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Geno only stared.
“Fuck. Me,” Cooper said.
They all knew that name: Rob Sullivan had been running the Vegas crew. Ocean’s 11 for Dummies. The Bulls had taken most of their loot but hadn’t gone after them directly. They’d assumed they had a boss who would handle them when they couldn’t produce. Cooper had said it outright at the time. He’d even made a joke about it.
He’d been right: the Vegas crew had had a boss, who had handled them severely. Sullivan and his associates had been bound and gagged. An old tire had been dropped over each man’s neck and shoulders, filled with gasoline, and set alight.
And now one of theirs had worked out enough to blame Cooper and retaliate.
Kai was nodding. “It’s obviously payback—but Cooney is not an innocent family member acting out in grief. He’s a bad dude. He was a Vegas cop, dirty as they come. Not the dirty we like, on the take, but dirty like fucking people up just to fuck with ‘em, stealing drugs, cutting ‘em, and putting ‘em back on the street, just grimy as fuck. Bunch of excessive force investigations, too. He finally got kicked, and now he’s a private eye—and still filthy. Freddie’s his assistant. He’s got a record. It’s small time, but he’s not walking the straight and narrow, either.”
“What do you want to do, Coop?” Zach asked.
Until two minutes ago, Cooper could have answered that question instantly and forcefully. He wanted to kill the motherfuckers who’d almost killed Siena and Geneva. He wanted to make them bleed and scream. Wanted a pound of flesh for every cough, every tear Siena had shed since.
But if last night had been retaliation, responding in kind could begin a cycle. Would they end up in a ‘gang war’ after all? How bad was this Cooney? How connected, and to whom?
No, wait. The Bulls hadn’t touched a hair on Rob Sullivan’s head. They’d stolen his crew’s loot, nothing more. Maybe that was a fine line to walk, but Cooper had great balance. They had not destroyed the warehouse. They had not even gone looking for the men. What happened after they’d taken the diamonds was not part of the Bulls’ story.
Not until now.
Cooper made up his mind. “Burning me out is not retaliation, because we didn’t kill his nephew. He aimed at the wrong target. But he almost did killmyfamily. He pays.”
“It’s more than payback,” Ben said. “We can’t let it get around that somebody burned our president out and lived to tell the story over beers at the corner bar.”
Cooper nodded and turned to Kai again. “You got any deets on where we can find Cooney, at least?”
Kai’s expression became wolfish. “I made a few calls, played a little bit of pretend. Cooney and Scott will be staking out a motel north of the Strip tonight. I can’t get you guy number three tonight, but I can give you Cooney and Scott.”
“Good. Those two will do.” He glanced Ben’s way. “Leaves one to tell the tale we want told.” Ben nodded in agreement, and Cooper focused again on the whole table. “Does it need a vote?”
All his men shook their heads. They didn’t need to vote; they were all with him already.
“Then let’s make a plan.”
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~oOo~
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Siena eyed him warily. “Does it have to be now?”
“This is not something you put off, babe. It has to be answered now. They have to pay now.”
They’d been a couple for what? A week? Two? They were brand new. Even factoring in all the time they’d known each other since January, they were still new. Cooper factored in that time before they were a couple, because Siena had been a dominant presence in his head from just about the first day. Then, he hadn’t understood why, and it had bugged the crap out of him. Now he understood. He’d been drawn to her from the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
Even so, they were brand new.
Yet a few hours earlier they’d both saidI love you, and meant it, and now here they sat, negotiating what and how much of Cooper’s outlaw life Siena would be privy to.
They’d gone through a whole lot of relationship development over the past eighteen hours or so.
He was stumbling through the conversation, figuring it out as he went. He’d never expected to have this talk with any woman, so he’d never thought about it. However, he’d heard again and again from his brothers that it was, more or less, an all-or-nothing situation. A woman couldn’t be half in. They either knew just about everything or absolutely nothing. What his preference was, though, he couldn’t say.
Siena handled that problem at once, and pretty much anyone who’d ever exchanged a sentence with her could have guessed what her preference was: she wanted to know everything.
For years, Cooper had wonder why the fuck all his brothers seemed to hook up with complicated women. Bossy, rebellious, opinionated women were like catnip to most of the Bulls, and Cooper had stood on the sidelines, happily single, and been baffled. Why would anyone want to work so hard to be with a woman?
