Page 34 of Tainted Blood
He’s trying to provoke me, so instead of giving him the reaction he wants, I give him the one he deserves.
“This all started in a New York nightclub, not New Jersey,” I say, delivering the accusation with a sharper edge. “They would have taken Thalia regardless. Maybe you should be more worried about your own goddamn mountain.”
RJ leans back in his chair. He’s still turning pieces of information around in his head, trying to make them all fit. A deep line sinks between his eyebrows as he runs his hands across his mouth. “Where did the shipping containers originate?”
“No idea,” I snap, the harsh memory of the dead women lingering. “Why?”
He motions between Grayson and me. “You both had one land on your doorstep. Same white dresses. Same execution style… If you trace the origin of both shipping containers, we’ll have a starting point, if not a location.”
Before he’s finished, Grayson and I are messaging the dockhands on our payroll at our respective port terminals. For fifteen minutes, no one speaks. No one touches another glass of bourbon. Each passing moment fades into the next as we wait for the confirmation, all of us primed and ready to paint the streets red.
Mine is the first phone to ring.
All eyes are on me as I answer. “Carrera.”
“Bad time?” my contact asks, reading my tone.
“Just get on with it.”
“I had to do some digging. ‘Special shipments’ like that one aren’t exactly scanned and recorded, ya know.”
“Then why are you wasting my time?”
He has the nerve to sound offended. “I wasn’t able to track where those ‘contents came from, but I can tell you the location of that particular container’s last official log, six days prior.”
Six days.
My mind wanders back to a night of tantalizing banter and stark honesty.
A night of submission and spaghetti...
“Carrera… You still there?”
I blink away the memory. “What’s the location?”
“New Haven.”
I freeze. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Jesus, you think I’d call Santi Carrera with some half-cocked—?”
The line goes dead as I end the call and slide my phone back into my pocket. I’m about ten seconds away from losing my shit, when I look up and find myself in the twin firing line of both Valentin Carrera and Dante Santiago.
“Well?” Santiago demands.
Meanwhile, Grayson is staring down at his phone with the same grim look on his face.
“Santi,” my father says sharply.
“The containers came from New Haven.”
His static expression shifts. “Connecticut?”
The word is barely out of his mouth when Grayson slams his phone onto the table, his cool composure shot to shit. “Ours too. Port of New Haven. That’s not even a cartel owned.”
“It’s Irish,” I grit out. “Green, white and orange have had a lock on the Port of New Haven for over thirty years.”
But why there? Why the diversion?