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Dani snorted. “Or something. Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Viv, you are stunning. I love this skirt, and we can’t go this long before hanging out again.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Viv promised.
They exchanged hugs all around, and Dani filed out, Alex and Felicity on her heels. Viv made an excuse that she’d left something at the table and waved as they left. Pulling out her phone to text James, she sighed.
The weight of the dishonesty sat heavily on her shoulders, even if she understood the reason for it. As soon as Collin was taken care of, she would tell her friends everything. She hated keeping secrets from them.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
Aidan surveyed the interior door to the basement under one of DiMarco’s old restaurants. Declan’s intention was to run the restaurants as legitimate businesses and leave Falcone to his illegal dealings downstairs. But in order to do that, they’d need entrances for anyone entering and leaving the casinos and soundproofing in case things got…spirited.
“We could put a door in directly to the casino. A private entrance,” Gavin suggested as they descended the stairs to the basement. “This wall here is completely exposed.”
“Mark it as an emergency exit, maybe,” Aidan said with a nod. “Yeah. That could work. Declan won’t want anyone coming in through the employee entrance. We won’t staff the entire restaurant internally, and no matter how well he pays people, we don’t want them getting suspicious.”
He walked the perimeter of the space. The basement ran directly under the kitchen and had probably been used as food storage at one time, or maybe a bomb shelter. It wasn’t the biggest basement of all the restaurants they’d taken from DiMarco, but it offered the most privacy, so it was first on the list for renovations so they could get it up and running.
Declan had tasked Aidan with overseeing the project along with Leo and Gavin. An added incentive to getting everything off the ground was that the faster they established the casinos, the closer Aidan was to being able to kill the son of a bitch who was stalking his wife.
“Papa wants to use this one for poker since it's smaller. Exclusive games with big buy-ins. House takes 20 percent of the pot off the top.”
“Only twenty?” Aidan wondered.
“For now,” Leo said.
They spent the morning going over plans for renovations. They wouldn’t need much. No one expected an underground gambling ring to be fancy. When they finished with one location, they’d move on to the next.
DiMarco had five restaurants in total sprinkled across the city, and after Brogan had killed the bastard, he’d worked up phony sales records and transferred ownership of the properties to one of the Callahan Corporation’s shell companies. They were still trying to figure out what to do with the estate. Brogan wanted to burn it to the ground. Aidan couldn’t really blame him.
When they pulled up to the last property on their list for the day, another car was already in the parking lot, parked at an odd angle and taking up three spaces. A black Jeep.
“Shit,” Leo muttered as Aidan climbed out of his truck.
“Is that…?”
“Our buddy Collin? Yeah.” Gavin replied.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Aidan demanded, crossing the lot.
He tested the door and found it open. Idiot. They locked it behind them before making their way down to the basement. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Collin was standing in the far corner, hands tucked into his pockets. It looked like he’d been waiting for them.
“Ah. Finally. I’ve been excited to hear what you’re going to be doing to my casino.”
“This isn’t your casino, Collin,” Leo said through gritted teeth.
Aidan pulled the rolled-up plans they’d been making notes on out of his back pocket and unfurled them, doing his best to ignore Collin completely.
“I hear my family is going to be running it. Exclusively. Sort of implies ownership. Doesn’t it?”
“This is Falcone property,” Gavin reminded him. “You’re the renter. Unfortunately.”
“Mmm,” Collin replied. “I thought it was Callahan property.” His gaze slid to Aidan, and he sneered. “The Falcones are in their pocket after all.”
“No one would expect a weasel like you to understand a mutually beneficial alliance,” Aidan said, drawing a rough sketch of the basement on the bottom of the page.
“Mutually beneficial for who?”
Aidan rolled his eyes. “Mutually beneficial is pretty self-explanatory, don’t you think? At least to someone smarter than you.”
