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“Calm yourself, woman,” the man with the steel eyes says. “Let’s talk.”
Scrambling to my feet, I press myself against the wall, glancing between the armed man and the one holding my sister. Although the huge goon should terrify me more with his powerful arms and meaty fists, it’s the other one who gives off an aura of deadliness that permeates the room. And it has nothing to do with the gun he’s just tucked into a holster at his waist.
In the span of a few seconds, I assess the situation. Determine my chances of taking these guys on and winning. Or, at the very least, giving Maisie a chance to flee. The answer I come up with is that if I try to fight, the outcome won’t be a favorable one for us.
I always appreciated my father for the extra effort he put into our education. My high GPA is something I’ve been incredibly proud of. Right now, however, I rather wish I excelled in combat training instead. Perhaps even self-defense. But because Momma was killed in the line of duty, he rejected the idea that either Maisie or I learn anything he considered violent. Obviously, that was a huge mistake on his part.
With useless adrenaline rushing through my veins, I begin to shake uncontrollably. “Who are you?”
The man walks around my kitchen, seeming much too large and dark a presence, while I watch him warily. Although he doesn’t look like the average thug or murderer my father put behind bars, he definitely gives off a vibe that screams criminal. The powerful kind.
He pauses in front of the knife block and slides out a blade. I swallow hard as I catch the glint of the steel I’ve used on many occasions to slice through steaks and have the sudden vision of it slicing my throat.
“Are you going to kill us? You’ll get nothing out of killingher.” I nod toward Maisie. “She has nothing you’d want.”
A chuckle escapes him. It doesn’t sound like the one from the phone. It’s not dramatic or evil. Actually, were this any other situation, I’d find it sexy. However, inthissituation, it terrifies me.
Sliding the knife back into place, he angles his handsome face my way. “I don’twantto kill either of you.” He adds inflection to the word want, as if he doesn’t have a choice.
“Then whatdoyou want?”
“Your father made a deal with me,” he informs me.
“Did you kill him for it?”
His gaze narrows almost imperceptively, but his smile doesn’t waver. “I wouldn’t have killed Thomas. I needed his help. And since the life insurance you’re entitled to is going into a trust until your and your sister’s twenty-fifth and twentieth birthdays respectively, and you have nothing to pay his enemies with… I believe you need my help too.”
“A trust?” I glance at my sister, who seems just as confused.
“Oh, didn’t you know that?” He goes to the table and pulls out one of the chairs, sitting in it. When he motions to another one, I take a seat across from him. “Thomas set the five-year wait to protect both of you from anyone who would want access to it,” he tells me. “But unfortunately for you, it’s going to do the exact opposite because not all of his enemies have the same information that I do. They don’t know you don’t have money.”
I stare at him, blinking. Wanting desperately to ask him if he knows exactly how many enemies we have and how much money they will hunt us down for.
“So you didn’t kill our father and you’re not here to kill us,” I say. “Then what do you want?”
His thick brow arches and his grin widens. “I want to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”
2
ARRAN
Ipeer at the photograph of the bed my father occupied not one month ago. The warped metal frame, melted mattress, and scorched sheets were a message.
I’m nipping at your heels, it said loud and clear.I’m close.The two 2009 pennies left in the center on the nightstand were the signature of the man who did it. And though he usually leaves the coins over the eyes of those he kills, the fact that he left them was also a message.Your father is already a dead man.
How he found where I’d been keeping him, I can’t be sure. No one outside of my inner circle knows of my father’s struggles. Clive Maxton has an image to uphold, after all. And only a few of my most trusted men knew his location. That I’d placed him in a memory care facility after the drugs he refuses to give up began to affect his brain and caused him to need constant supervision.
Butheknew. The man we call The Ferryman.
Some months ago, the heads of certain powerful families started turning up dead. It was Tony Sinacore, then godfather of the ruling family in New York, who made the first connection between their murders and a man named Stephen Black. That connection cost him his life.
After Luca, his younger brother, took over thefamiglia, he called a meeting to warn those of us at risk about the new threat.
“Have you heard of The Ferryman?” he asked as we gathered around his dining room table at his home, Briar House. “He worked under Tadesco in Chicago for years, growing his power right under his nose. They called him the Ferryman because he was a smuggler. The mark he left on anyone he killed was—”
“Pennies,” Noah Esposito, the new heir to the Gianni throne in New Jersey, finished for him.
Stephen eventually grew too powerful, infiltrating territories and incurring the wrath of the players he affected.
