Norman scowled at Valentine Shepherd’s back as she marched away, swinging her hips like she outranked him. It was all he could do to keep himself from chasing the bitch down and beating her face in. Why his Army contemporaries saw fit to give people like her leadership positions, he’d never understand. If the military insisted on clinging to the notion of diversity while ignoring the obvious differences between men and women’s physical capabilities, they could at least put a premium on respect.
When he was sure she was gone, he tossed his shovel to the side and hurried back inside his house. In his den, he whipped out his cell phone and dialed as he paced across the Oriental rug.
“What do you want, Norm?” Dean Price answered. “I’m meeting with a client in five minutes.”
“Do you know a woman named Valentine Shepherd?”
After a long pause, Dean said, “She was an acquaintance of my son’s. Why?”
“Because she was just here asking questions about Lester Carressa. Why the fuck would she do that?”
“I don’t know. She’s aware that Robby was on the team of lawyers representing Maxwell Carressa—”
“How did she connect us? What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t tell her anything.” Dean’s voice took on an edge of anger. “For some reason she thinks Robby’s death is related to Carressa’s case. Why would she think that?”
Norman cringed. Calling Dean had been a mistake. Just when Norm had finally managed to quell Dean’s suspicions that his son’s “accidental” death was nothing more than a coincidence, Norm had stoked the flames again. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Gino behind him, lounging on the russet-colored leather sofa with his arms and legs crossed as he bounced a foot in the air, his thin lips twisted in a crooked smile. Goddamn Gino was like a fucking ninja—or a shadow, always there but only sometimes visible.
Norman turned away from Gino’s distracting presence. “She didn’t mention Robby,” he said to Dean, “but she’s connecting the dots somehow. You need to get her off the trail.”
Dean scoffed. “She doesn’t know anything. She can’t know anything. Just ignore her. I need to go.” He hung up.
Norman gripped his phone hard, then harder, until a crack appeared at its edge.
“Overreacting again, I see,” Gino said in his obnoxious singsong voice.
“Shut up.” Norman tossed his phone on his antique desk and took a couple of deep breaths. “How much so far?”
“Seven point six eight million.”
“Goddammit. There’s no way to move it faster?”
Gino laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back. “Not unless you want to catch the attention of the FBI. Oh, by the way—I saw Maxwell Carressa parked in a car a block from here, waiting for that woman who paid you a visit, I’m guessing.”
Norman slammed his fist down on the desk. “Fuck!”
“Don’t get mad at me. I did what you told me to. Killing the Price boy was supposed to clear our path to success, right? So you tell me why we’ve got Lester’s kid and Little Red Riding Bitch on our case.”
“I don’t know why. It wasn’t supposed to be like this…” He’d been told eliminating Robby was critical to the plan—exactly how, he still didn’t know. He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. It was a little longer than he preferred, but his campaign advisers told him that voters wouldn’t warm to the close-cropped military look. He glanced at Gino. “Criminal activity is your area of expertise. So how would you handle it?”
Norman watched Gino run his tongue across his lips as he considered their options—first his top lip, then the bottom. A heat clawed its way out of Norman’s belly and down to his groin, pushing bile up his throat in its wake.
No, not here. Not again.
“Keep eliminating the weak links,” Gino said. “Robby’s gone—though that turned out to be pointless—and your boy toy’s been removed from the picture—”
“Don’t call him that,” Norman growled. “He wasn’t my ‘boy toy.’ We just…I just…That little faggot tricked me.”
Gino laughed. “Sure he did, Norm.”
Norman’s fists tightened into leathery balls. Goddamn Gino, he knew how to push his buttons. He hadn’t even known Gino for that long, met him through a friend-of-a-friend with connections to the criminal underground, but the skinny Italian man with shiny suits and a smart mouth had managed to work his way under Norman’s skin in record time.
“Next in the chain would be Georgie Porgie,” Gino said. “Get as much out of him as possible, then put him down. That piggy’ll squeal eventually.”
“Fine. Do it. The Carressa kid, too.” War always involved casualties. The weak were the first ones to go.
“Uh-uh. We won’t get away with killing a rich white boy, not so soon after Robby. Better to convince your pal Dean to pull the trigger on slipping the incriminating evidence he’s got on Maxwell to the DA. That’ll get the Carressa kid out of the picture. Maybe the redhead will disappear with him.”
Norman nodded and cracked his knuckles. Dead people were easier to deal with, but Gino was the expert. Maybe after he became mayor and some time had passed, he could arrange for Maxwell and his whore to have an accident. Tie up those loose ends.
“You look stressed,” Gino said. His eyes drifted down from Norman’s face.
“Don’t.”
Gino chuckled. “It’s hard running for office. Everyone needs to let off steam now and then.” He stood and walked toward Norman.
Every muscle in Norman’s body tensed, ready for a fight—a fight within himself. “Stay away from me, you fucking fruit.”
Like the ninja that he was, Gino’s hand shot out lightning-quick and grabbed Norman’s groin. Almost as fast, Norman grabbed the lapels of Gino’s suit coat and yanked him close, staring murder into his eyes, ready to slam his skinny ass into the ground and end this game once and for all.
“How will you clean up this mess you’ve made without me, Norm?” Gino said as he ran his fingers across the outline of Norman’s hard cock beneath the khakis.
Norman moved his lips to tell Gino to go to hell, to crawl back under the rock he’d come from, that he didn’t need him for anything, that he had it all under control, but nothing came out. Gino popped the button off Norman’s pants, the sound of unzipping as loud as a freight train, the feel of the air on his bare butt as sharp as a needle to the eye.
“No…” Norman said, but it came out as more of a moan when Gino knelt down and dug his fingers into Norman’s ass cheeks, then flicked that sharp tongue against the tip of Norman’s penis exactly four times before taking the whole thing in his mouth. Gino took his time sliding his lips up and down Norman’s cock so Norman could feel every movement of Gino’s tongue, every millimeter his wet lips slid down the shaft, every squeeze of his hand cupping the testicles. He was so excruciatingly slow that his legs began to shake and he whimpered like a baby for Gino to get it over with.
When Norman teetered at the precipice of his shame, Gino shoved him away like a child he’d gotten tired of playing with. They faced each other for a moment, the Italian’s flushed mouth warped into an evil grin, snickering, as the colonel considered snapping his neck.
“Turn around,” Gino said.
“Fuck you.”
Gino grabbed Norman’s arm and spun him, then bent him over his desk. Norman’s bear-like body could have easily resisted, but his mind was weak. When the urge seized him, his military training and moral scruples dissolved in the sickening heat of the moment.
“I hate you,” Norman murmured when Gino thrust himself into the colonel and painful ecstasy shot through every nerve of his body. “I fucking hate you.”
“I know,” Gino said, his voice slick with contempt. In and out he went, over and over, faster and faster, their thighs slapping into each other, grunting together in mutual desperation for release.
This is the last time, Norman swore as he came with a shudder on the rug under their feet. Every time he told himself it would be the last, but he meant it this time. Like last time. Norman cringed as Gino tensed with his own climax, pushing his life force where God and nature didn’t intend it to go, just to spite Norman.
The last time.