nightingale standing beside the elevator doors, arms crossed on his chest, one booted foot up, the sole resting against the concrete.
Yes, Nightingale was good.
Marcus’s building was secure. In other words, it had armed security guards that looked after everyone, not just Marcus. There were codes. There were monitored cameras. And Nightingale looked like he’d been waiting for some time, undisturbed.
“It’s okay,” Marcus said.
Ronald swung into his spot and bit out, “Fuck!” as Marcus threw open his own door.
Lee pushed away from the wall. Marcus closed his door and met him halfway across the short space.
Nightingale shoved his hand in his pocket as Ronald warned, “Not another move.”
“It’s fine, Ronald,” Marcus said, not looking from Nightingale.
H
e pulled his hand out of his pocket, lifted it, and from his fingers dropped a necklace—delicate gold chain, at the bottom a row of pearls.
“Wasn’t the time to give you this an hour ago,” Nightingale muttered.
Marcus lifted his hand palm up.
Nightingale let the pearls go and they fell into his hand.
His fingers closed around it.
“Do you work on retainer?” Marcus asked.
Lee Nightingale’s head twitched.
And then he smiled.
* * * *
Marcus slid into bed beside Daisy, gliding a hand over the silk at her belly and pulling her back into his front.
He curled into her.
Her fingers curled to link through his at her middle.
“Everything good?” she asked sleepily.
He buried his face in her hair.
“Everything is perfect.”
Her fingers tensed in his.
He pulled her deeper into his body and whispered, “You’re safe now, darling.”
At that, her entire body tensed.
She let his hand go, turned in his arm, and slid hers around him.
He could feel her gaze in the dark.
“Are you okay?”
Marcus tangled his legs with hers.
“I’m fine, honey.” He gave her a squeeze. “Are you?”
“Peachy.”
He grinned.
She snuggled closer.
“Love you, baby,” she whispered.
“Love you too, darling.”
She stiffened then melted in his arms.
He’d had to wait to say it. He’d had to wait until he knew he’d done all he could to make it as right as he could make it.
He’d done that.
So he said it.
“A dream,” she murmured.
“Sorry?”
“You. You’re the dream a girl like me never thought she could dream.”
She was right. She’d told him she’d never given herself a prince charming.
But now she had one in the way he came.
So all that was left was to build her a castle.
And Marcus was going to take care of that too.
Epilogue
Annamae
Daisy
I stood in the suite and stared out the windows at the snow-covered mountains while Michelle closed the door behind the girls who’d done my hair and makeup.
Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick #0.5) Page 16
