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“Imight have to kill your husband,” I told my best friend in the whole world. “Don’t take it personally.” I dropped into the seat across the table from Sloane, reached for one of the margaritas she’d mixed, and took an enormous swallow.
“I’ll try,” she agreed calmly. “But what are we actually going to do about him?”
God, I fucking loved that girl. I knew a lot of people in this town—a lot of people who depended on me for a lot of shit and were, for the most part, pretty open to whatever I had to say. But I didn’t think any of them would have let me insult their significant other without blinking an eye.
Of course, I’d known Sloane Brennan-Rossi—and her husband, Joseph—since we were too young to realize the three of us shouldn’t have been friends at all. The princess of the Irish mob, the heir of the biggest Italian family in the city, and the...
Well, me. The girl who didn’t have anything to do with the mafia. As far as anyone knew. Even though I could have been running the entire fucking city when I was about ten years old and doing a better job of it than some of the biggest guys out there.
The thought made me grin, and I leaned my elbows on the table and glanced at her, trying to remember what she’d even been like as a kid. What we’dallbeen like. Sloane was married to Joseph now, and we both had more power than we’d had in the past.
At least in theory.
Of course we were still officially just the girls, and that pretty much cancelled out whatever power we might have had, when it came to the menfolk. The thing was, our families—the Rossis and the Brennans—were currently embroiled in an enormous war with enemies we still hadn’t named, and Those In Charge had yet to make any big breakthroughs in terms of what the hell was going on.
You’d think they would have been glad to accept some help. That, having run out of ideas, they would have turned to other sources and asked for feedback. Instead, they shut Sloane and me down every time we opened our mouths. And don’t even get me started on Penny. She might be Michael Rossi’s new pet, but he and Joseph seemed absolutely committed to thinking she didn’t have anything in her head aside from bubblegum and hearts.
And I was getting really tired of it. Sloane was one of the top lawyers in the city, Penny could run circles around anyone else when it came to numbers, and I was... well, let’s just call me a ‘fixer,’ and leave it at that. We had good contacts. We had information the menfolk would never have had access to. We had brains that could put them to shame.
And yet.
I took another sip of my margarita, slower this time, and called the meeting to order. “What are we going to do about it? I’ve got some ideas. But if Joseph and Michael found out about them...”
I made a face. I could imagine exactly what Joseph would do if he knew the plans that were running through my head. He’d never been good at letting us girls do anything he thought was ‘risky,’ and his brother was even worse.
Control freaks, both of them.
Not that I’d ever cared much.
“It’s the Massimos,” I told the girls clearly. “It’s got to be. There’s too much proof. Anthony following Penny, not once but twice. The Carusos suddenly having all this money to throw around. And the fact that no one’s seen a fucking Massimo since this whole thing started. They’ve up and disappeared. They might be ghosts, but this is...”
“Weird,” Sloane agreed. Her gray eyes met mine, somber and worried, and I could almost read her mind. Someone was making war on our families. Taking out our soldiers on the streets and getting spies into our warehouses. They’d been following Penny and had probably been behind the bullets that tore into Michael’s body when he was trying to hide her.
They were dangerous, and the guys were evidently incapable of putting two and two together and getting this war started.
In short, they were all talk and no action.
Typical.
“We know the Massimos are up to something,” I continued. “We know it has something to do with us. And as far as I can see, we need to get in there and figure out what the fuck it is. I’m tired of sitting around waiting.”
Suddenly Penny, my smaller, blonder, and altogether more innocent friend leaned forward, her face looking surprisingly crafty. “In that case,” she said, sounding more conspiratorial than I’d ever heard her. “I might have exactly what you’re looking for.”
Sloane and I stared at her for several moments, both of us shocked at this sudden turn of events. Penny was a lot of things, but a schemer wasn’t one of them. The last time she’d tried, muscling her way into Michael Rossi’s office as a spy for a reporter, it ended up with her falling in love with Michael and then nearly getting herself and Michael killed.
The thing was, she never should have tried it on her own. If she’d told us what she was doing, we would have made sure she was smarter about it.
So if she had a plan, I guessed, at least she was telling us about it this time.
“You do?” I asked, unable to come up with anything more than that.
She shrugged, her curls bouncing a bit with the movement. “Sure. You want the Massimos? Well, I have a way in.”
“You have a way in?” Sloane asked, looking horrified. “Who are you and what have you done with our friend Penny?”
