“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?” Max asks with a wicked glint in his eyes. Max DiMarco might have mellowed in recent years, since he married my kid sister, but he’s as unhinged as I am. Even more so in some respects.
Tension seeps into my pores and I roll my shoulders and crack my neck to try and ease a little of it. “Is this why you tagged along? Did Dante send you to babysit me?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Just keeping you company, buddy.”
I look across the parking lot at the motel, the one where Deputy Superintendent Hayes fucks his mistress every Thursday morning. “Like I believe that.”
“Number twenty-six, right?”
“Same every week.”
After scanning the buildings, he gives me the side eye. “You sure this is a wise move?”
“I’m not going to fucking kill him. But whatever Mulcahy has on this prick is something no other fucker seems to know about, so how else do we find out unless we go straight to the source?”
We come to a stop outside the motel room. “And we can’t ask Brad,” Max says, eyes narrowed as he holds my gaze.
“No. Mia specifically asked us not to.”
His mouth curls up in a smirk. “That’s what I just said.”
I press my ear to the door. “I know what you’re thinking. Fucking cut it out.”
He laughs again. “Mind reader now, huh?”
Ignoring him, I listen to the sounds coming from the room. A man’s voice and a high-pitched giggling. “We have no reason to go after Brad right now. The raids on our businesses have stopped, and he’s leaving Mia alone.” Although I’m still not convinced we shouldn’t wipe the piece of shit from the face of the earth. But Dante said we should respect Mia’s wishes, and I agreed, albeit grudgingly.
“So, why are we about to bust into Hayes’s motel room?” Max asks with a devious grin.
“Because I still want to know what the fuck Mulcahy has on this slimy prick.” I drop my shoulder and ram it against the door, breaking the cheap-ass lock and bursting into the room.
The woman screams, clutching the sheets to her chest to maintain her modesty, as if we’re interested in seeing her tits.
Max picks up what looks like a dress and a bra from the floor and throws it at her. “Get dressed and get the fuck out of here.” Shrieking, she scrambles off the bed.
“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Hayes shouts, pulling the covers over himself.
“Private detectives. Your wife hired us.” Max chuckles as he pulls up a chair and takes a seat.
“Pete?” The woman scrambles to pull on her clothes.
“Shut the fuck up and get out, Candice,” he barks at her. “I’ll call you later.”
She throws him a look that would melt steel, but then she glances at Max and me and hurries from the room.
As soon as she’s gone, Pete Hayes climbs out of bed, his limp dick swinging between his legs, and pulls on the boxers he grabs from the floor. “When I asked who the hell you thought you were, it was a rhetorical question.” He sighs, running a hand through what’s left of his hair as he sits back down on the bed. “So, Mr. Moretti”—he fixes his blue eyes on me—“perhaps what I should have asked is what the hell do you think you’re doing bursting into my motel room the way you just did?”
I pull up the remaining chair and take a seat. Despite who I am, even I would think twice about taking out the deputy superintendent of the Chicago police department in broad daylight, and he knows it. We have an amicable, if somewhat strained, relationship with Chicago’s finest—meaning that we stay out of each other’s way.
“I just need a little information and then I’ll leave you to your day, Deputy.”
He bristles at the disdain in my tone, but he shakes it off. “Since when do you and your ilk come to me for information?”
“Since it pertains to you.”
His Adam’s apple bobs and he glances toward the door, which Max promptly goes to stand in front of.
“You should’ve known we’d respond to the spate of raids on our businesses. Did you think we’d sit back and not look into that?”
“It was a few raids. Nothing was found.” His nostrils flare and his fists clench by his sides. “You’re really coming at me over this?”
“I want to know why you allowed a piece-of-shit cop from Boston to pull your strings like that.”
A muscle ticking in his jaw, he shakes his head.
“Don’t mistake my calm demeanor, Deputy Hayes. Yes, we have an uneasy truce, but I will happily peel your skin from your body and roast your cock and balls on a barbecue before forcing you to eat them if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”
Face turning pale, he flinches. Hayes has heard the rumors, it seems, and believes me fully capable of committing such a violent act. But I’ve been around the block long enough to know that fear doesn’t motivate all men. “Look, I have no interest in you. My family and I are happy with the way things operate in this city, and we have no desire to change that. But I do have an issue with Mulcahy.”
