The Rules of Survival (Mercer #1)

RoS Chapter Thirty Four

Sighing at the scorn in Alec's voice, Gabriel pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, I really didn't come here to start anything. One, we're supposed to be on the same God damned side. And two, these are the tidiest clothes I own. If I mess them up, the wife is going to eat my ass for lunch. All I want to do is speak to her."

Her being me, evident in the way his finger was aimed in my direction.

"Why?" Sal asked. "Since you're Cordero's replacement, you must know she's off limits."

Gabriel actually rolled his eyes. "If I wanted to hurt her, I wouldn't have stomped my way over here loud enough to interrupt your moment of grief. I would have just snuck up on you both and that would have been all she wrote."

Getting tired of the macho display Alec and Sal were partaking in, I limped my way around Sal, ignoring his barked command for me to stay where I was.

"I'm tired of the back and forth," I said, coming to a stop near Alec. I craned my head up to take in Gabriel, who must have been somewhere around six two. "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing," Gabriel said, and I blinked at him in confusion. He laughed at the expression on my face.

"I knew your brother." A severe ache started up in my chest at the mention of Kalen, and I had to resist the urge to rub at it. "He was a good guy. The best. I always thought he was too good for the CBK. Too honest and noble. I'm sorry you had to bury him."

I nodded at the sincerity in his gaze, unable to speak past the lump in my throat.

"And I heard about everything that happened after his death." He gave me a strange look. "Of course, since I was filled in on the way over here, I have a feeling I'm still a little hazy on some details. But I got the gist of it."

He unfolded his arms to rustle around in his pants pocket. Alec looked extremely wary, but Gabriel didn't come across as threatening. At least not yet. At first I thought his hand came out empty, but then he motioned for me to give him mine, placing something small and hard in it when I did so.

Frowning, I brought my hand up to inspect it, and my breath caught at the sight of the silver metal band sitting in my palm. It was Justice's ring. The only piece of jewellery he'd ever worn. So inconspicuous I'd never consciously paid it any attention. To me it had simply been a part of him, like one of his fingers, or his nose. It's significance or existence had never meant anything in particular to me, and the only reason I could even claim it as being Justice's was due to how important it was to everybody else.

Bafflingly enough, it had been one of the main identifiers when Cebrian had gone to the morgue across the road from Destiny Hospital to identify the body.

I'd been told a few times, that rival gangs liked to desecrate the bodies of their victims. It was the ultimate humiliation, and the ultimate insult to the victim's friends and family. Justice's death at the hands of Samson had been no different.

Samson had not only taken Justice's life, but he'd made sure identifying the body would be extremely difficult. Justice had nothing on file. No dental records, no fingerprints. He was a ghost, and one without a face on arrival to the morgue. He'd sustained burns to sixty percent of his body. His CBK tattoo had been carved out of his hip.

Callahan was listed as Justice's next of kin - something I hadn't known - and since he was behind bars, and Cebrian trusted nothing but his own eyes, the man himself had gone down to the morgue to see for himself.

He'd spent half an hour with Justice. Not even being informed that Justice's wallet, cell phone and keys had been on his person were enough to satisfy Cebrian. But for some reason, seeing the ring on his finger had convinced him.