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“No, you need Cole to get them,” he said in a sharp tone. “Are you stupid? You pull those and the Feds will have your ass in a minute. Cole is our patsy. He gets them, in exchange for his life—and maybe a favor, after I take my rightful place as head of the Michaelson family.”
Daniel
I slammed the front door of the West Carlisle house behind me, the bang satisfying my broiling temper. I stormed across the icy driveway, taking deep gulps of the frigid air, hoping to cool it. Hoping it might erase that wary look that Ty had given me when I hadn’t believed Lia’s bullshit story. A look that had gutted me and had made me feel every inch the Reaper’s demon offspring.
The cold did nothing to cool my blood. But it did make the warning, know-it-all voice in the back of my head all the louder.
Lust and love clearly made your cousin Ty lower his guard.
My lungs hurt from the cold. I was piecing together the words to justify my sudden distrust of Lia, to prove Ty wrong, to finally have a reason to hate Sara.
Sara with her ruthless, near-psychic perceptiveness.
Would she have called me if she had thought something was wrong? I took out my phone, noting I had texts from the guys, but no missed calls, and nothing from Sara. My unease increased. Sara would absolutely call me if she thought something was up with Lia. Why hadn’t she?
Something had been wrong since Lia had emerged from Mickey Weiss’s hospital room earlier today. At first, I’d put it down to revisiting the trauma of losing her mother, of seeing us beat up Mickey Weiss, and maybe remembering how her father had gotten her into this mess in the first place. I knew today would be hard for her, which is why I’d been against it when Ty had asked me to bring Lia to visit Mickey.
The Lia who went into that room was not the Lia who’d come out. What had he said to her? It couldn’t have been something about Ty, or she wouldn’t have come back here.
I jolted and turned back to the house, my eyes narrowing. How the hell had Lia gotten back here from Boston. A rideshare? I frowned, hesitating, and then shook my head. It didn’t matter. Ty trusted her. Whatever she told us, he’d believe her.
I get it, I get how easy it is to love Lia and I’m not surprised she brought your cousin to his goddamn knees.
Sara’s voice in my head was relentless and gritting my jaw, I unlocked my phone and called her. While it rang, I wedged it between my shoulder and ear, freeing up my hand to pull out my cigarettes and attempt to light one. But the cold made my fingers clumsy, and I couldn’t get it to light. Annoyed, I almost dropped the lighter as the call went to voicemail.
What the hell? Was Sara not answering on purpose?My heart beat a little faster and I called back, frowning as it went straight to voicemail again.One more time.
But no luck that time either. At that moment, I realized I’d dropped a perfectly good cigarette on the ground, and it was soaking up the salt, muck, and snow. With a groan, I left it and stalked around, getting into the car. I turned it on, letting it heat up, and glanced back at the house. Part of me was tempted to go in there and have it out with Ty.
I had a feeling, though, that if I went in there Ty and Lia would be going at it like rabbits. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. I felt my brow furrow and I remembered Lia getting sick earlier, then shook my head.No way…
Unable to bear that line of thought, I sped off into the evening, thinking hard. Tomorrow there was the annual “Mobster’s Ball,” as Artie had nicknamed it years ago. Its real name was the Independent Business Association Ball, and it was meant as a show of goodwill that the crime families of Boston, from theMafia to the Bratva to theSons of Celtcould keep the peace, keep to their own territory, and not start a gang war. Tommasino and some of his old cronies had started it after my father had wiped out Slinky’s old gang—presenting a united front that it wouldn’t happen again.
I frowned, barely seeing the dark country road as I whipped along. Ty had been hoping that the Bratva or our guys would’ve found proof by now that Hendrix had wiped out the former Bratva head, Ivan Volksov, along with several of his men, and taken overThe Cathouse.Not quite a gang war, but enough that some of the old heads in Winter Hill had apparently taken notice, as they hadn’t seen Ivan in week.
What had Ty said earlier?
The Russians still don’t know shit.
And I’d responded about Hendrix covering his tracks well for once. Guess the threat of revenge from the Bratva would do that.
I’d made it to the highway without even really realizing where I was going. For a moment, I considered going to my house instead of my apartment, but I needed the equipment at the apartment. The house was there for when I needed a break, when I got to pretend that I didn’t need two residences in case the Feds came knocking—or someone put a hit out.
Tomorrow, I could visit Weiss and figure out what was going on. Ty would be preoccupied with the event and wouldn’t be any the wiser. In the meantime, first thing tomorrow I’d go ask Slinkyfor help, and maybe help Kir, Ivan’s nephew, look around some more.
Tonight, I needed to talk to theSons of Celtand see what they knew. Slinky had said they were suspicious, nothing more. But if Hendrix had somehow made it look like the trail went to Ty, as he had with the Bratva—that could be bad. The Winter Hill Gang was long in the wind, but some of those old guys had gone to work for Ivan or had kept up their connections with him. Those old heads meant business and a lot of their family had joined up with theSons of Celt.
This was my job. This was what Ty had me do in the shadows—keep tabs and stop things from getting out of hand.
None of us wanted a war.
None of us except Hendrix, that is.
I’d been up since 5 a.m., running around town. First, it had taken me a while to track down Slinky, but he’d agreed to keep an eye out and look more into Hendrix’s connection with Mickey Weiss. There might be a deeper one there, maybe something that went beyond just a cop trying to take down all the crime families.
After, I’d spent hours searching the city with Kir for proof that Hendrix had iced old Ivan. The easiest thing would be to goThe Cathouse,but I’d ruined my only chance to get in unnoticed afterI’d iced Jock and dumped his body there. And it was risky for Kir too, someone might recognize him.
“I will go,” Kir said. We were smoking on a loading dock not far from the club, discussing how best to get in there. “Irina is my family. You have done enough.” He gave me a critical look. “You should go home and shower. Get some sleep, Daniel.”
