This is for the people, Anthony. Get your head out of your ass.
Luca, who knows me well, gestures for me to step aside. “You’re just here for security, Anthony.”
Wills glances between the two of us, his brows pitched up.
Hopper, perhaps seeing his confusion, decides to be helpful.
“Anthony doesn’t touch the illegal side of things.”
“Not that there's an illegal side of things,” I say, correcting him.
Hopper nods a little too earnestly. “If you want to break the law, Luca’s your guy.”
Luca and I facepalm.
Wills looks at me sideways and decides to speak up. “I don't like breaking the law, either, but as I understand it, these people are forced to live in a tiny dank apartment complex in the middle of a jungle. They’re getting bused over to some industrial park to work for pennies or are forced to sell their bodies. Losing the Wolfe Athletics contract means a lot more of the second scenario is happening. I don't mind breaking the law when people are at stake.”
Guilt and anxiety churn in my gut and bile hits the back of my throat. I cough and swallow hard. “Well, I do. Obviously, helping them out takes precedence. I just…anyway, like Luca said, I’m only here for security.”
I step to the side, and Luca finalizes the transaction while the guy sends weird looks in my direction. Charlie Wills from Texas doubles the cost because of the heightened security risk, and within minutes, Luca gets the okay from Rand Wolfe.
I fucking hate all of this. I just want to run my security company and be done with this bullshit. But my dear friend Luca Stefano refuses to let me out of my official association with him—he says it’s for my own safety, and he’s probably right, but I reserve the right to hate it. Either way, I remain his consigliere—his counselor and right-hand man—despite the fact that I am, at best, only half-Italian. A high-ranking mobster who wants nothing to do with any of it.
I love the man to death and would take a bullet for him, but this continues to be a bone of contention between us.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I fish it out and answer, “Go for Edgerton.”
“Anthony?”
I swallow reflexively. Hopper is wrong. He and Luca aren’t the only people who use my first name.