Never Gets Easier

Tommaso

“And I will handle Gamal’s guard rota personally,” Stan said.

“Like you should have from the beginning,” I bit out in the top room of a commercial building I’d forgotten I owned.

Stan nodded, looking chastened, and I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t mad at him. He’d even dug up this old facility of Niccolo Marino’s, a music store that had fallen off everybody’s books with an even more secure set-up than my house. And, in truth, I should’ve been handling Gamal’s fucking guards. He was in my house, where Paige was. I’d just let Marino take over my whole fucking brain.

“I’m sorry.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I trust you. Thank you.”

Stan nodded and left the small top room crowded with dusty instrument boxes. The business owner knew nothing of the cells in the basement or the bug-proofing up here, just that they hadn’t paid rent in a year and weren’t going to say anything until somebody else did. I’d told them they technically needed to pay me something to keep the lease active,