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373 My Little Toddler
The bolt hadn't finished sliding home before she turned around.Camilla hit him at a dead run and got both arms around his chest and squeezed like she was trying to break his ribs. "You're here."Her whole body was shaking against him."You're actually here. My Tyler. My little toddler."Tyler stood there with his arms out to the sides for a second. Don Camilla of Sapphire City had her face buried in his shoulder and was sobbing into his shirt.Then he put his arms around her and held on.She was crying so hard she couldn't get a word out for a full minute. Her fists were knotted in the back of his shirt. Every few seconds she squeezed again, checking he was still solid."Nine years, you little swine. Nine whole years.""I know.""I paid informants. I threatened clerks. I put a man's hand in a drawer once because he told me your file was sealed."She pulled back and grabbed his face in both hands."And you turn up in the middle of a gunfight in a cartoon shirt asking me to make you di
372 Cold Shoulder
They took the last working car out through the gap in the north road while the barricade was still burning.Bruno drove. Two of the men rode on the hood with rifles until they cleared the square.Nobody came after them. There was nobody left on that road in any condition to try.Tyler sat in the back next to Camilla.She didn't say one word to him for twenty-two minutes.She sat with her rifle across her knees and her eyes out the window, and she never turned her head once. When Bruno asked her something she answered him in three words and went back to the window.Tyler let the streets go past the window and turned it over in his head.He had just put fifty of Vex's men in a crater for her. She had demanded his name at the start and never brought it up again.Camilla had heard "Callie" out of a stranger's mouth in the middle of a firefight and gone white, and now she was acting like he was a piece of furniture somebody had left in her car.Women were strange. He'd learned nothing else
371 Fish Sticks
Bruno came up off the wheel arch with his rifle still on the young man's chest."There's nobody here by that name, you idiot. You're standing in front of Don Camilla, and she runs every street on this side of the river. Say it right or I'll put you down where you stand."Camilla didn't hear a word of it. Her rifle was still pointed at his chest, but her arms had gone loose, and the barrel was drifting off him an inch at a time.Nobody had called her Callie in all these years.Callie was the name the sisters had written on her file at St. Brigid's. Camilla was the one she'd built on top of it so nobody would ever find the girl underneath.Six people in the world knew the first one. "How do you know my orphanage name?"Her voice came out wrong, and she heard it happen, and every man behind those cars turned to look at her. "Were you in there too?"Tyler shrugged. "We can talk about all of that later."Another burst came in off the north road and blew the wing mirror off the car above th
370 River Street
Gunfire tore across River Street Square without stopping.Fifty rifles were firing into the center of it from four directions at once. The noise came off the buildings and doubled back, so hard that the shop windows on the corner had already shaken out of their frames.In the middle of that square, twelve men and one woman were pinned down behind four cars.The cars were coming apart around them. Glass sprayed off the roofs in sheets and rounds punched clean through the door panels into the asphalt.One of them found the fuel line on the second car. The whole front end thumped and caught fire.Vex had sealed all four roads with vehicles. Two moving trucks nose to nose on the north, a flatbed and three vans on the south.Cars turned sideways east and west, bumper to bumper, close enough that a man couldn't get between them.There was no way out of that square. That was the whole point of it.The woman in the middle of them was in her mid-twenties.She was tall, with the kind of beauty
369 Free Food and Drinks
"Take your hand out of that woman's hair before you really hurt her."Dodo didn't move. He stood there with a fistful of Rosa's hair and a grin on his face. He was already sure what the answer was going to be."Forget about this old bitch. Listen to my offer. Five grand a month, kid, and you never pay for anything on this side of the river again.""Guys twice your age and half your size have begged me for that offer. Say yes and let's go get a drink."Tyler was barely listening. "I'd rather go back to prison."Dodo's grin came down about halfway. "You want to run that past me one more time? Because I don't think I heard it right.""You heard me fine. I'd rather go back to Montserrat and serve the other nine years in the ice than stand around with a pack of worms who swindle an old woman out of a breakfast she cooked for you."Rosa let out a painful gasp and Tyler stood up out of the chair. "Now take your hand out of her hair. That's twice I've asked."The one nearest the door didn't w
368 The Tab
Sapphire City was carved into eleven districts on the official maps.Nobody who actually lived there used those maps. There were two halves, east and west, and everybody knew which side of the line they were standing on.The east belonged to Dorian Vex. The west belonged to Don Camilla. The border ran along the river and shifted a few blocks every year depending on who'd shot who.The same people paid for both sides.Six or seven billionaire families kept the mobs funded. A construction permit moves faster when the men across the table are frightened.Contracts got won. Inspectors changed their minds. Union heads retired early.Mayor Rourke didn't interfere with any of it. Those same families had paid for his campaign twice, and a man doesn't bite the hand that buys his billboards.That was the city. Everybody living in it just worked around the two of them and got on with their day.Corvetti's had been on the corner of Ninth and Maple for a hundred and four years.It was a narrow pla
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