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It was simply the way he was built—cold efficiency. The same cold efficiency that allowed him to shoot a guy who was blackmailing them between the eyes allowed him to fuck women senseless and not get attached. That’s exactly what he needed to remember with Viv.
Fuck her senseless and don’t get attached. It was the only rule he had for sex. Well, that and always wear a condom. If he was being forced to break one rule, he was determined to keep the other one.
James came by to hand him an earpiece that he hooked deftly over his ear. As soon as he settled it in, he could hear the rapid clicking of keys under Brogan’s fingers on the other end. No doubt finalizing payment or running a last-minute background check on a new player. They never went into anything blind, and that was all thanks to Brogan.
Aidan suspected Brogan’s anger about the night Finn died was directed as much at himself as it was at Aidan. It was proof that even when you had access to as much information as Brogan did, even when you meticulously and carefully planned out every detail and its contingencies, shit could still go wrong. And when shit goes wrong, people die.
This time it had been Finn. Next time—and there would certainly be a next time—it could be any of them. It was a risk they all accepted by living this life. Aidan would give anything to have traded places with Finn, anything so Finn was here to go home to his wife and kid every night.
"Deal closed. Ready for drop off," Brogan said in his ear, jolting him out of his thoughts. "Will confirm payment in full."
The men moved in a flurry of activity, climbing into their respective vehicles while Aidan swung up into the driver’s seat of the delivery truck and cranked the engine, waiting for James to join him in the passenger seat. When Sean’s arm shot out the window of the lead car, Aidan pulled onto the road behind them and followed at a distance. They always made deliveries in a caravan. A lead car to absorb the initial hit in an ambush and a tail car to provide cover support.
Not that they'd ever been ambushed. Not even the Italians had been stupid enough to take a direct hit at them. They weren’t stupid enough to do it now. Their firepower, their men, their training. The Callahan syndicate was unmatched, and every criminal in the city knew it.
Which is why this alliance with Falcone was so groundbreaking. It had been more than a century since a Callahan ancestor had established dominance in Philadelphia, running blockades during the Civil War and getting a taste for the unchecked wealth that came with illegal deals and illicit agreements.
As immigration from Ireland picked up in the last half of the 19th century, the syndicate grew to what had become known as the original five until it became twelve sometime during the Prohibition era.
In all that long and sordid history, never once had they aligned with a rival organization. They hadn’t needed to. Callahans had always been willing to do whatever was necessary to stay on the throne of power, no matter how bloody.
This alliance was necessary now, according to Declan. Technology and the digital age made it both easier and harder to continue their business. Declan was all too willing to adapt when he needed to, but Aidan suspected he knew that if they wanted the syndicate to continue to thrive for another century or more, they were going to have to plan for the long term.
He could respect his brother’s commitment to maintaining the legacy even if he hated being the guinea pig for the whole damn thing. Especially because it left him unable to stop thinking about a certain irritatingly irresistible woman with big brown eyes, a full, heart-shaped mouth, and long legs he wanted to feel cinched around his waist. Or his head. Or both. Definitely both.
“Aidan!”
His fingers jerked on the wheel at James's shout. “Jesus! What?”
“Just wondering if you were going to miss the second turn like you missed the first and get us all arrested.”
Aidan muttered a curse and slammed on the brakes in time to take the secondary entrance into the docks, coasting to a stop and throwing it in park while one of their syndicate men leaned out of the guard house window in his uniform.
"Rough day?" he wondered, holding out a hand for their papers.
James passed a folded slip that said they were delivering electronics and flicked a glance at Aidan. “Just a little caught up. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. My coworker might be annoyed I sent him on a random and ultimately pointless errand, but he's new and I can’t stand the guy, so it was fun for me. Plus, he's a pain-in-the-ass rule follower. Probably best he didn't see the truck anyway.”
He handed their papers back and pushed a button that made the chain-link fence in front of them glide out of their way with a buzz. They drove through the maze of one-way lanes until they reached the loading zone they were looking for, and Aidan backed the truck up to the mouth of the shipping container.
“You good?” James wondered.
Aidan watched three men emerge from the dark of the metal tube. “I'm fine. Let's go.” He climbed down from the truck, leaving James to follow.
The men probably wouldn't make trouble. They wanted to take their product and go as much as Aidan wanted to get rid of it, but the weight of the gun at his back made him feel better about facing three guys built like defensive linemen.
“You have what we pay for?” the smallest man said in an accent Aidan couldn't place.
“You pay for what we have?”
The man grunted just as Brogan confirmed payment in full in his ear, and Aidan signaled to James to open one of the crates for inspection. Once satisfied, the men quickly offloaded the weapons and left the way they came.
"What the hell was that back there?” James demanded as they pulled into the warehouse parking lot, maneuvering the truck into the hangar out of sight of the road.
Aidan cut the engine but didn't get out. “Nothing. I was thinking. Distracted.”
“About…?”
