Free The Con by Justine Elvira

pull off an impossible job for them. A
job that was so crazy even I would never consider it. A job that
would send me to jail for a long time or get me killed if I got
away with it, which I wouldn't so that's a moot point.
    Angelo stands in the entryway of my trailer,
looking around the room. His jet-black hair is slicked back. His
skin is dark from the tanning beds he frequents and his bulky
muscles burst out of his gray V-neck that is two sizes too small.
He's wearing black dress pants and snakeskin shoes to complete the
outfit. He looks like something that dropped out of the Jersey
Shore.
    "What the fuck are you doing, Angelo? You
can't just barge in here."
    "We need to talk."
    "The fuck we do. I said all I had to say to
you last week."
    "I'm going to give the two of you some
privacy," my sister interjects as she takes in the hostility
between us. Turning around she walks to the rooms in the back of
our trailer. She's been around for several of my business dealings
so she knows the drill.
    "Did you have a chance to look over the
file?"
    When I left the warehouse last week, Damien
slipped me a manila folder to look over. I would have refused it
but that would have meant staying there with them longer than I
needed to be, so I took the file and got the hell out of there.
What these men have planned is going to put them six feet under and
I want to be as far away from them as possible so I don't
accidentally get buried with them.
    "I looked it over, and you're even crazier
than I fucking thought. Stealing from Matteo Esposito? You have a
death wish." Matteo Esposito is the son and golden boy of Roman
Esposito and Lala Manchini. Roman is one of this country's most
feared mob bosses and Lala Manchini is a cartel princess. Stealing
from Matteo Esposito means you'll have the mob and cartel on your
ass.
    Angelo moves further into my home and
instead of kicking him out, I walk into the kitchen and grab two
beers out of the fridge. I toss him one and then sit down at the
round table in the kitchen–another recent purchase of Charlie's–and
Angelo sits down across from me.
    "It'll be a lot easier than you think,
Jagger. We've already got all our ducks in a row and our contact
inside the bank is on board. We just need you."
    I take a sip of my beer before responding.
"And why do you need me so bad?"
    "Because you clean up real well. You'd look
like a God damn model if you cut your hair and shaved regularly.
The rest of us scream thugs and criminals, but you, Jagger, you're
a chameleon. You've always been able to pull off any look and job
that's been handed to you."
    There are reasons for that. I work best
alone. Every time I've had to bring someone in on a job, it was
always just one other person. I'm a firm believer on the fewer
people who know your shit the better. This job already has too many
hands in the cookie jar, which means too many ways it can be fucked
up.
    "Sorry, man, but there's nothing you can say
that will make me change my mind on this. This is too big, even for
me."
    Angelo leans back in his chair with one hand
on his thigh and the other flipping the cap of his beer on the
table. His eyes land on mine and we stare each other down, both of
us trying to feel the other out, neither of us willing to break
contact first.
    After an eternity Angelo breaks contact
muttering, "Damien agreed to your terms. We'll do five instead of
two and split it fifty-fifty."
    Well... shit.
    I did not see that coming.
    "When did Damien agree to that?" I ask
skeptically.
    "This morning."
    When Damien and Angelo approached me last
week with their plan to steal from the Esposito family, they wanted
to take two million and split it eighty-twenty, in their favor.
There was no way I was doing this job, being the one whose ass was
on the line doing all the heavy lifting, and getting that little of
the profit.
    But...
    Upping it to five million and splitting it
in half just might make me reconsider. So that's what I told them
when we were in