He shook his head as he dropped his smoke to the ground and crushed it under his heel. The best thing for both of them would be to get these goons off her back and get her to her sister so that he and she could part ways. Then she’d be safe from sharks like Sicoli, not to mention riptides like him who would suck her under the surface faster than she could swim to shore.
“Sooner I deal with these assholes, the better,” he muttered to himself as he pushed off his bike. Taking one last look around and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, Aiden headed into the alley between the tattoo joint and voodoo jewelry shop to the door that led up to Kat’s apartment.
He had no plan other than to see how serious these guys were. He needed to know how much they wanted and the latest they’d take it. If he could put them off for at least two week, then Jax could wire the money.
Using Kat’s key, he opened the alley door and walked up the dimly lit stairwell. At the top were two apartments. Kat’s on the left and another on the right, which sat over a shoe repair store.
In other words, nothing like a rowdy bar that would disguise any noise coming from across the hall. For small town cops, answering a call for “gunshots fired” would make them cream their department-issued polyester pants. They’d have the cops crawling up their asses so fast they’d have friction burns.
Aiden took a deep breath, cracked his neck, then his knuckles, and let himself into Kat’s apartment. She’d given him the layout so he had a basic idea of where things were in case he needed to know in a lights-out brawl kind of situation, but when he closed the door behind him and flipped the switch, the lights came on without a problem.
The problem was the two men standing in the center of the room holding guns with suppressors. Damn.
“Oh, good, you’re already here,” Aiden shot off. “I was worried I’d have to send smoke signals or something. By the way, how’s the Caddy? Sounded like you maybe scratched the paint.”
The goons glanced at each other, communicating in some sort of telepathic mob language, then turned their attention back on him. Goon One narrowed his eyes, giving him a strong resemblance to Christopher Walken. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”
Whoa. The guy even sounded like Walken. Aiden half expected the guy to demand “more cowbell.”
“My name is Sully and my associate here is Vinnie. And you are?”
Aiden arched a brow. “None of your fucking business.”
“I disagree if you’re here on the girl’s behalf. However”—Sully gestured with a roll of his hands, the barrel of the gun drawing small circles in the air—“if you’re not, then you’re absolutely right; who you are doesn’t matter.”
The one called Vinnie pulled back on the slide of his gun, chambering a round, and aimed it between Aiden’s eyes.
“Smith. John Smith.”
Sully offered a smile a cat would flash to a caged canary. “Mr. Smith, as you may or may not already know, we’ve been hired by Mr. Sicoli to collect a debt owed to him.”
“Hired? You don’t work for him?” If not, their loyalty was more likely to themselves than to Sicoli. Aiden had a chunk of winnings still in a savings account back home. Maybe he could pay them to forget about Kat and tell Sicoli they’d killed her.
Sully spoke with a tinge of annoyance. “I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Smith, and the answer is no. We might only be contracted to go after runners, but Mr. Sicoli pays us handsomely for our loyalty. Plus, we get half of whatever money we collect on top of our regular fees, which is why we’re more patient than your average collectors.”
Fuck. There went that plan. At least he’d had the presence of mind to instruct Xan to get Kat out of town until Xander could reach Jax if Aiden didn’t make it out of this meeting. From the look of things, he’d give himself a fifty-fifty chance at this point. Not great odds.
Aiden planted his feet shoulder-width apart and kept his arms loose by his sides. Without the aid of Kat’s gun, the only thing he had going for him was his fighting skills. “What happens if you can’t collect?”
A sadistic glint lit up Vinnie’s eyes. The kind that said, I’ve tortured living things since kindergarten and never lost an ounce of sleep. “Why don’t you ask Lenny Marx? Oh wait, you can’t.”
Sully elaborated. “Our orders are to come back with either the money or proof of death. After meeting with Mr. Marx in prison, we determined he had no means of getting us the money. Soon after, he met with an unfortunate accident.”
If that wasn’t a bluff, then these guys were the real deal, and any hopes he’d carried for bargaining his way out were a waste of energy. Though he hadn’t wished death on the guy, he couldn’t deny a small part of him was glad Kat’s ex wouldn’t be coming after her in the future.
That is, if he could ensure she even had a future.
“So then it should be over. The girl doesn’t have anything to do with it. Marx was the one who borrowed the money from Sicoli, not her.”