LORIK
My apartment was a dump. It was the motherfucker of all dumps. If you took into consideration what my apartment looked like, you’d say I was one disgusting individual. My mom would die a slow and painful death if she had to see this place.
There were empty beer bottles scattered throughout the living room, along with dirty glasses containing the sticky residue of last week’s rum. The microwavable plastic instant meal containers were stacked up in a tower next to the kitchen sink, and the empty cans of the soda I used to quench my morning-after thirst were lined up on the counter.
The way I saw it, I was a detective, not a domesticated pansy. I had much better things to do with my time than clean, cook, and do laundry.
Talk about laundry…I’d probably need to do that soon-ish since I pulled my last clean shirt from the closet this morning.
I glanced at the heap of dirty clothes bunched up in the corner of the living room. The living room, for Christ’s sake. Okay, this could not continue.
Since I was apparently off for the rest of the day—and the rest of the month—I decided I might as well try to make my mama proud by getting rid of at least eighty percent of the germs I was currently sharing my living space with.
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to clean up most of the mess. I was a minimalist. If I didn’t have a use for shit, said shit didn’t get into my apartment. There were the basics every human being needed. Microwave, coffee machine, fridge—and it was a fucking state of the art fridge with an ice maker. Because there was nothing more annoying than when you wanted to pour that first drink of the day and realized you were out of motherfucking ice. Happened to me once, and I maxed my credit card the very next day buying that damn expensive fridge. I’d been a happy man ever since.
There was a La-Z-Boy in the living room because every man needed a La-Z-Boy. I was pretty sure it was written in the Bible somewhere. And then, of course, there was my fifty-two-inch Smart LED television set to complement my Xbox One perfectly, and the state-of-the-art surround sound for those nights I decided to piss off the neighbors.
Naturally, there was also a black leather couch where I just happened to fall asleep five nights of the week. The other two nights were usually spent in either my bed or a bed completely unfamiliar to me, next to a woman I’d familiarized myself with from the inside out—or rather, my cock did. Bottom line, my bed was used for something completely different than sleeping, which was probably why I always seemed to find pieces of condom wrappers lying around in there. Amazing how those foil packets managed to creep into the tiniest of places and remain hidden for fuck knew how long.
Then, of course, there was the cabinet—the cabinet where I kept all my investigation tidbits. The very first thing I did when I moved in was build the huge cabinet, which I bolted against the wall. Carpentry was one of my many hidden talents.
Behind those cabinet doors was all the information I’d managed to gather on the Valenti family. That cabinet was like my own personal Holy Grail.
I tossed all my laundry into a black bag and headed to the front door. Then I almost squealed like a fucking girl when I opened the door and looked straight into Anderson’s ugly-ass face.
“What the fuck, Anderson?”
He walked right by me and into my apartment. “Heard you got suspended.”
“Why don’t you come right on in?” I flung the door shut and set down the black bag.
“I told you to drop it. And you just couldn’t listen, could you?”
I turned and swung my car keys around my finger. “I guess doing what I’m told isn’t something I’ve mastered over the years.”
Anderson took a seat on the La-Z-Boy. Motherfucker. Did he not know a man’s La-Z-Boy was right up there with his woman? You didn’t touch it, you didn’t even fucking look at it, let alone use it.
“Why are you in my apartment?”
He leaned back into the La-Z-Boy, patting the armrests before gliding his hand up the smooth leather. Oh, the fucking horror.
“You’re chasing after the wrong family.” He said it so calmly, like he was discussing the weather.
I crossed my arms. “Not like I care, but what makes you think that?”
He snorted. “Fucking rookie,” he muttered. “You really need to make it less obvious that you haven’t been around here long.”
I scratched my jaw. “First, fuck you. And second, fuck you. Third, I’ve been here for four years.”
“Four years,” he scoffed. “No wonder you’re so fucking clueless.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Please tell me exactly why the fuck I’m listening to you insult me in my own damn apartment?”
“Because if you’d been here long enough, you’d know the Valentis have been around for the last fifty years.”
“God, are you that old?”
“No. I just remember my grandfather telling stories about them, about Allesandro Valenti.”
“Lorenzo’s father.” I’d done my homework. I knew the history of these motherfuckers better than I knew fifth grade math.
Anderson nodded. “They called him the Professor, a very intelligent man, just like Lorenzo. He was more popular than John Wayne in the seventies.”
I plopped down on the couch. “Is this why you’re here, to give me a fucking history lesson?”
