My head pulsed with every beat of my heart, my tongue felt like it was three sizes too big, and most importantly, there was a black bag over my head.

With every breath I took, I could feel the fabric conforming to my lips, trying to follow the air I inhaled and then puffing away from me with every exhale. I could tell that there was a light on somewhere in the room, but I could only get the faintest hint of it, as well as the hum of electricity.

I tried to move my hands, only to meet with a cold resistance. I knew that feeling more than I’d like to admit—these were handcuffs. Wherever the hell I was, they weren’t playing around with shit like zip-ties or rope. No, they sprang for the real deal, and that narrowed down the kind people I might be dealing with and gave me something to ponder while I wished in vain for a hairpin.

I was sitting on a hard, metal chair that was fastened to the floor—the kind that cops usually kept in their interrogation rooms. But when the hell did cops start drugging people they were planning to bring in for questioning? No, this wasn’t the local PD. If these jackasses were any kind of law enforcement, I was betting on federal. But this seemed shady even for the FBI, and this kind of shit certainly wouldn’t fly in any court of law. It felt like the more I started to deduce, the more questions seemed to come along with it.

And even if I managed to get out of the cuffs, I have no idea where I’m going, I thought, leaning forward until I hit the hard edge of a solid surface—a table, maybe. More and more, I was sure that this was some kind of interrogation room, and that wasn’t the sort of shit that Russian mobsters kept on standby—they were more the kind who would beat the shit out of you in a back alley for information before they put one through your head.

Might be best to stay put for right now and see what happens. If they wanted me dead, they wouldn’t have bothered cuffing me to a chair.

So I waited, listening for even the slightest hint that someone was about to collect me or question me, or whatever the hell they were planning to do. It was the wait more than anything that had me on edge… and thinking about what they were planning to do to Chrissy.

The last thing I could remember before I blacked out was Chrissy crumpling to the ground at the feet of a man clad in all-black combat gear, his face hidden behind a matching balaclava. It wasn’t even a second later that I felt the sting of a needle in my own neck, and I was down before I could even think to defend myself. I could only hope that she was in at least a similar situation as me, kept somewhere safe, if restrained. But one thing was for sure; if they had decided to keep me alive, then I had to guess that Chrissy was at least still breathing—after all, between a biker and a mafia princess, I could only imagine that she was more valuable alive than I was.

With no frame of reference it was hard to tell how long I was sitting there, but by the time my head had stopped hurting I heard the sound of a doorknob being turned and the soft tapping of soles on a concrete floor. Someone had finally come for me, I can only hope they weren’t planning to execute me.

“Wakey, wakey, sunshine,” said a voice from beyond the veil of black fabric before someone yanked it off my head. I felt some strange sense of déjà vu as I heard this voice, like I’d heard it somewhere before—somewhere recently.

Two shapeless black shadows stood before me, partially blocking the sting of the lights. I shut my eyes tight in an attempt to give myself time to adjust, drawing a few derisive chuckles from the men standing across from me.

“They always forget to shut their eyes when the hood comes off,” one of them said to the other, who gave an amused grunt in response. “I mean, that’s just common sense, right?”

“I don’t think he’s got any,” the familiar voice said, “I mean, he was just fucking Nicky’s kid—how much common sense could he really have?”

I opened my eyes just a bit, letting the light filter through until I was finally able to stare at the two bastards who were grinning at me from across the metal table. It was right then that I finally knew where I’d heard that voice before, and suddenly I felt like I was back in the strip club, looking at the Hawaiian-shirt jackass who’d bumped into me—the same guy I’d seen at the hotel while Chrissy was making her phone call.

“Who the hell are you?” I asked, sounding like I’d just got done gargling rocks. “Where am I?”

“No,” the once-Hawaiian-shirted man said, shaking his head, “you don’t get to ask questions. We didn’t bring you here to have a conversation. We brought you here to deliver a message.”

Both men sat down in a pair of chairs opposite me, the one I didn’t recognize dropping a thick file down with a thud. In the top left of the file was a white label with the word “FALCONE” typed in bold, along with a string of letters and numbers that I could only assume was some kind of case designation.

“This is Agent Smith,” Hawaiian-shirt said, shoving his thumb in the direction of his friend. “I’m Agent Donaldson. And you’re conspiring to move drug money across state lines.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, my brow furrowing as Donaldson locked eyes with me. “The Hounds of Hell don’t deal with illegal drugs.”

Both agents gave me a smile that I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. Then Agent Smith steepled his fingers as his partner continued to speak.

“Sure, it might not be illegal on your home turf,” the agent said, his tone smug, “and buying things with money you earned from it would be fine, so long as you didn’t take it into another state—y’see weed’s still illegal where the federal government is concerned, and that means that transporting any money that’s made directly in conjunction with its sale across state lines is a federal offence. Which means that the moment one red cent crosses that border to, say, repay an investor for their generous contribution to starting a dispensary with your biker buddies, you’ll be thrown into a federal prison faster than you can even say, ‘I’m a piece of shit.’”

My stomach grew taut as the agent went on about just how he planned to screw me. I knew what he was doing, he wanted to make sure I knew that if I didn’t play their game--whatever game that happened to be--I would be completely fucked.

“All right,” I said, still straining against the handcuffs. “You made you point. If I don’t play ball, me and probably a lot of my club brothers are going to have to worry about dropping the soap. Now, what do you want?”

