“Tell me who the fucktheyare!”I shouted.
Frank flinched.“We-we-we can’t tell you,” he stammered.
“Wrong answer,” I barked.“You’re playing games with the wrong club.”
Nick was trembling.“Please… please, man.We didn’t want to be part of this.We were told to send messages.We didn’t know it would escalate like this.”
“Who.Are.You.Working.For?”I demanded.
Nick squeezed his eyes shut, then blurted, “The Ledger!”
Hodge froze.Podge straightened behind me.
“Please don’t kill me!”Nick whimpered.“We’re not doing this to you.We’re just, just relaying messages.Orders.”
I turned to Podge.“The Ledger?”
He raised a brow.“Whatever the fuck that is.”
I looked back at Nick.“Who is The Ledger?”
“We don’t know!”Nick shouted, still pinned.“No one knows who they are.They’re just… there.”
“Not good enough,” I snapped.“Then how do you know to fuck with us?You just wake up and decide to play messenger boy for the bogeyman?”
“No!”Nick shouted.“We get messages.Emails.Letters.Weird shit.Always anonymous.Started ten years ago.At first we thought it was some prank, you know?But when we ignored them… things happened.”
Frank stepped forward.“Bad things,” he added.“Our store got trashed one night.We lost all our suppliers.Got shut down for fake zoning issues.”
“Yeah,” Nick said quickly.“Health violations that didn’t exist.Fire inspections we didn’t know about.All fines.All pressure.They make it so hard to breathe, man.”
I looked at Hodge.That last part hit a little too close to home.
“So what?”Podge said.“You just get these messages and roll over like puppies?”
“What would you do?”Nick shouted, wild.“We tried fighting back.We stopped responding for a while.Next thing we know, one of our suppliers’ trucks gets hijacked.Full shipment gone.Next week?IRS audit.Just shows up.Fucking scary.”
I stared at him.“You seriously don’t know who’s behind it?”
“No,” Frank said.“They don’t show their faces.Ever.They don’t ask for money.They just… push.Control.”
“And now they want us out of Madison,” I murmured.
Nick nodded frantically.“They told us to scare you off.Said you were stepping into something bigger than you realized.”
“You should just leave,” Frank said quietly.“Find another city.It’s not worth it.”
“Not worth it,” I repeated, eyes narrowing.
They didn’t know a damn thing about me.
“The only city I give a shit about right now is the one wheresheis,” I said coldly.
Frank frowned.“You mean Tempi from the bar?”
I smiled then, slow and deadly.“If I were you, I’d be real careful about what words you use when talking about her.”
Nick whimpered.
