Hard Up: A Military Mafia Romance Read Free Page A

seconds, he started to look down the bar at the Black Saints, then seemed to stop himself.
    Avoiding a confrontation, or trying not to draw attention to himself?
    “Maker’s,” he said. “And a splash of Coke.”
    His accent was distinctly northern, not Boston or New York, but maybe somewhere between.
    “Got it,” she said, moving away to make his drink.
    The process of making drinks, something that was unknown to her only eight months ago, was now mechanical. She didn’t even think about it as she filled a rocks glass with ice, poured in two fingers of Maker’s Mark whisky, and then topped it with a tiny bit of cola.
    “Maker’s and Coke,” she said, setting it on the bar before him.
    Remembering the coaster, she tossed one on the bar, then moved his glass.
    “Hey,” he said, his icy fingers closing around her hand. “Listen…”
    “Ooookay,” she said, smoothly pulling her hand back. “That’ll be six bucks.”
    He blinked and pulled out his wallet, then slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. Word from bartenders in downtown Savannah was there’d been a string of fake hundreds passed in the neighborhood recently. Seeing a hundred at Snake’s made Vi suspicious in a heartbeat.
    Her customers rarely came in flashing any kind of cash. This was the spot where you drank your problems away, not the place you celebrated being flush.
    Vi barely even looked at the bill. “I can’t break that.”
    “Not askin’ you to,” he said. “You can keep it.”
    “Um, we don’t take bills that big,” she lied, capping the whisky bottle and putting it away.
    He smirked. “It’s real.”
    “Sure,” she said with a noncommittal shrug.
    “Listen,” he said, dropping his voice. “I just need a little info.”
    “I don’t know anything,” was her instant response.
    “Just tell me what name’s on the card when the guys to my right pay,” the guy insisted.
    “Don’t know.”
    His expression hardened. “You don’t want to lie to me.”
    She shook her head. “It’s not a lie. We don’t take cards here.”
    “They come in here in a lot, I bet.”
    “What’s a lot? Some of my customers are here open to close, four or five days a week,” she said, restocking the coasters and cocktail napkins.
    “I’m saying, you hear things. You know who they are, their names,” he pushed on.
    “I’m not a rat, if that’s what you’re asking,” she snapped, the words out of her mouth before she could clamp her lips closed.
    Instead of getting angry, though, he just gave her a knowing look.
    “A rat, huh? You connected, sweetheart?”
    “No. Nope,” she said. “I have to get back to work.”
    “I think you might be somebody’s goomah ,” he said. The way he pronounced it, goo-mar , made Vi’s blood run cold. “If not, maybe you should be. It’s a dangerous world out there, sweetheart.”
    This guy was Italian, no doubt about it.
    “I don’t know anything or anyone,” she said.
    “You want to?”
    “No.”
    When she dropped a stack of napkins next to him and started to move away, he grabbed her left wrist.
    Vi turned to him with wide eyes. “Let go of me.”
    “Tell me what I want to know, maybe I let you walk right out of here,” he said, his voice dropping to a menacing whisper.
    “I can’t help you,” she said, struggling to pull away.
    “Sure you can. I’m looking for a bunch of fucking bogtrotters sent down here by the Irish, and I think I’ve found them. Have I found them, sweetheart?”
    He twisted her wrist just so, and she cried out.
    “You’re hurting me!” she said, her heart thumping.
    “Shut the fuck up,” he said, releasing her. “Lucky thing you’re a nice piece of ass, because you’re a waste of fucking air.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Dec and Callum were on their feet, moving closer.
    “Everything okay over here?” Dec asked.
    The two Black Saints flanked the stranger, not confronting him, just focusing on Vi.
    “Yep. Bar’s closed!” she