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Jack cupped the nape of my neck, dusting his thumb over my cheekbone. He was uncomfortable but forced a smile nonetheless. He tugged me in for a kiss, his lips tight against my mouth like he couldn’t bear the taste of me knowing he had to leave.
“I’m going to find my brother,” he promised, his forehead pressed against mine.
“Please be careful,” I begged. I didn’t know everything going on in his world, but my emotions were in reaction to his. Something was horribly wrong. Jack wouldn’t cut our vacation short for anything that didn’t constitute an emergency. Connor hadn’t lost cell service or decided to go for a joy ride. Someone was keeping him from getting in contact with his family. Or worse.
He kissed me one last time, his lips parting for a moment, before he turned and stalked off. He disappeared as the elevator doors slid shut.
Chapter Three
Jack
“I’ve been tryin’ to call a meeting fer six months,” Peter McKenzie fumed, cigarette dangling from his lips. A fleck of ash fell, flaring bright red before it landed on the cement ground and sizzled out. “Me men going missin’ aren’t important, but when an O’Connell disappears, everyone fuckin’ listens!”
We were gathered in a large, dimly lit room. It was often used as an underground casino, but it’d been cleared for this meeting. Dust and smoke stained the air, thick and pungent. The other heads of house sat around a card table, but Peter and I stood, facing off.
“We don’t give a fuck about what happened to your men,” Kieran spat. He looked as weary as I felt. His mop of dirty blond hair was a mess, his clothes were wrinkled, and his face shone with sweat and filth. He’d barely made it back in time for the meeting.
I held a hand up, silencing my younger brother “Yes, we do. If our men have been going missing for this long, it could be the same people that got to Connor.”
“Oh, so it’s our men now, eh?” Peter scoffed. “Where were ye bastards when I had two Willies wash up with their throats slit?”
“I was at your home that day,” I volleyed, “helping track their last movements.”
It wasn’t a lie. I had been with the McKenzies on that day back in November. I remembered because I’d been trying to cut the meeting short to call Emma before she went to sleep. I should’ve paid more attention to the deaths.
Two McKenzie recruits had surfaced along the Hudson, throats slit and almost all the blood drained from their bodies. As far as I knew, no one could say when or where they had been abducted. They’d disappeared into thin air. Like Connor had. Only these men had floated back up forty-eight hours later. It’d already been a day since Connor’s last communication. If the same person or persons were involved, we were running out of time.
Peter McKenzie grunted and sat on a metal folding chair, lighting another cigarette to show he was done complaining. I continued to stand, my legs jittery like I needed to sprint. To where, I had no idea.
“Anyone else have disappearances we don’t know about?” I asked, pacing to give myself something to do in the interim.
We had the heads of the McKenzie, Sweeney and Murray families gathered under one roof. That hadn’t happened since Jeremiah Murray had been killed in prison. The three clans were entities unto themselves, but Connor governed them at a distance. With him missing, they answered to me. Whether they—or I, for that matter—liked it or not.
“We have a similar story,” Michael Sweeney stated, twirling an ace of diamonds between two fingers. He was a quiet man in his mid-forties with mousy brown hair and small, inquisitive eyes.
I lifted my brows, a signal for him to continue.
Michael adjusted himself in his seat, dropping the playing card on the table. “About two weeks ago, my nephew disappeared on his way home from a yacht party. Found him a couple days later, dumped in the alley behind one of our restaurants in the Meatpacking District. Throat cut so deep he was nearly decapitated, the poor lad. All the blood gone.”
A chill skated down my spine. Someone was picking off the Irish, that was obvious. I hoped to God whoever was doing this didn’t have Connor, but the odds of it being anyone else were slim. We had many enemies, but Eoghan kept track of their movements. This threat had to be unknown to slip under his radar.
“Any leads?” I demanded.
Kieran shifted restlessly, coming to the same conclusion as me. We had a day, if that, to find Connor alive.
Bryan Murray rose, looking worse for wear. Their war with the Mafia wasn’t going well. His father was in the hospital recovering from a shot to the head. With his eldest brother dead, nineteen-year-old Bryan was left in command of his family.
“I’ve heard rumors,” he said, addressing me. He was pale and slim, his chin still housing the acne of youth. “Nicoletti brought someone over from Italy. Another family member.”
“Luca Nicoletti ships people back an’ forth from that godforsaken country every five minutes.” McKenzie swore with vitriol, running a meaty palm through the orange scruff on his cheek. “We can’t keep track of every Rickie or Vinnie coming an’ going.”
“Let the boy speak,” I snapped, all too aware of the hand on my watch ticking. Was it moving faster or was that my imagination?
Bryan cleared his throat, proceeding. “I have a mole. She’s in a position close to the Nicolettis. Said the men have been talking about some sort of ‘enforcer’ that Don Luca recruited to inspire fear, even among his own. The disappearances, the bodies, they all started around the time he brought this man to the States.”
“Who’s the mole?”
Bryan shuffled his feet, scuffing the toe of his boot along the cement floor. “I’d rather not say.”
