Nico slams his cane into the wooden floor, the sound harsh to my ears. The soldiers have the good grace to cover their start with a cough, avoiding his eyes.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I can’t help but understand Nico’s aggravation.
Another shipment gone. This time, kept off the books, not told to anyone but those who needed to know. I spent the last few days trying to find a way to trick the rat. They can’t steal something they don’t know about, right?
Wrong. It was still stolen. Gone in the middle of the night, leaving our docks without another word.
As pissed off as Nico is, as angry as I am, it gives us a lead.
It means that someone close to us is behind the theft. Something I don’t think Zio has considered yet. Or if he has, he’s refusing to acknowledge it.
It doesn’t help I’m primed, energy and aggression simmering in my veins.
All because of my wife.
I’ve told her that I own her, but that fallen angel owns my soul just as securely. Just one look, one smile, and I want to bow to her, let her heels walk over my back while I devote myself to her. I need to hear her voice, hear that fire that cuts into my skin with each quip, see that intelligence as we parry our words and tempers. As drawn to her as I am sexually, it’s her fire, her spark that I miss more. I’ve spent most of my days away from her because of this mess and I need her to take the edge off this aggression.
“God, we look like such amateurs.” He flops back into the couch, old body sinking into the leather.
“No, Zio. I look like an amateur.”
I look like someone who can’t handle the family business. I’ve taken all the tasks from Nico, scheduling, communication, shipments, everything.
I was supposed to be able to handle this. Nico is supposed to trust me to keep the family running, to be the heir he needs.
I can’t fuck this up.
We have just two days until Maeve’s products come in, and if I can’t handle my own shit, how am I expected to handle hers’?
Sighing, Nico coughs lightly. It sounds wet and my anxiety increases, thoughts spiraling toward how this stress is exasperating his condition. “No, Lex. It’s both of us.” He refuses to let me shoulder the blame alone. “Let’s start at the beginning. What do we know?”
He’s always been my hero. He saved me as a child, and he’s saving me now, keeping me focused on the task at hand.
We’re family. Family leans on each other. In this life, that’s extremely rare.
Pulling on my collar, I grab the fountain pen and slowly roll it between my fingers to soothe my mind. “Right. Well, we kept this delivery small, so as to weasel out extra people. We wanted to keep this contained. Only five people knew about the shipment. You, me. Two soldiers, and the one to accept it. And those who are on the ship.”
“Who did we send to accept it?”
“Dom.”
“Look at the soldiers,” Nico directed. Because Dom would have no reason to fuck us over. He’s family. “Check out the ship and its workers. Go into their backgrounds. See who they know. I want to know who they fucked ten years ago. Someone is screwing us over.”
Stealing the products would be stupid but also ill intended. Dom makes too much from the family keeping the shipment in the designated route; more than what those shipments sometimes bring in. It has to be one of the soldiers that’s tipping off the rivals.
Soldiers don’t make shit and they’re easy to bribe. I’ll change that when I’m fully in charge. I’ll need absolute loyalty.
I rub my head, shoulders tensing. It could very well be the ship’s crew. They might want to double dip, get paid by us and take bribes to pad their pockets.
There are too many factors.
“Anyone else?”
“No, Zio.”
Standing, Nico comes closer, tapping my cheek with affection. “Fine. Let’s look at this a different way. A different perspective. Even if it’s a crew member or a soldier. Who would want us to fail?”
I snort. “Come now, Zio. Everyone. Bruno wants the import business and there are smaller crews coming in from New York City, looking for a bigger piece of the market.”
“Right.” He leans on his cane, greying hair slicked back and reflecting the dying sunlight. “But who would risk it, knowing we’ve aligned ourselves with the O’Brien clan? Who would be stupid enough to face her retribution?”
Sucking on my bottom lip, I pause. Rubbing my chin, putting the pieces together like a complicated jigsaw. “Not many people know we’ve aligned. The wedding was in the papers, but we haven’t exactly made a big deal of being allies.” I’ve spent the time breaking in my new wife, breaking in this marriage that at one point seemed stupid. Now, it’s all I want.
“Bruno and the small crews aren’t idiots, Lex. They’re watching us. They know about the wedding. Maybe someone is trying to shake it up?”
It’s a decent thought. It’d give me more direction of why our product is being taken not just how or when. I need a name and I need it now if I’m ever to keep the alliance alive.
Because I’m not giving Sloane back. Contract or not.
“Someone isn’t happy with the alliance,” I surmise, dropping back into my chair. Nico smirks like he’s been waiting for me to make the connection. “It was hasty, put together on the cusp of Ferguson’s death. I’m not even sure the Board knew about the arrangement.” It would explain the shouts I heard when I showed up to the after party. Nico remains silent, because even now, he’s not telling me the full details. “Someone knows how to hurt us where we’re weakest.”
The cane stomps into the ground once. “That’s my boy,” he praises. “We are not a weak family, but the alliance is young. It can be broken with only a few things. What are they?”
“Take out what’s covered in the contract—docks, imports, costs. It’ll scare Ace away. It fucks with our entire family and alienates us from O’Brien.”
He stomps his cane once again in agreement. “What else?”
I tilt my head. “Sloane. That was Ace’s biggest concern. If anything happens to her, the contract falls. If someone gets her, they get the contract.” Over my dead body.
