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The Russian wrinkled his nose like he’d just caught a whiff of something sour. Dashkov and Eriksen weren’t enemies, but like us, prior to Ava, they weren’t friends either. Many people had a strong beef against my father in the underground, and Eriksen seemed to be at the top of the list. What none of us could figure out was why. If he was working with the senator, it could spell disaster.
“I’ve heard about your problems with both of them,” Matthias admitted, nodding a thanks to the maid who handed him his drink. “I haven’t personally had any dealing with the man, but my little birds tell me he’s been seen meeting with several of Richard Crowe’s men.”
“I thought Crowe wanted the biker gangs and mafiosos out of the city,” Ava said. “He and Elias would hold strategy meetings. I thought it was Elias trying to become more political, but since I learned Matthias had him under his thumb, it makes more sense that he was trying to push him out of the city.”
“The things you paid attention to astound me,malyshka.” Matthias held up her hand and kissed the back of it. Kiernan gagged at the show of affection.
“Ouch,” he hissed, then glared at our sister. “Did you just kick me like a five-year-old?”
Ava stuck out her tongue at him. “Don’t act like one, then.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at their sibling antics. Even my father was smiling, his eyes darting between the two.
“What I wonder is why the arranged marriage with Knight?” Matthias wondered. “I’d heard rumors of it a few years ago, but not much since. It doesn’t seem to have a purpose, especially since Bailey isn’t the socialite her sister is. She doesn’t even carry Crowe’s last name. Besides a few appearances here and there at social functions, she is practically a ghost. And why wait so long to get married? It would have been more prudent to marry them when she turned eighteen, and she’s nearly twenty-six now.”
“That does seem odd,” Kiernan pointed out. “Knight has a huge amount of political capital, and if he backs Crowe in that election, he’s a shoo-in. Maybe that was why they waited. Stage the wedding right before the election. Voters would eat that up.”
“Crowe could have run for office years ago,” my father said. “Why wait?”
“It is unusual,” Matthias said, tilting his head in agreement. “Maybe he is waiting for something.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to marry him.” Ava’s face twisted, her nose wrinkling in distaste. If anyone had a reason to hate arranged or forced marriages, it was Ava. Matthias had forced her to marry him when he first took her as collateral against the man she had thought was her father.
Our father had been livid when he’d found out but had come to accept that despite how Matthias had forced Ava to marry him, she was safe with him, and for some odd reason, she seemed to care for the Russian potato.
Questionable taste, in my opinion.
“Bridgett said that Drew Knight has been trying to get out from under his father’s thumb,” Kiernan added.
“That could have something to do with the delay,” Matthias mused. “Maybe he was against the marriage and was trying to figure out a way to get out of whatever contract his father had with Crowe. He would have to do it just right, though. Everyone knows that daddy dearest has had a tight leash on his son’s finances.”
“Where did he get all the money to finance his startup, then?” Da wondered.
Matthias shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “When he got into the security game, we looked into every aspect of his business but couldn’t place where he had gotten the cash to fund everything. He didn’t have any known investors in the first few years. No doubt people would have been too afraid to cross his father. But I do know that there has been an influx in activity the past few weeks with Crowe. Eriksen has been meeting up with Crowe’s men, and over the past twenty-four hours, Magnus has been panicking about something.”
“Maybe because the arranged marriage he set up is about to come crumbling down,” I told him, smirking.
Matthias’s forehead creased in confusion. “How would you know that?”
“Because I refuse to marry a cheating pig.”
10
The building was nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Nan led me down the hallway toward the elevator, filling the silence with idle chatter about the structure. The building was built in the late eighteen hundreds by Kane O’Connell, Seattle’s first Irish mob boss. It was continually added on to until the end of the O’Connell mob in the late 1950s. It laid vacant until Nan’s husband, Finn Kavanaugh, took claim over it when he moved from Boston in the nineties.
“There are seven floors, plus a parking garage,” Nan rambled as we stepped into the elevator. I wondered if she was aware of how much the chatter helped my nerves and racing pulse. “The ground floor is made up mostly of the McDonough’s bar. The second floor is the family area. Living room, kitchen, and the likes. The third and fourth floor are the residential suites for the main family. The fourth floor belongs to Liam, and only his print can open it. The final floors house the soldiers without anywhere to go.”
“The whole family lives in this one building?”
That was a lot of people all living under the same roof, constantly being underfoot. Liam Kavanaugh had two more sons and a daughter, and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like when everyone was home at the same time.
Nan laughed. “Jaysus, no.” She smiled at me through the reflective mirror of the doors. “Liam and his wife have a house near Greenlake, and the young’uns reside in Ireland for the time being. The twins have an apartment somewhere. God knows where. The two of them move more often than a plow sowing a field.”
“Oh.”
Was that all I could say? Nan must have thought my brain was addled. Not that I cared much.
