“And?”
“Liam Shane.”
The man dropped his guard and the second that asshole’s name left my mouth, I spotted the fury he stirred up in Dino. My man was loyal. He would be. Shane had nearly taken out my cousin Johnny. He’d made himself the biggest enemy our family had. That meant he was Dino’s enemy too.
“She’s connected?” Dino asked, his mouth tight.
“She might be. Shane’s got a missing wife no one can find. This redhead is the same age. Same height and weight. She’s got the same scar on her neck where Shane cut her when she fought her way out of their bed. But Dario can’t be sure. He didn’t get that close of a look.”
“He saw the scar?”
Dino watched the smile stretch over my mouth but didn’t react. Of course Dario watched. The redhead was hot. “That bastard did five years on the inside and she’s everything on his list.”
“He likes redheads?”
“Fuck, man. He likes female. Enough said. She had him interested and now he wants to know if that’s her.”
“If it is…”
I nodded, stretching back to rub a hand over my mouth. “If it is, she might have just as much reason to find out where Shane is as Dario. They’d have a common enemy.”
Liam Shane had been the one to supply the drugs to our youngest brother, Dante. The same drugs he sold out of Dario’s bar. Dante took Shane’s money, and our family landed an enemy. But it was Dario who took that bid for our kid brother. It was Dario who landed in Riker’s.
After Shane kidnapped Johnny’s woman, just to prove he could, he cut his own neck with our family. The redhead might know where Shane did his hiding. If she did, that information would be valuable.
We needed her found.
“Kat Harrell is back on the East Coast,” Dino said, his voice even, but I heard the hint of something anxious in his tone. He’d been a little soft on Kat a few years back, even though the woman had never been interested in anything but the laptops she used to hack into whatever security system needed breaking and whoever paid her the most for doing the job.
“Find her,” I told him, pushing back from my desk. “If the redhead has been travelling or using anything other than cash, Kat can find her.” I downed the rest of the espresso, my glance moving to the window and the bakery down the block. “Tell Wilson at the precinct to get me a tap on their line.” It was time the cops in this little town started returning some favors for the money I poured into their budget. They looked the other way when I needed them to and I made sure they had enough guns, enough cars, and enough vests to keep this town peaceful and quiet.
“And…Dario?” I shook my head, not much liking the disbelief I heard in Dino’s voice when he asked about my brother. When I glared at him, he held up his hand. “He might spook the woman if he finds her.”
Everybody had thoughts about people doing time. Even Dino. But my kid brother wasn’t some career criminal. He’d done his five years. Learned a few things in the process. Still, Dino didn’t look convinced.
“Or, hell, maybe she’ll spook him.”
“Nah,” I told the man, grabbing my cell when it sounded again. “Dante and Luca took him to the city months back. He got his back straightened out.” Dino frowned, like he had no idea what I meant. I cocked an eyebrow when the man only stared back at me blankly. “Jesus, man. They got him laid. A lot. He can handle himself.” Dino nodded, moving back to the door when my cell sounded, and I waved him off. “He’s a Carelli. Give my kid brother a little credit.”
“Got it,” Dino said, shutting the door behind him before he disappeared into the hallway.
Twenty crates. Marco’s message read.
That was an easy half a mil gone because that Finney punk didn’t want to earn his own money.
And they beat the fuck out of Bobby and his kid brother.
Shit. Bobby was barely twenty-two. He’d brought his brother along because it was supposed to be an easy night watching the docks.
Watch your back and keep shit locked down, I typed back, my fingers slipping across the screen from how firmly I held my cell.
“This is why,” I told myself, throwing my cell onto the desk, slumping back into my chair. My life wouldn’t get easier. This wouldn’t change.
There was no eager son waiting in the wings to take over for me. There never would be and I knew why.
This business. This life, there was no place in it for a family or connections that could be used against me.
My father could protect my mother and siblings better than I could. He’d been doing it longer.
I could protect myself. I could give myself up if I needed to.
But anyone else would only get in the way. On my own, I had nothing to lose. On my own, there were no liabilities.
The thought had me slipping, dropping my guard. Sometimes, I couldn’t help myself.
The folder was in an app marked Calculator. Anyone with half a brain would know about it, but probably wouldn’t guess what I had stored in mine. I thumbed through the folder, hunched in my chair, elbows on my knees as I stared down at dozens and dozens of pictures I’d sneaked of Maggie when she slept next to me. Dozens more of the kid laughing, playing with his mama. More of Maggie grinning up at me or making faces that made her look like a kid.
“Fuck.”
It was no good. No point in getting myself lost in this bullshit. Not when it would go nowhere. Not when I’d told her there could never be anything between us. She knew this. She’d known it from that first night we were together. I’d offered her the only thing I could.
“I can’t promise to be your man, but I can have your back and look out for you. You need that. You need a friend and I got you. You understand me?”
She had.
We both had.
Still… we kept coming back.
But sex blurred everything.
Maybe she was tired of those blurred lines.
Maybe that’s what she’d meant last night.
“We can’t…we have to stop this.”
I hadn’t listened.
I never did when the truth was stuffed behind the bullshit I pretended was real.
Maggie had refused my mother’s gift tonight.
She tried to refuse me last night.
Maybe she was trying to tell me something deep down I knew I wasn’t ready to hear.
Problem was, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to hear that from her.
3
Smoke
Brunch hadn’t always been a tradition.
Families get busy. Schedules don’t mesh, but since Dante came back from Pistoia, where our folks had sent him when Dario willingly took the sentence for his drug charge, and since the man himself had gotten out of Riker’s, my ma had made something of a big deal about a sit down for brunch whenever we could manage it.
But it was always a damn madhouse.
“Maria!” my mother screamed to her sister. “How many times do I have to say it? Get the orange juice. I swear…you don’t listen…”
My ma and her sister, Maria, still bickered like they were ten and twelve and not sixty-two and sixty. I’d learned it was best to stay out of their way, which is what I did as I moved through the back entrance of my folks’ large apartment.