AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"You want to grill the steaks? Fine. You keep trying to grill me and I'm out of here," I warn before returning to my chair.
It would be a shame to waste Gina's salad.
"I don't like the potential I see for the situation with this woman to blow up in your face and that's the last I'll say about it." Orion takes a sip of his beer. "For now."
Doesn't matter what my brothers or cousins say. I'm keeping Lucia. Hell, I'm not sure it matters what she says.
I tell them the observations I've made and the name of the distiller who sells Lucia his handcrafted ale. Too bad for Shawn, his craft distillery is in our territory. I won't mind extracting protection money from him at all.
"What did he do to piss you off?" Helios asks.
I shrug. Telling them he stands too close to Lucia might make me sound unhinged. I'm not. I'm protective. And a little possessive. Maybe a lot. Okay, yeah, definitely a lot.
I would be as happy to kill Shawn as let him live to pay us.
"There's an issue with the port," Zephyr says when I'm done giving my report.
"I thought you had it locked down," Zeus says. "We already put the offer in on the abandoned shipping yard."
"Someone else came in and made a backdoor offer. They're trying to outbid us."
"Who?"
"I don't have a name, but I saw a group of tatted up men down there today. They were with someone who never got out of the car, but they each reported to him after checking out different parts of the yard."
"What kind of tats?"
Zephyr looks at me and then back to Zeus. "I can't be positive, but they looked like bratva tats."
What the actual fuck? We spent a year investigating the Portland metro before we made our move and there was no sign of a bratva presence.
Street gangs and militia groups, but no bratva, no Irish mob and no Italian mafia. We chose our new home carefully because establishing a new territory for theÁdis Adelfótitaisn't going to be easy.
Zeus doesn't look as shocked as the rest of us.
"You know about this?" I ask him.
"I got a tipoff that bratva activity is increasing in Portland."
"Tipoff from who?" Orion asks.
Zeus grimaces. "That anonymous guy who has been sending me texts."
We don't know who the unknown informant is. But the intel Zeus has received so far has been accurate.
"Did your CI give any details?" Helios asks.
"He's not a CI," Zeus snaps. "I'm not a fucking cop."
Unfazed, Helios says, "He's keeping his identity confidential and he's an informant, so CI."
"You're not as funny as you think you are." Zeus looks at me. "Myanonymousinformant gave me the name of a bar the bratva are hanging around. Atlas, I want you there. You have the best chance of recognizing bratva soldiers by face alone and knowing what family they are from."
I am a little obsessed with any bratva even remotely connected to Golubev. No one in my family will ever go through what I did because the bratva want something from us.
I send a message when I need to and even when I don't. Loud and clear, with dead and dismembered bodies.
"I'll do the recon, but otherwise I'll be with Lucia." I let my brother see my commitment to this family in my eyes. "If you need me, I'll be here."