“You won’t come after me?” he asks, and I suppress a grin. I knew self-preservation would be his downfall. That’s how Mulcahy was able to use him in the first place.
“I only want Mulcahy,” I assure him. “So, tell me what that fucker has on you.”
He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “She was his girlfriend.”
Girlfriend? What the fuck is he—oh, fuck no. Every muscle goes rigid. Max senses it and takes a step toward me.
“That prick set it all up,” Hayes continues. “Told me she was into role-play and that they’d planned it all out. He said she was supposed to say no. The screaming was all part of the act. She was supposed to fight back.”
Bile burns the back of my throat.
Max places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Fight back?”
Looking down at his feet, Hayes nods. “He told me it was all part of the fantasy. He even told me her safe word, but she never used it.”
My growl echoes around the tiny room. “Stop talking in riddles, Hayes, and tell me what that fucker has on you.”
He blinks up at me, tears forming in his eyes. Tears for himself. “He filmed it all. That twisted piece of shit filmed it all.”
“Filmed what?” I shout.
“Me f-fucking his girlfriend. He t-told me she had a rape fetish. I knew her. I knew that she’d toyed with the idea of it a few times. So one night …” He swallows hard, eyes darting between me and Max. My blood boils in my veins. “He arranged for me to h-have sex with her. He said it was the fantasy.” He wipes sweat from his brow, and his voice drops to a hoarse whisper. “So she screamed at me. She scratched me and she c-cried, b-but I thought she wanted it.” He looks thoroughly ashamed, as he fucking should. But it’s not enough. All I can think about is my beautiful Mia being pawed by this sack of shit. Her cries and screams as she tried to fight him off. I don’t care who the fuck he is, he’s going to die a painful death for what he did to her.
He looks up at me, eyes wide and pleading. “I fuck around, and I like it when women fight back, but only consensually. You have to believe that. I’m not a rapist. I swear I thought she wanted it.” He drops his head in his hands.
Stepping forward, I ball my hands into fists, but Max squeezes my shoulder and pulls me back. “You were partners in Boston, right? Thirteen years ago?”
Hayes sniffs. “Yeah.”
Thirteen years? Mia met Brad ten years ago. I let out the breath I was holding.
“What was her name? His girlfriend?” Max asks.
“Sherrie Jackson.” The name trips easily off Hayes’s tongue, like he’s never forgotten it. “She’s married with three kids now. I hope she doesn’t think about that night as much as I do.”
Relief that it wasn’t Mia washes over me in a wave, but the fury doesn’t dissipate completely. It may not have been someone I care about, but no woman deserves that shit. “Pretty sure she thinks about it every damn day,” I snap.
“I thought she was into it!” he insists. “I mean, what kind of animal allows their girlfriend to be raped?”
My clipped fingernails dig into my palms as I fight against the urge to punch him in the face. If I start, I’ll never stop. “What kind of animal doesn’t establish enthusiastic consent before he engages in a rape scene?”
Covering his face with his hands, he sobs into them. Max gives me a warning glance, and I nod my head, giving my assurance that Hayes will live.
Seemingly satisfied that I’m not about to start a war with the Chicago PD, Max takes his hand off my shoulder and turns his attention back to Hayes. “And you said Mulcahy recorded all of this?”
After several moments of sniffling and scrubbing his face, Hayes finally answers. “Yeah. He has it all on video. I’d lose everything. My career. My wife and kids. Everything.”
I sit back in my chair and motion for Max to keep going.
“Why would he do that to you? You were partners? Buddies, right?”
“We were. But I guess he saw me as a way to get to the top. I was always going places. Youngest sergeant in my precinct.”
“Or maybe it was more about Sherrie than you?” I suggest, knowing what a twisted fuck Brad Mulcahy is. “What happened to the two of them after?”
“They split up. I heard later that he’d caught her cheating on him.”
I snarl. “So he had his girlfriend raped as punishment for cheating on him?” I’m going to kill that sick fuck if I ever see him again.
Hayes shrugs. “I guess.”
“So, how does this work? Mulcahy just comes to you when he wants a favor?” Max asks, his face furrowed in a frown as his mind ticks over.
