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“What?”
“I’ve been turning my phone off at night so I won’t have to leave you for every little thing that comes up. If it's important, they know to come wake me. Apparently James has been picking up the slack.” He shot me an apologetic look. “I’ll talk to him. I’m thinking of putting someone on permanent night duty to answer these questions. Most of them are pretty simple fixes, they just happen all night long.”
I scowled. “You’re the leader and you can spend the whole night here. I’m pretty sure James has a problem.”
Jo laughed. “I think they all do, Liam’s just been working on it longer. He started staying home at night after I got hurt. He only works nights when he absolutely has to now.”
Liam tossed back the rest of his coffee, kissing Jo on the cheek. “I’m going to go deal with some of this shit. Then I’ve got a meeting with Volkov. Are you going to be home today?”
Jo shrugged. “I’ve got a few errands to run with Jaime, but mostly home, yeah. Your mom wants me to start working with her on a few projects.” She made a face and Liam grinned.
“You’re a saint for agreeing to work with her after everything. I love you.”
He went to leave and she pulled him back, kissing him fiercely. “I love you too. Be safe and text me.”
I felt bad but I was supremely jealous watching them. If I didn’t know what he did for a living, I would think he was a normal guy working a normal job. I focused on my coffee, trying to hide my scowl.
Jo’s hand on my shoulder brought me around. “Come on. I’ll show you Liam’s office. You can work on that project for me while I run errands so you won’t have to see my face for a little bit.” She held back a smile until I chuckled.
“Shut up, I’m not mad at you. I’m just jealous. James is gone more than he’s here and he’s not even in charge.”
She squeezed my shoulder. “I know. We’ll figure out a way to kick his ass later. Right now, you’ve got work so you can kick ass as a freelancer. I really do have to run some errands, my friend Mariana texted me to let me know she was coming back soon and I want to grab a few things for her. I won’t be long though.”
ChapterTwenty-Five
Jo setme up in Liam’s office. It felt weird sitting at his desk using his laptop. I was worried I was overstepping, imposter syndrome hitting hard, but I followed the directions Yuri gave me and surprisingly, I found what she was looking for pretty quickly. Yuri mentioned it wasn’t as hard as it looked but still. I almost wanted to call him to have him look it over but that would probably defeat the purpose of me doing it in the first place.
Jo came back as I was pulling up the video she asked for.
“How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. What am I looking for, exactly?”
“There was a fight with some of our guys. Liam needs to know who was involved so he can deal with it. Our tech guy was one of the ones hurt during the fight so we didn’t have anyone to look it up for us.” She pulled up a chair next to me, frowning at the video I was fast forwarding through. “How can you tell what’s happening?”
I shrugged. “I slow it down when I see groups of people. You said it was a fight, so I figured it was a bigger group. You don’t have an exact time, do you? There’s time stamps on the video.”
She shook her head. “No, but I could call Liam if we can’t find anything. I’m sure he knows more.”
Our eyes were glued to the screen while we chatted, pausing every once in a while to check the video before fast forwarding again.
“I’m surprised he lets you do this kind of stuff. When you think of a mafia boss, don’t you automatically think misogynist?”
Jo cackled. “Yes. I got lucky. Liam doesn’t care what gender you are, as long as you get the job done. Most of the people who work for him are guys but that’s a matter of circumstance. O’Connors make a lot of boys. As for me, he only lets me do the stuff that doesn’t require me to leave the house, but I don’t really mind. One run in with the enemy was plenty for me.”
“Are all of them related?”
Shaking her head, she leaned back in her seat, looking thoughtful. “I’d say maybe 65% are related in some way or another. The rest are hired, usually based on recommendations from family. And then there's James, who is a special case.”
I remembered him telling me about his situation. “I’m glad Liam found him. Not having a family sounds horrible.”
“It is. It’s lonely and honestly a little terrifying. I mean, I have parents, but they want nothing to do with me. If I showed up tomorrow, dying from cancer, they’d be pissed I interrupted their vacation plans and demand I go check into hospice.”
I grimaced. My family was nothing like that. I love them and they love me. I haven’t told them about everything that happened yet, but I would on Sunday when we have our weekly call. If I called in the middle of the week, my mom would automatically assume I was dying and I didn’t want to freak her out.
I was about to respond when a large group popped up on the feed. I paused it, rewinding it a little and we both leaned forward.
“Oh! That’s it! See that guy right there? That’s Adam. Can we save the video for Liam?”
