Page 82 of Intent to Kill
“Well, if lying wasn’t enough, clearly you haven’t got the balls for this kind of job.”
Then he shot the guy square in the temple.
“Boss?” T.B. cleared his throat. “Letting off steam?”
“This little fuck just told me Yani is dead,” Dorian said.
“Well, before you blow any more brains out, come see for yourself.” His head tilted in the direction of the baker’s kitchen.
Dorian straightened, collecting himself and swallowing before following T.B. down the deep hallway. Keeping a respectable distance, Dorian noticed the second lower-level associate following him. Huh, that one had balls. Who knew?
When Dorian pushed open the door to the baker’s kitchen, the smell of decomposing flesh polluted the air. In the heat of this city, the decay had been sped up and the smell was unbearable.
The lower-level covered his nose with his shirt while Dorian kept a straight face and moved around behind the counter.
On the floor he saw it.
Yani laid dead and still, his eyes wide open and his flesh almost transparent. There were pools of dried blood on the floor. He was also missing his fingers that were still arranged on the chopping board above. He had two stab wounds to his abdomen, one fatal stab to his heart, and a multitude of bruises covering his face.
Dorian took in the scene and rubbed his head between his fingers to cover his eyes as he looked away. Yani was a good friend who had worked for him for a long time. If Dorian still had a heart, it might have hurt. “Fuck.”
He turned to the lower-level associate and waved him out of the room. He scattered away gratefully, the sounds of him retching in the hallway as he attempted to hold in his vomit the last sounds that they heard as he fled. Weak as piss, after all. But Dorian didn’t have time to shoot him too.
He held up an open palm to signal T.B. to stay in the room.
“This has got to be whoever is coming after us…and now they’ve got Yani.”
“It looks that way,” T.B. said.
Dorian squinted and turned to T.B. “I’m feeling nostalgic, T.B., take a walk down memory lane with me?”
T.B. twitched on the spot. “What are you thinking?”
“Tell me, you lost a race the other day...” Dorian said.
“I did,” T.B. huffed, his face red with an angry embarrassment he obviously still held onto.
“When has that ever happened before?”
“Never,” he answered, too quickly.
But that wasn’t true, was it? Dorian folded his arms and stared him down knowingly, compelling him to think a little harder.
T.B. sucked in with a tight mouth as he answered. “Only once. Back when we lost the prison van.”
To Dorian, the words seemed like an agreement from T.B. that there could only be one possible conclusion, one possible reason that all of this was happening, and that it was happening now. Again.
The rage grew within in him like a dark, all-consuming black hole, and Dorian let out a crude grunt that echoed the halls, though T.B. did not flinch. “And who did you lose to?”
“We can’t say exactly, but...” T.B. hesitated. “Someone working for Adam Vandemilio.”
“Exactly.”
And that was all the confirmation he needed.
“Holy shit,” Antonio nearly gagged as he came charging through the doors. “Is that...?”
T.B. nodded.
