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“Just a little longer, beautiful, and this will be taken care of,” he promises. “I’ve got you. I’ll always have you. I’m your safety net, baby.”
“I know, and I’ll always let you catch me when I fall, Julius. I just wish you’d let me save you too.”
“You do. You have. In more ways than you’ll ever know,” he mumbles into my hair.
Julius
“Now,they’re just toying with us,” I gripe, tossing the newspaper containing an article written the day the clubhouse exploded across the top of my desk.
Leo brought in the mail this morning, and this was in an envelope addressed to me, with no return label from the sender.
“They’re being obtuse. Acting like if they send it anonymously we’ll never make out who it came from,” Luca adds, sipping from a crystal glass that’s halfway filled with his favorite whiskey, a brand that cost three hundred dollars per bottle. “We need to make a riskier move.”
“What’s riskier than putting our family out in the limelight?” I ask my brother. He better, for his health, not be going where I think he is.
“Jules.” He sighs, shaking his head like I’m a numbskull who’s not smart enough to read between the lines.
“No!” I thunder. “Not happening, Luc.”
“Okay, Jules,” he says, deflating in his seat, his glass hanging loosely from the tips of his fingers. “Then we have to come up with something else that’d make them lash out and act erratically. What we’re doing isn’t cutting it.”
“I know this. We all know this. But I’m at my wits’ end, here. Toss me a line, Luc.”
“If taunting them with the boys isn’t working, there aren’t any more lines to toss out that you haven’t reeled back in, brother. The only other thing we can do is attack. Are we ready for that? Do we have enough intel to take them and all of their men out, in one fell swoop?”
“You know we don’t,” I seethe, lashing out at him. “They’re never in one place together anymore. They’ve spread themselves out and there’s no pattern to when they meet. We can’t get to them fast enough when it’s been reported to us that they finally gather in one area.”
“Then we need to pick them off one at a time,” he states.
“All that will accomplish is them coming here. With us not knowing their exact numbers, it means we don’t know if we have enough men here to keep our girls safe,” I argue.
“Then we send them underground until it’s safe and we can bring them back. It may be the only way,” he counters.
“You may be right,” I say, falling back into my chair.
“Boss,” Marco calls out, knocking on the door.
“Come in, Marco,” I order.
“The Fitzgeralds are on the line. They want to set up a meet at a neutral location. They sound desperate. What do you want me to tell them?”
Luca leans forward, his hands dangling between his legs, twirling his tumbler between them. “Julius, it may be a good idea. I know we’ve been putting this off, but it’s time. It’s the next logical step.”
“I know,” I snap. “We’ll need to bring Shayne with us. But no place we could go is secure enough to keep her out of harm's way.”
“What about the bunker we bought a couple of years ago? It sits empty. We could fortify it with soldiers. Bring up the boys to add as backup security detail for her. That should give us the numbers we need to keep everyone safe,” Luca recommends.
“See if they’re agreeable to that, Marco. If so, we’ll meet with them in three days. That’ll give me time to get the men gathered, prep Shayne, and get the bunker strengthened.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I get off the phone with them, boss. If they are, do you want me to get a head start at the bunker?” Marco asks me.
“Yeah. Take men with you. No one goes out on solo runs. Got it?” I command.
“Got it,” Marco answers, stepping into the hallway and shutting the door behind him.
* * *
Once Marco let us know that they agreed to the location and date, Luca went to talk to the boys while I sought out Shayne to tell her what we’ve decided and to get her prepared for the potential fallout.
