An Offer You Can't Refuse, Sal Bianchi [free ebook reader .TXT] 📗

He nodded. “Please have a seat. We have a new case, and I wanted to hear your opinion on it.”

“Mine?” I asked skeptically as I took a seat in front of him. He slid a tablet over to me so that I could look over the details of the case.

“Senator Alexis Rothschild was found dead in her home this morning,” he explained. “It was clearly a murder, but as of now, the police are unsure about who might have done it.”

“Why are we being called in?” I asked. “Do they think it was a mafia hit or something?”

“It’s possible.” Flint nodded. “Senator Rothschild was adamant about cleaning up Miami and was very outspoken against the mafia. She wanted to turn Miami into a more family-friendly destination, which is a problem when every other club is a hub for criminal activity. However, she was also controversial on a number of other topics. Basically, she had a lot of political enemies, any one of whom might have a motive to want her dead.”

“I see,” I replied quietly. “So you want to consult Nick on this one?”

I couldn’t think of any other reason why the director would have asked to speak to me in particular. Any time Nick consulted with us, I was the agent he was paired up with. We’d known each other since high school, so we already had a good rapport, and aside from Chloe, none of the other agents felt all that comfortable working with him, anyway.

“That’s what I was thinking,” Flint confirmed. “Even if this isn’t directly connected to the mafia, he’s good at tracking people down. If anyone can figure out who it was among the senator’s various enemies, it’s him.”

“Okay,” I replied. “I think he’d be up for it. The only cases he doesn’t like touching are the ones that are directly connected to his family, since, you know…”

I trailed off awkwardly. Nick’s family was a pretty sensitive subject, both for him and for everyone at the office. His connection to the mafia was the reason most people were wary of him, after all.

“Right.” Flint nodded in agreement. “Well, I think the chances of that are pretty slim. I’ll give him a call a little later then, after I get some more details on the case from the police. You can go back to your desk now.”

“Okay,” I replied again before getting up and leaving the director’s office.

I couldn’t help but smile as I headed back toward my desk. Honestly, working with Nick was fun. Even when he pulled me into his poorly thought-out plans, I always had fun when we were assigned to work on a case together. Few people could say they got to spend their day solving crimes with their best friend.

3

Nick

I woke up with a dull pulsating pain at the back of my skull and a dry tongue that felt swollen inside my mouth. It wasn’t the most pleasant sensation, but as far as hangovers went, it was pretty good. I squinted against the beams of light streaming through the windows as I reached over to my nightstand to retrieve the bottle of aspirin I kept stowed there for just such occasions. When my hand met empty air instead of the cool, smooth wood of my table, I sat up in surprise and alarm. This was not my room.

As I took a look around at the room, which was decorated with band posters and had twinkle lights strung across every wall, the events of the previous night came trickling back to me. I’d gone out drinking with my friend Jase. It was a normal enough occurrence for us, especially since we’d started working together. What wasn’t as normal was the shot drinking contest we’d gotten into about an hour into the night. I couldn’t remember who had won, but I could remember that I’d ended the night by heading home with a dark-haired woman I’d impressed by riding a mechanical bull. Considering how drunk I’d been, I couldn’t have been that impressive, but I wasn’t one to turn down a pretty lady, so here I was.

The only issue was that she wasn’t here. I looked around for my clothes, which were scattered in a messy pile beside my bed, and was relieved to find my phone in the pocket of my jeans. I checked the time as I pulled them back on.

It was a little past ten in the morning, so it wasn’t unreasonable to think that she had gone to work already. If that was the case, I wasn’t sure what I should do. It would be rude to leave without locking the door behind me, especially if she’d just popped out for coffee or something.

I finished dressing and left the bedroom. The apartment wasn’t very big, but she didn’t seem to be in the living room or the kitchen either. Though there was a pan with food remnants sitting on the stove, so it looked like she at least had eaten breakfast before leaving. What was the protocol when a one-night-stand sneaks out of their own apartment in the morning?

Just as I was contemplating whether I should take a quick shower first or just duck out, the front door unlocked with a click and creaked open. The girl from the night before stepped through, carrying a large white paper bag.

“Roxanne,” my brain helpfully supplied just as she looked up at me. Her eyes were gorgeous. A stunning clear blue against her caramel-colored skin. I hadn’t remembered that detail when I’d first woken up.

“Oh, hey,” she smiled shyly as she set the bag on the kitchen counter. “I tried to cook breakfast, but I got distracted, and it burned, so I went to get something from the cafe downstairs.”

She gestured toward the pan on the stove, still crusted with blackened bits of an unidentifiable substance.

“Were you about to leave?” she asked, her face falling as she realized I’d been standing right in front of the door when she’d come in.

“I