“Like I said, you’re after the wrong goddamn family. It’s during the last five years that shit started to go wrong on these streets, am I right?”
I shook my head. “Wrong. Children started to disappear around two years ago, smartass.”
He shook his head with the most annoying smirk on his face. “Children started disappearing long before that. But no one took notice because only about two cases a year got reported. It was two years ago that it got so out of hand everyone started to notice.”
I moved to the edge of my seat. “What are you saying, Anderson?”
“When did the Mancusos move into town, Stone?”
The way he asked that question, I knew he already had the answer, but I answered it anyway. “Five years ago.” And then I clicked where he was going with this. “But it doesn’t fit into the timeframe with the child disappearances.”
Anderson lifted a brow, the corner of his mouth twitching. “If you’re as smart as you think you are, you’ll know it was about five years ago that drugs started to flow on these streets like fucking champagne at a New Year’s Eve party.” He slanted his head. “Do you think that’s a coincidence, Stone?”
“This morning I arrested a guy and found cocaine on him. He said he was dealing for the Valentis.”
“And you believed him?”
I shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because there is no fucking way anyone with half a brain would give up the name of their dealer,” he snapped his fingers, “just like that.”
“Obviously, you don’t know Gio, then. He’s one stupid individual.”
“I’m not kidding, Stone. If he was dealing for a family like the Valentis, there’s no way in hell he’d snitch on them. He’d be good as dead.”
I leaned back on the couch. “So, you think he’s lying?”
“Oh, I know he’s lying.”
“It’s a setup, then?”
“Maybe. Probably.” Anderson went to stand in front of the window, looking out. “If the Valentis are behind all the drugs and the child kidnappings, why did it only start to get out of hand two years ago when they’ve been around for fifty years?”
“Who knows? Maybe the fuckers got greedy.”
He snorted again. God, I hated when he did that. It was only cool when I did it.
“Lorenzo Valenti is guilty of a lot of things, Stone. But kidnapping children isn’t one of them, and neither is selling drugs.”
He sounded so damn sure about this fact that it made me wonder exactly what had him so completely convinced about Valenti’s innocence. Sure, it was a bit suspicious that Gio gave up the name so easily, but then again, Gio wasn’t exactly what you’d call street smart.
I got up from the couch and stood next to him. “Do I want to know why you sound so fucking sure about all this?”
He placed his hand on my shoulder, and all I could think was why the fuck is this man touching me?
“I’ve been around a long time, rookie. Trust me when I say it’s the Mancusos you want.”
I peered down at his hand on my shoulder before looking up at him. “This still doesn’t mean we’re partners.”
“Of course, it doesn’t.” He removed his hand and walked to the front door. He paused as he reached for the doorknob. “Besides, your ass is suspended, remember?”
Ah, fuck. I forgot about that for at least ten minutes, and it felt so good until this asshole ruined it.
And then it occurred to me. “If you know I’m suspended, why did you just tell me all this?”
He was already halfway out the door when he stopped and glanced my way. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just did my duty as your partner to check how you were doing after getting suspended.” A wicked half grin curved up the corner of his mouth, and then he closed the door behind him.
This time it was my turn to snort. What an asshole—albeit an asshole who just scored some major points.
It pained me to admit it, but maybe he was right. Maybe I’d been concentrating too much on the wrong damn family. The heat had been on the Valentis for so long, the Mancusos’ movements went almost completely unnoticed.
Clearly, I needed to spend some time investigating the Mancusos to see what I could come up with. I still wasn’t convinced I was wrong about the Valentis being behind this town turning into a criminal dumpster. But if—and that was a big fucking if—Anderson was right, I needed to start paying closer attention to the other Italian family in town.
I grabbed my phone, scrolling to Karina’s Facebook page before I sat on the couch, wondering why I felt the need to disinfect the La-Z-Boy before I made use of it again.
There was still no status update on her page, and I was pretty sure since she now knew I was watching her profile, she wouldn’t be updating it that often anymore. I was surprised she hadn’t deleted and blocked my ass yet.
Staring at her profile picture, her smile almost reaching her chocolaty eyes, I couldn’t help but think she didn’t quite fit into the Valenti equation. Sure, she was feisty with a healthy dose of that sexy as hell Italian attitude, but part of a criminal family? I didn’t think so.
It was easy to see her older brother Antonio was well on his way following in their father’s footsteps. Dante had that whole Italian bad-ass nailed to perfection. But her? I didn’t know. One thing I did know was Karina Valenti was definitely a puzzle I wanted to solve, and I knew just where to start.