Page 77 of Take Her

“Okay,” I prompted.

“I’m not as healthy as I used to be.”

“That’s what happens when you drink every night.”

“It’s not just my liver. It’s a little worse than that, actually. I’ve got aggressive renal cell carcinoma. Kidney cancer, to be less precise.”

I was glad I’d set my coffee down, because if I hadn’t, I would’ve dropped the mug onto his nice white carpeting. “How long have you known?” I angrily demanded.

“Just a few months. We caught it late, it’s spreading, and I’ve already gone through more medications than would fit in a smuggling car trunk,” he said with emphasis. “Not just a normal one.”

“Like that makes a fucking difference,” I said darkly.

“Don’t be like that, bestiola.” He snorted at my currently affronted state. “You knowing wouldn’t have changed a thing.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “And—who else knows?”

“You, me, my doctors, and Rio, who drives me back and forth to my appointments, and who is paid well enough to never speak.”

“How long do you have?”

“A few months to a year. It’s slow, but also inescapable—because I’m done with fighting things.”

I felt a part of my soul rush out of my body. I couldn’t imagine a world without Nero Ferreo in it. I had dealt with death before. I’d already lost a wife; I wasn’t prepared to lose my oldest friend, too.

And then all of the stress of our other on-going business decisions rushed in to fill that gap.

“Call off the IPO,” I pleaded.

“And disappoint Samson Investment Corp?” Nero clearly teased.

“How are we supposed to do our roadshow without you? And all the fireside chats?” There was always a dog-and-pony element to going public, wherein you paraded around your best and brightest, giving potential investors intimate access to existing board members at exquisite vacation homes or upscale parties.

“I can still do them,” Nero said.

“For now,” I snarled.

“Precisely,” Nero said, coolly not taking my bait. “And you’ll handle everything for me, like you always do.”

“And what happens if you die before we manage this thing? Who takes care of Corvo then?”

“I won’t die a second before my time,” he said. “I swear.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Nero,” I said, at an even louder volume, and noted Rio coming to the door of the den to eye me.

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” Nero went on. “I didn’t want things to change.”

“Says the man who wants me to take his company public before he dies.”

He didn’t rise to my bait. “Do you remember the Salvatore brothers?”

I frowned, irritated he was trying to change the subject. “Nero?—”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Fuck,” I growled. The Salvatore brothers had been early on in our acquaintance. They ran an underground gambling ring that we’d wanted a stake in—and when they wouldn’t give it over to us, we took it, after a somewhat epic gunfight. I’d had to pry a 9-mm round out of the meat of Nero’s upper arm afterward, and melting away all the bodies in industrial strength acid had taken weeks—but that’d been our leg up into casinos, and now Corvo had two in Las Vegas, and another one locally on the way.

“We were so fucked in that basement,” he said.