“Now you’re thinking like a Capo. Sloane isn’t just a pawn for the O’Brien clan, she’s the key to their dealings. She can turn this around. What’s the next step?”
“Research the soldiers, see who they’re answering to.” I open my phone, shooting a text to Tony to do just that. “Then set up another delivery with only those we trust. Get on the ship. I’ll investigate the products myself.”
Sloane will need extra protection. If someone wants the contract, wants the De Luca family to fail, she’ll be their way to do it.
“Good man,” he agrees. “As for Ace and her clan?”
I wince. “I’d rather keep her out of the loop until absolutely possible.”
Nico hums, tilting his head in thought. “It’s risky. Ace isn’t the type to be left out if it affects her side of things. And you know the clause.”
The clause in the contract that Ace added at the last minute. It says that if anything were to happen—like a dissolution of the arrangements between the two organizations for whatever reason—Sloane is forfeit. She goes back to being an O’Brien and no longer a De Luca.
The idea that my ring, my name will no longer be attached to her is unthinkable. I can’t lose her, can’t allow her to leave me after all the leeway we’ve made. I own her—but she owns my heart, and I cannot think of a day when I don’t have her fire in my life, her sharp tongue flaying me or her body beside me at night. I refuse to lose her; I physically can’t.
I wouldn’t survive without her.
“What about a compromise?” What I’m going to suggest is either very daring or very arrogant. “I could bring in a third party. One that will be on our payroll and one who will have Ace’s best interest at the forethought?”
Nico goes still, thoughts spinning in his mind. He didn’t become the Capo because of money or force, but because Nico is smart. He sees scenarios better than anyone else. And he knows almost immediately who I’m referring to.
He visibly swallows and it’s painful to watch. Only one man gives my uncle pause and I’m asking to hire him.
“Hire him, Lex. But you better have control over him, otherwise none of us are making it out of this alive.”
Hours later, Killian Linwood is sitting in my office with a drink in hand, one leg propped up over his knee. The picture of calm and control.
But I see his eyes. Soulless and dead. There’s no remorse in his gaze. Just the instincts of a killer.
Mio Dio, I hate what I’m about to do. What I have to do to keep Sloane mine and this alliance alive.
“So you are losing product,” he says, sipping from his glass. The smile he fights has my blood boiling, but I keep it down.
It wouldn’t look good to punch the hitman while I try to hire him, would it?
“It’s being stolen,” I amend. “Right off the docks, right from under my nose. I need your assistance to help me secure the next shipment. Locate who might be stealing from me.”
Nodding, he drops the empty tumbler, reclining just slightly. “It’s an inside job. Can’t trust everyone. Or maybe you don’t know who to trust. And let me guess.” He clucks his tongue. “Ace doesn’t know about it.”
“Not yet,” I agree. “I can’t go to her empty handed, and I don’t want to raise alarms if it can be handled before her shipment arrives.”
He smiles again and it’s more disturbing than if he had taken the gun and put a bullet in my head. “You think to solve this in two days?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Ballsy.” He smirks, tapping his fingers on to the armchair. On his palms are faded tattoos, the ink more blue-green than black. I can’t place the words, but the Old English Script covers across his knuckles and parts of his hand. “What do you want from me?”
“I’ve got another shipment tonight. It’ll be you, me, and my right-hand man there to accept it. I have to personally check my goods. And check the ship out in the process.”
“You want them to fear you, in case they’re fucking you over.”
I incline my head. “Something like that. I don’t know who to trust, and I need all the help I can get.”
He gestures to the club. “You want to hire me, but I think you have a good idea of who it might be. You just don’t want to look too far into it. Not all wonderful in your family, heir?”
My jaw clenches. My hand twitches to grab my gun and end this conversation in a bloody way.
But I rein back my murderous thoughts and calm myself. Only Sloane can break my control, and I don’t lose it anywhere else. Not even with this tool.
“Then what do you propose, Linwood?”
Stretching like a cat after a long nap, the ghoul cracks his neck, bomber jacket crinkling in the quiet of the room. “I’ll help secure the shipment tonight and then look into your crew. On my own.” I open my mouth to refuse when he glares.
The coldness in his gaze stops me in my tracks. There’s something unnerving about how effortlessly he can silence anyone, even someone like me.
“You’re too close to it, heir. I can look into everyone and have a name for you by next week.”
“But that will run into the timetable with Ace’s shipment.” Frustration builds in my chest giving me a pounding migraine. “I need this figured out before that.”
“You could always tell her.” I give him a flat look which he chuckles. “Yea, I wouldn’t either. She’s very good with knives.” He rubs his forearm almost tenderly.
“It’s the best I can offer.”
“What about in the meantime?”
Raising one dark brow, the killer points to my form. “Looks like you’re on night guard duty, heir. You remember those shifts, don’t you?”
Biting on my irritation to pounce across the table and punch the reaper, I jerk my chin toward my office door. “Get the fuck out of my office, Killian.”
“A pleasure as always, Alessio.” He smirks, standing. Before either of us can leave, my office door flies open. Tony walks in with a bundle in his arms, and I’m moving before I comprehend the sight before me.
My wife is in his arms, sobbing, and I surge forward, readying to beat the life out of my right-hand man.
