Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Pablo
“Why?”
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Pablo. Why the feck are you such a fucknut? Why the feck are you such a shitstain? Why the feck are you bothering us?”
I called Dillan, the mob boss, and demanded a meeting.
This isn’t about swapping pleasantries. Hell, it could devolve into something far more violent.
The strip club is the closest place to anonymity since it’s dark, and the fuckers here aren’t interested in anything but the women and their hard-ons.
It’s also still public enough to remind us we shouldn’t shoot each other’s brains out.
I ignore Dillan’s questions or how he uses “feck” to irritate me.
It sounds ridiculous to begin with, then it sounds utterly stupid when he uses fuck in a common phrase but feck for everything else.
Instead, I sweep my gaze around his cousins.
Fucking red hair and green eyes. Fucking leprechauns.
All six of them share the same features.
Dillan’s cousins—Seamus and Cormac—are built like fucking oxen and are standing on each side of Dillan.
I’d like to say they’re as dumb as beasts of burden, but they’re both lawyers.
Finn, the second-in-command, and his twin brothers—Sean and Shane—stand to the right of their other three cousins.
My family is freshly from Colombia, so no wonder we still all have Spanish names.
But the O’Rourkes have been here for like four generations. A fucking stereotype based on truth.
“I can tell you’re cursing our names, Pablo. We’ve heard it all before. I want to be home with my wife. Get on with it.”
“Patience is a virtue, Finn. Shut the fuck up and keep looking pretty.”
He’s the most handsome one in the family. Kinda like Alejandro, but my cousin actually looks like a man, not a Ken doll.
Dillan’s patience is wearing thin to match mine and Finn’s. “I’d also like to be home with my wife and baby, Pablo. Keeva has an ear infection and is miserable. If I have to be miserable too, I’d rather be holding my little one.”
She’s an adorable baby. Even I can appreciate that, especially since she takes after her mother. At least they didn’t fuck that kid by spelling her name the Irish way—Caoimhe. I’ve seen the original spelling of his wife’s name since she was born in Northern Ireland. Most Americans wouldn’t get it.
“Poor baby.”
Javier chimes in from where he stands behind me. We all know he isn’t referring to the infant. My cousins are here in force just like Dillan’s. We look like rival football teams about to face off.
“I get you’re obligated to defend the O’Sheehans, and that’s why you’re doing this.”
“What the ever-loving feck are you going on about?”
“You’re targeting my girlfriend to get back at my family for Drew.”
Dillan takes a menacing step forward. Of course, that results in his cousins following him. I can’t ignore it, so I take my own step forward, which brings my cousins with me.
“We don’t target women.”
“Anymore.”
“You can wipe that sneer off your motherfecking face.”
“Could you just pick feck or fuck, for fuck’s sake?
You’re impossible to take seriously. It won’t distract me.
You’ve been expanding into Eastern Europe for the past couple years.
You’ve pissed off Maks. Now you’re pushing into Latin America.
We let all of you have your little labs as the price of peace.
But you went way too far getting Humberto involved. ”
“That old fart? He’s dead, and you killed him. We can’t do business with a dead man.”
It doesn’t surprise me news already left Colombia and reached New York. Annoying, but not surprising.
“Before I took care of him. You still want something from us, and you’re using my girlfriend to get it.”
“Look, Pablo, we—”
All at once, my cousins’ and my phone go off. We keep them on silent except for two things. The emergency group text and the tracker alerts. I glance back at my family as I pull out my phone.
“What the fuck did you do?!”
I’m ready to lunge at Dillan, but I restrain myself at the last second. It’s Flora’s tracker that’s going off.
“What are you talking about? Whose tracker is that?”
All members of the Four Families wear one. The women have them in bracelets and necklaces. The men have them on watches or belt buckles. Just like in my family, the only time the other men’s phones make noise is for the family emergency text or their trackers.
“It’s Flora’s. I swear to God, Dillan. I swear to motherfucking God.”
His eyes widen as he realizes just how close to the brink I am. I’m one of the few who nearly never takes the Lord’s name in vain. My mother would kill me if she just heard me.
“Pablo.”
I look back at Joaquin, our chief intel gatherer. He hands me his phone, and I read a message from one of our men saying an attack happened as a car arrived to pick up Flora. She was leaving her lunch with Tía Catalina and Tía Luciana.