“That was how it worked, but I hadn’t heard from him in years. Not since I gathered enough information that could hurt him too. I told him that we were done.” Hayes runs a hand through his sparse hair and sighs. “Then he showed up last week with a final ask. He wanted me to ‘ruffle the Moretti’s feathers.’ I figured sending my men on a few raids would satisfy him without causing too much trouble.”
“Why give into him when you’d told him you were done?” Max asks.
“He seemed different.” Hayes stares at the window for several moments. “Frantic. Like he’d lost his mind. He threatened to show my wife and the superintendent the video, even though I could bring him down just as easily as he could me.” I sit forward in my seat, but I don’t interrupt. “He didn’t give a shit. Said he was happy to take us both down, so I did what I could, while …”
I narrow my eyes. “While?”
He rolls his neck. “I have enough information on him to get him kicked off the force for good. I just need to get that tape.”
“But you haven’t yet?” I ask.
“No. Prick up and disappeared. I spoke to his captain back in Boston, and he’s been on sick leave for three weeks. Apparently his wife left and he went completely off the rails.”
“But you’re looking for him?” Max says.
Hayes nods.
“Officially?” I ask.
He shakes his head and avoids my gaze.
I lean forward, my interest piqued. “So, you plan on recovering the tape and then what?”
“Don’t get excited, Mr. Moretti. It’s nothing quite so exciting as anything you’d have in mind. I’ll turn over the evidence I have on him to Internal Affairs.”
My mouth curls into a grin. “And exactly what evidence do you have on him, Deputy?”
“Intimidating witnesses. Mishandling investigations. Tampering with evidence. That kind of thing. Again, nothing quite in your league,” Hayes replies.
“Shame,” I mutter under my breath.
“So?” Hayes grabs his pants off the floor and holds them in the air. “You gonna let me get back to work before anyone notices I’m gone?”
“You’re an asshole, Hayes, but you got balls of steel, I’ll give you that. You hear anything from Mulcahy, you let me know.”
“His wife’s with you, right? Her cousin married your brother?”
I fix him with a glare. “Miss Stone’s whereabouts are none of your concern.”
He doesn’t break eye contact when he replies. “Of course not.”
The fucker really does have balls of steel.
“We need to deal with him, D, before he becomes a liability. He’s holding us partly responsible for Mia leaving him. He’s already proven he’s prepared to tank his career. He won’t stop until he has her back. Even without the threat to Mia, allowing him to live isn’t good for business or our reputation.” Talking to Hayes confirmed my initial gut feeling that Mulcahy is a problem we need to rid ourselves of.
Dante’s deep sigh communicates his reluctance to go against Mia’s wishes. Kat is firmly on her cousin’s side, and he’s rarely willing to do anything that displeases his wife. But he knows I’m right about this.
I lean against the edge of my desk. “I’m prepared to do it myself, quietly, if that makes things easier,” I suggest.
“I’m not lying to my wife, Loz,” he says with a frown. “I told her I killed her own brother, I think she can handle this.”
“Tell her then. Tell them both. Mia might be pissed, but she’ll learn to live with it.” I don’t understand why—and I don’t wish to explore my reasoning—but I hate the thought of doing anything to cause her any degree of unhappiness. Still, I’ll take her displeasure if it means keeping her safe from that fucker. Family is everything, and Kat is my family. At least that’s what I’m telling myself to justify my commitment to Mia’s well-being.
Dante glances between Max and me. “I don’t want either of you running around the country looking for this sack of shit,” he says with a shake of his head. “Mia’s safe here, and she has no plans to leave. When Mulcahy comes back to Chicago for her, do whatever the fuck you want with him. In the meantime, let Hayes do his thing. The man might be a slimeball, but he’s smart and ruthless. If luck’s on our side, he’ll solve the problem for us. An ex-cop is easier to deal with than a cop.”
I don’t have to like it, but his reasoning is sound. My baby brother has grown up a lot—he didn’t have a choice. Dante was never meant to be the head of the Cosa Nostra, but his ability to curb his impulses and look at the big picture makes him the best man for the job, and I respect him enough to follow his lead.
“You okay with that, Loz?”
“Fine. But as soon as he comes back here …” My chest tightens.
“Do whatever the fuck you like with the slimy prick,” Dante finishes with a cruel smile.
