Page 74 of Ruthless Claim

I have patience for this part. I know how it goes and how long the pretending lasts. I know exactly when to push and when to let the silence do the work.

I’ve done this more times than I can count. I’m in complete control.

This is a job and I am very good at this job.

Mickey starts talking nearly immediately and I fight the urge to roll my eyes at what a fucking coward he is.

Three dockworkers, the inside contact at the manifest office, dates and amounts and the name of the buyer he’s been offloading to in Newark.

He sings like a fucking canary, clearly very motivated to be cooperative.

I listen to everything, already drafting the Connor debrief in my head.

I’m almost out of here and can get back to my wife.

Then the idiot decides to negotiate.

“Look,” he says earnestly, “I gave you everything, yeah? Everything, clean. You’re gonna tell Brennan I was straight with you, right?” He shifts in the chair and I watch with puzzlement as a gleam grows in his eye. “Because I’ve heard things, you know? Things that might be worth something to you. About your marriage.”

The air seems to still. Doyle shifts his weight from leg to leg. I look at Mickey, my expression unchanging.

“Word on the street is it’s for show,” he continues, reading the silence as encouragement, which is a mistake. “The Santoro girl—your wife.” He snorts, settling into it now. “Heard she’s not exactly sitting at home waiting for you.” He laughs a wet phlegmy sound which speaks to years of cigarette use. “Heard she’s been seen at a hotel on the Upper East Side, couple of Tuesday nights in a row, with randos.” He smiles. “Can’t blame her, right?”

There’s heat at the back of my neck and I breathe through it. I’m still in control.

He’s still talking and I need him to finish talking.

He’s enjoying himself now, leaning into it.

“Between us?” he says, dropping his voice like we’re mates sharing something. “Seen her picture. Few of the boys have. Someone pulled it up on their phone, one of them society pages she’s always in.” He lets out a low whistle. “Jesus. Your wife is something else, man. Like, genuinely.”

He shakes his head with this expression of pained appreciation, like he’s doing me a compliment. “Legs up to here. That mouth on her.” He clicks his tongue. “Waste, is what it is. Woman like that, stuck home alone while you’re out here doing this.” He gestures at the warehouse and at me. “Tommy on the overnight—big guy, you might know him—he said, and I’m just repeating this, he said he’d give his left nut for twenty minutes with her.” A wet laugh. “Can’t say I argued with him.”

I look at him. My jaw is very tight.

“Like, no disrespect,” Mickey adds, in a tone that is absolutely intending disrespect, “but Valentina—” and the way he says her name, like it’s his to use enrages me— “she seems like the kind of woman who needs a lot of”—he grins—“attention. You know what I’m saying? And a man in your line of work, you’re not exactly around much, are you.” He cocks his head. “Heard she’s been getting it somewhere else anyway, like I said. So maybe she’s sorted, but I’m just saying.” He shrugs, still grinning. “If she ever needs another option, you could pass my number along. I’d treat her right.”

He winks.

He actually fucking winks at me.

I don’t remember moving but I do remember the sound of the chair falling over. Twenty years of Connor’s work has buried so deep in me that my brain doesn’t need permission anymore. Mickey doesn’t even get his hands up. My first punch catches him across the jaw before he’s fully registered I’ve crossed the distance. The crack of it reverberates up through my knuckles and into my wrists. I feel it and I don’t care. The chair goes sideways and Mickey goes with it. I follow him down to the concrete floor because he said her name like it was his and he’s still got that stunned remnant of the grin on his face and I want it off.

My knee goes into his chest, pinning him.

I hit him again, harder.

This time his head snaps back against the floor and he makes a sound that isn’t a word anymore.

Good. I want him to stop making words.

I want every word he just said driven back into his stupid grinning mouth.

My knuckles split on his cheekbone and I don’t stop because the words are still in the room, her name in his mouth, like she was something to be passed around and rated and laughed about by men like him.

I hit him again.

“Cillian.” Ryan’s voice somewhere behind me, tight with something that isn’t quite alarm but isn’t far from it. “Cillian.”