“I’ll call Mamá.”
Javier and Alejandro speak, and I know they’re calling my tías. It’ll be to check on their mothers and to see if either of them knows what happened. Maybe they saw something.
“Pablo—”
“What?!”
Dillan holds up his hands and takes a step back. “This isn’t us. We won’t defend the O’Sheehans. They know that. Whoever went after your woman wasn’t connected to my family.”
I narrow my eyes at him, but I see his cousins on their phones.
I watch Sean in particular. He’s their family’s intel chief.
The man can find a country’s nuclear secrets if he wanted.
I hate admitting anyone from another family is better than mine.
But his grad degree in national security trained him to find shit buried as far back as when his family were probably Druids.
“Pablo, I’ll do what I can. I swear, but I can’t make any promises. Whatever the feck goes on between us has nothing to do with our women.” Sean knew I was watching him.
Joaquin is nearly as good. Sergei and Anton claim they are since everyone knows they went to an Ivy—UPenn isn’t even the best one.
It takes two of them, but chiefly Sergei.
Lorenzo and Carmine are the guys in the Mancinelli family.
Carmine’s always been a nosy little shit, and Lorenzo dabbles in computer science.
Since Flora went to Rutgers, I won’t be able to insult Lorenzo about that anymore.
“We need to go.”
I spin around and nudge my chin toward the door. I don’t give a shit about this meeting anymore. If Dillan’s lying, then I’ll annihilate his family. I’ll leave the women to grieve, but the men are dead to me already.
“Yonkers.” Joaquin keeps his voice low as we walk outside.
“What the hell is there?” Alejandro wonders the same thing I do.
“I don’t know what’s there now, but it’ll be us soon enough. Are they already there?”
Joaquin’s enlarging something on his phone as he speaks. “No, that’s my best guess for right now. Assuming Florencia’s tracker transmitted to us the moment it went off, they’ll be in Yonkers in ten minutes.”
I glance at my phone’s clock. It’s already been ten minutes since the alert went off. Without too much traffic, it’s about twenty minutes from Manhattan to Yonkers. We’re in Queens right now. It’ll take us at least thirty minutes to get there.
We came in two SUVs with bodyguards in each of them.
I hold out my hand, and my regular driver, Arturo, tosses me the keys.
I jerk my head toward the second SUV. The guards will go in that one.
My cousins and I will go in the lead vehicle.
We rarely all ride together, but I want any conversation we have to be for my family’s ears only.
I hand the keys to Jorge. My youngest cousin drives like every trip is the Indy 500.
Joaquin and Javier climb in the back. Alejandro’s in the front passenger seat.
I sit in the middle as I prep Jorge’s and Alejandro’s gear.
They’ll need it once we arrive. My other cousins and I slip off our suit coats before putting on our bulletproof vests and strapping on thigh holsters.
We fasten belts around our waists that carry extra ammunition and at least one knife.
It’s not ideal that we’re in suits rather than tactical clothes, but we’ve done this before.
We have Kevlar helmets if we need them. Javier passes rifles forward to me.
I hand two to Alejandro. He keeps one by his left knee for Jorge. He holds the other.
My right knee bounces. It surprises me when I feel my body shaking, so I take a moment to realize it’s my leg doing it. I never allow my nervousness to show. Just the opposite. I’m always the most stoic one.
You won’t do Flora any good if you don’t get yourself under control.
I can’t let the woman I love be the one who ruins me. If I do, then I’ll risk her life. She needs me to be the monster I hide from her. She needs me to be so much worse than the hint I gave her.
You love her.
I love her.
That realization’s been nipping at me the last few days.
I knew it was coming. It’s why I abandoned the idea of a twenty-four seven D/s relationship.
I need her by my side. If she were here, I’d ask her what she would do in my position.
I’ve never wanted to rely on someone outside my family before—let alone actually do so.
It’s disconcerting as fuck, but it makes me even more committed to bringing her home.
“Jorge, why are you driving like a vieja abuelita?” An old granny.
“Do you want to die on the way to rescuing your woman? Unless I plow through these cars, there’s nothing I can do. This vehicle isn’t exactly known for its agility.”
That’s not entirely true. These SUVs are surprisingly light on their feet—tires. They handle extremely well and take some tight-ass corners. We weave through traffic when we need to, but never excessively. We don’t need someone calling the police on us.