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On this particular day, Shane was there, sitting off the bed of his truck, drinking coffee, and watching me sweat my ass off as I laid the new bricks for the sidewalk. He wasn't going to help me. He was just there to bust my balls and watch me work. You know, brother stuff. I was half-expecting Eli, Ryan, and Hunter to show up to add to the ball busting. That was just how my family was.
"But yeah, the little fuck ate one of Fee's designer shoes," Shane went on, talking about Eli's new dog, Coop. Apparently, he was a bit of a handful. "You can imagine how much she enjoyed that. And now all Hunt has heard for a week is how much Becca wants a puppy now."
"I give it a month," I said, hauling a jagged chunk of old brick into the back of my truck, parked near Shane's.
"Care to put some money on that?"
Well hell.
I'd been losing epically in the betting department with my family. But that being said, I was always good to throw a little money down. "Twenty," I said, not feeling overly secure in my month prediction. Hunt would probably bring one home tomorrow if Becca begged, but Fee was a bit more of a hardass about those kinds of things. As mentioned, she had her shoes to worry about.
"I'll go for Christmas. What better time to get a kid a puppy? And they won't do it for Becca's birthday because that would say it's her dog and the other girls will flip the fuck out. So I got Christmas."
Chances were, whatever she picked, my mother would be the one to win the bet. Partly because she had been through the mothering thing and therefore had a sort of sixth sense about it. But the other possibility was, if Hunt and Fee didn't cave before her bid was due, she wasn't exactly above buying them a puppy herself.
"Yeah, I..." I started, a movement from across the street catching my eye.
It wasn't that it was unusual for there to be movement across the street. In fact, it was weird when there wasn't. Third Street members were constantly in and out of the building, picking up supplies or dropping off money. But the movement wasn't coming from the stoop to their building. It was coming from the seemingly abandoned shack a couple doors down.
All I caught at first was a flash of shiny, dark hair being kicked up in a slight breeze, blowing around a woman's back and shoulders. Nothing to really write home about.
But as my eyes went and stayed in that direction, I saw someone beside her with a face that, while not familiar to me, I knew... I fucking knew was one of the guys from the store robbery. It was in the build, the carriage, the dark hair that I knew was dark. It was the first time I got a good look at the features. And I was secure enough in my manhood to relay that the guy was good-looking.
I was just about to call out to Shane to tell him, them finding the whole incident interesting.
But then the woman grabbed her hair, twirling it in her hand, then yanking it to the other side, so it stopped flying into her face.
And yeah, now that face was very, very familiar.
"No fucking way," I hissed under my breath, my heartbeat seeming to pick up oddly in that moment as I watched her throw her head back and laugh at something the robber said. Then he gave her a fake punch to the chin and walked off, calling something back over his shoulder that I couldn't make out the words to.
Well, I couldn't make out any of the words except one.
"... Scotti..."
No.
Fucking.
Way.
But even as my brain tried to find any other explanation, it was beyond any of them. Because all you had to do was look at those two. The family resemblance was like that of my family. You saw me and one, or all, of my brothers together and you knew we were related. Same with Pops. There was no mistaking he was our old man.
And Angela/Scotti and the robber(s) from last week, yeah, they were brothers and sister. There wasn't a doubt in my mind.
The hot as sin woman I had been hoping to get a look at for weeks was a damn armed robber.
Of course.
You know, because the men in my family could never be into easy, normal women. Nope, it was all phone sex operators, ex-bikers, agoraphobic drug dealers.
And now, apparently, armed robbers of big box stores.
Yup, that sounded about right.
I mean, not that I had any plans to get serious with the woman. I was just making a comparison. Apparently, loanshark enforcers were inherently drawn to women who were trouble.