“You know your new friend, Nicky Falcone?” Smith asked. “The guy whose daughter you were just giving it to?”

“Fuck you,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at the two of them. “What about Falcone?”

“Well, you see, Don Falcone’s got a bit of a problem—a problem that he’s too much of an idiot to even see that he’s got.”

“He’s got a traitor in his little club,” Donaldson said, pulling the file in front of him and flipping it open. Inside were a collection of photos and typed reports, including what looked like some transcripts from phone calls. “And as much as people like Falcone are a problem in this great nation of ours, he’s a problem we’d prefer to have than, say, a different one.”

“The devil you know, and all that shit,” Smith added, taking out his phone and fiddling with it.

“We know that you and your new girlfriend have been getting into some trouble where the Russians are concerned,” Donaldson continued, “and since we both are having the same problem, we thought we’d offer a little bit of help.”

“The enemy of my enemy—” Smith started to say before Donaldson cut him off.

“Every seen this guy?” he asked, shoving a glossy surveillance picture of a man wearing an all-black suit, a thick beard covering his jaw. I recognized him immediately.

“He was in the penthouse,” I said. “He was leading the assholes who tried to kill us.”

“That man is named Sergei,” Donaldson said, “and he’s a captain in the Russian mob. Kind of a dick, if I’m being honest. He specializes in human trafficking.”

I took a moment to memorize his face, putting a name to the grade-A fuck who’d almost shot me. In general, I liked to be on a first name basis with people who wanted me dead.

“And what does he want with me and Chrissy?” I asked. “Is all of this really because she’s a witness to what happened at the club?”

“Partly,” Donaldson said with a nod. “But Sergei has a bigger game in mind, one that involves your girlfriend’s daddy and everything he holds dear.”

“What the hell do the Russians want with Falcone?” I asked, “I mean, they know that if they take him out, then they’ll have to deal with all of the other families. It’s insane.”

“Maybe,” Smith said, “if just taking out Falcone was their plan.”

“Which it isn’t,” Donaldson continued. “Sergei doesn’t want to get rid of the Italians, he just wants to be able to do what he does without anyone getting pissed, and Don Falcone’s made it more than clear that he won’t have any human trafficking in his territory.”

I stared, bewildered. “Then what the hell is he playing at? If he’s not trying to take over, then—”

“Remember when we talked about Nicky F. having a traitor in his organization?” Smith asked, plucking a photo out of the folder and pushing it across the table toward me. This photo had Sergei in it like the other one, but also had someone else, someone I could make out very clearly.

“Caputo,” I said, less of a question and more of a confirmation of what I felt I already knew. “That piece of shit.”

“We heard your conversation with Falcone,” Donaldson said, “and that burner nearly cost you your lives—or it would have, if you hadn’t told Falcone where you were staying. Sadly, that meant Caputo also knew, which was how the Russians found you so fast.”

“You’re lucky we got there when we did, or you and your girlfriend would have a bunch of new holes in you,” Smith added.

“Lonnie’s not too happy with how he’s been treated,” Donaldson went on. “And unlike Nicky, Caputo doesn’t give a shit if a few girls get shipped in and out of Vegas to whoever can pay for it—so long as he gets his cut.

“The plan, as far as we understand it, is to make Falcone look like an idiot—so much so that he’ll be forced to step down, which leaves his second in command, good ol’ Lonnie, to fill his shoes.”

“So all of this is just to make Falcone look incompetent?” I asked, shaking my head. “Shit, killing him sounds like it would have been simpler.”

“The Russians don’t want a war. They couldn’t afford it, and Sergei wouldn’t have the rest of his brothers behind him if someone like your friend Carliogne came looking for blood. So he wants to put someone more friendly at the head of the Falcone family. He gets what he wants, and Caputo gets a little bit richer.”

“So why tell me all of this?” I said with a shrug. “I’ve already told Don Falcone about what I thought of Caputo, and he told me to go fuck myself. How is me knowing the whole story going to make this any more believable?”

“Because before, you didn’t have any proof,” Smith said, reaching down just out of my view beneath the table. He dropped another—much smaller—file down on the table. “We’re giving you everything you need to implicate Caputo in this. You just need to hand it over to Falcone.”

“And you two couldn’t have done this shit yourselves—or, y’know, arrested Sergei and Caputo?”

“As much as we love to be informed,” Donaldson said, “we also like to keep our hands clean and our faces off the radar. If you need to drop our agency as your source, fine. But staying physically anonymous at least gives us undercover opportunities in the future. Which is why we’re only give you the information to out Caputo. We’ve got bigger plans for Sergei.”

“Right. ‘Cause he’ll be so fuckin’ pleased to hear the feds are involved,” I muttered. “What the hell else am I supposed to say about this shit, huh? That I bought the pics off eBay?”

“What you say is totally up to you,” Donaldson said mildly.

“But we’ve already told you what happens if you say no,” Smith remarked, giving another snort of amusement. “Do we have a deal?”

I stared at the two men, then down at the file currently set between us. If their little plan worked and Falcone actually believed anything that was in there, then I could put an end to all of this with as little mess as possible. Shit, I could be back with the Hounds of Hell by the end of the week.

But where did that leave me and Chrissy?

I leaned back in my chair. The only answer I could come up with right then was that it left us in circumstances that would be way more favorable than our current ones were.

“I don’t see what other choice I have,” I said at last.

Goddamn, was I beginning to regret ever setting foot in Earthly Delights.