I Called It a Drunk Mistake, So the Mob Boss Made It Permanent novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Hand

The apartment has been turned over, Quincy is furious, and in the back of the car Leandros's hand makes Linus come apart; then the radio plays his song in Griffin's voice.

The apartment door above the laundromat hung open on one hinge.

Linus stopped on the stairs with Manolis a step behind him, and his stomach went cold.

"Stay here," Manolis said.

"It's my apartment."

"Stay here anyway."

A large hand pressed him gently back against the wall, and the driver went up with a pistol held low along his leg.

Linus listened to his own pulse.

Then a voice yelled from inside, high and furious, "If you're back I have a skillet!"

"Quincy?" Linus called.

"Linus?"

Quincy Dalrymple came out onto the landing in scrubs and a Ravens hoodie, holding an iron skillet over his shoulder.

His round glasses were crooked, and he looked at the large armed man with a shaved head and a gold cross.

"Who is the gorilla?"

"Drakos," Manolis said, and put the pistol away.

"I did not ask the gorilla's name, I asked who he is."

"He's my ride," Linus said, his voice shaking. "Are you hurt?"

"I got home from my shift at eight and the door was like that. Nobody was here." Quincy lowered the skillet and finally looked at Linus's borrowed black shirt. "Wait. Where were you all night? Whose shirt is that?"

"Later."

"Linus Orrick," Quincy said.

"Later, Q."

The apartment was torn to pieces.

Every drawer lay upside down on the floor, and the couch cushions were slit open.

Linus's guitar lay on the bed with its strings cut.

Someone had pulled every cable out of the wall behind his desk.

He stood in his own bedroom and looked at the open drawer where he kept his old phone.

The drawer was empty, and so was the charger socket beside it.

"Nothing else is missing," Quincy said from the doorway. "I checked. The TV is here, my laptop is here, and your grandmother's ring is in the sugar jar. They took your old phone and that's it."

Linus said nothing.

Behind him, in the hall, Manolis spoke quietly into his own phone.

"Yes, sir. Both of them. No, sir. Not the kid."

Linus turned.

"Not the kid what?"

Manolis looked at the ceiling.

"Mr. Kallis wants to know if you want a bag," he said. "For a week."

"A week where?"

"His place," Manolis said.

"And Quincy?"

"There's a guest room with a TV and a view," Manolis said. "And I make a very good lamb."

Quincy looked at Manolis for a long moment, and slowly lifted the skillet again.

"Define very good."

"Q," Linus said.

"I'm only asking."

The car was parked at the curb with its engine running.

Leandros sat in the back seat with a laptop open on his knee and his beads in his other hand.

He moved the laptop to the floor when Linus climbed in.

The door closed.

The glass between the front and back seat slid up, and Manolis was gone behind it, with Quincy beside him arguing about the radio.

Linus stared out of the window at the laundromat.

"They searched my place," he said. "They took my old phone."

"I know."

"You said it was in the harbor," Linus said.

"I said you dropped it."

Linus turned his head.

"That's not the same."

"No," Leandros said.

"Who are they?"

"People who think the phone is worth a great deal," Leandros said. "I don't know why yet. I want to find out before they decide you know too."

"Know what?"

"Whatever it is."

Linus laughed, short and angry.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have."

He did not look away.

Linus's anger had no place to go, and it all sat in his chest at once.

He kept seeing Griffin's text, and the cut guitar strings, and the two men in the hall who had looked him up and down.

He was shaking, and the shaking would not stop.

"You're trembling," Leandros said.

"I'm angry."

"I know."

The car pulled away from the curb.

A large warm hand came to rest on Linus's knee.

It did not grip.

It just stayed there, heavy, on the denim.

"Don't," Linus said.

The hand slid up an inch.

"Tell me again," Leandros said.

"Don't touch me."

"That's not what you said last night," Leandros said.

"I don't remember last night."

"I do."

The hand reached his thigh.

Linus's breath caught, and his hips shifted before he could stop them.

"I hate you," he said.

"Mm."

"I really do," Linus said.

"I know you do."

Leandros's thumb pressed up along the seam of his jeans, slow and firm, and Linus's head went back against the seat.

His cock was already hard.

It had been hard since the bed, since the hand on his wrists, and he had pretended otherwise for two hours.

"Open," Leandros said.

He meant the jeans.

Linus looked at the glass partition.

"They can't see," Leandros said. "They can't hear either. Open them."

"No."

"Linus."

It was only his name, but it was said in the tone of a man who expected to be obeyed and meant to be gentle about it.

Linus undid the button with fingers that shook.

Leandros pulled the zip down with two fingers, reached into his boxers, and took him out.

His hand was big and dry and warm.

The first long stroke made Linus's whole body arch.

"Look at me," Leandros said.

Linus turned his head.

Leandros was close, with his mouth an inch away and his eyes dark.

The beads were wound tight around the hand on the seat between them, and his knuckles were white.

He was holding himself back.

Linus saw it, and something in his chest turned over.

"You don't get to do this," he said, and his voice came out ragged.

"Tell me to stop."

Linus put his forehead against Leandros's shoulder and said nothing at all.

The hand slowed, teasing, and Linus's hips jerked up into it.

"Don't stop," he said.

"Say it again."

"Don't stop. Don't you dare stop."

"That's what you said last night," Leandros said. "Word for word."

The hand moved faster.

He bit down on the black cloth to keep from making noise, and a thumb dragged over the wet head of his cock, and he made it anyway.

"There," Leandros said against his hair. "There. Good."

"Shut up."

"You're so hard for me," Leandros said.

"I said shut up."

"Come on," Leandros said, low. "I've got you."

Linus came with a broken sound against his collarbone, hot over Leandros's fist and his own stomach.

It went on longer than it ever had.

He shook through the last of it, boneless, and Leandros held him up with one arm and did not say anything.

Then he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and cleaned them both, slowly.

Linus sat up and fixed his jeans, with his face on fire.

"You didn't come," he said.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's yours," Leandros said, "and I'm in no hurry."

Linus's phone buzzed on the seat between them.

It was Quincy, from the front of the same car.

QUINCY: Don't panic. The gorilla put on the radio. Your ex-best-friend is singing your song and I think I'm going to throw up.

Linus read it, and the glass divider slid down six inches.

Through the gap came a tinny, bright voice, and a chorus he had written on his bedroom floor.

It was Griffin's voice.

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