Page 20 of Marcus

Cella nodded.

Her smile was back, too.

And he couldn’t look away.

Neither could she, it seemed.

“Absolutely, Marcus.”

“Three-hundred cases of the Quebec farm’s syrup went through the border last week. According to the driver, there were dogs at the crossing and they checked the trailer. Didn’t even sniff the sections of the trailer where we would use to smuggle, though.”

“Mmm.”

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?”

Marcus glanced up from his phone but couldn’t even be bothered to have the decency to seem ashamed about the fact his attention was not on this meeting with Chris at one of their many warehouses for the maple syrup farms. Today was mostly for updates which meant he didn’t give a shit about the mundane things—only when something went wrong, so he could fix it as soon as possible before it made a bigger mess.

So far, everything was on the up.

That’s what counted.

“This is kind of important.”

He met his brother’s stare overtop the dusty boxes in the back of the warehouse. For the most part, many of the workers at the syrup farms didn’t know about the illegal activities that happened because of the Guzzis’ ownership of the businesses. So, when they did show up to go over the usual, they tended to stay away.

Hence, the boxes.

And dust.

“Someone needs to clean up in this backroom,” he muttered, brushing off his blazer.

Jesus.

He hated dirt.

“That shipment, Marcus,” his brother said shortly, “proved we can export using the maple syrup farms, too. That’s good news. More money.”

“Right, right, except we have our usual ways, and we’ll take a far greater hit to our income—and probably freedom—if one of the shipments gets picked up on the maple syrup side of things, oui?”

Chris sighed, glancing down at the clipboard he held. “Probably, but—”

“Unless we can get someone at the border that we’re paying, I don’t want any of the maple syrup shipments to be used for that purpose. Any that get shipped out on the cargo boats—that’s different. We’ve got our contacts. Otherwise, we need a more foolproof plan for having shit on the roads, that’s all I am saying. Ever since Cross Donati had that gun shipment picked up in Maine … well, I don’t want to play with fire.”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it.”

“And don’t fuck around like that again. I don’t want to find out after the fact that you’ve put something through the border as a test, Chris. Fuck.”

“If you were paying attention—”

“I paid attention. I heard you. It proved we could possibly do it. Don’t do it.”

“Fine.”

Chris went onto something else—the money going into the business accounts this month, by the sounds of it. More of the usual, which Marcus had little to no interest in hearing about. He knew how all that worked, and exactly how they would launder all that dirty money through the maple syrup farms to clean it before it came out the other side looking like profits on the books.

That’s what mattered the most.

Profits.