Merciless Wager (Brannington Empire Collection #3)
Chapter 1
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
I’d no sooner gotten out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist when I heard the incessant ringing of my cell phone. Going into the bedroom, I snatched it up as soon as I saw who the caller was.
“Cill,” I said in greeting.
“Where are you?” my father’s cousin asked me.
“Home, but not for long,” I responded. “Why? What’s up?”
“King and I are downstairs. Go ahead and give me the code so we can come on upstairs.”
“Sure thing,” I replied, then waited for the app on my phone to provide one. “9-4-2-1-1-7-5-2. What’s this all ab—"
“We’ll be up in a minute and will go over it then.”
The line dropped, so I tossed my cell phone onto the couch, then began to get dressed. I barely had time to do more than throw on a pair of jeans before I heard their voices. I reentered the great room to find both my uncle and first cousin once removed standing there.
I hadn’t known anything about either man until I’d turned nine years old.
My great-grandfather had ripped me from my mother’s arms at a young age, then raised me until his death.
It was during his will reading that my existence had become known to both of these men, and they’d been in my life ever since.
And maybe more than I would’ve liked, as it seemed they felt the need to just show up wherever I was, and whenever. They helped me run our family’s empire, which now spanned multiple continents, with home bases in Dublin, New York City, and here in Boston, where I lived full time.
Cillian preferred the Irish base, while King had his roots in place there in New York.
I enjoyed my life here in Boston, so it all worked out.
Equal partners in one organization, or at least it was supposed to be that way.
Somehow, I always seemed to be the last to know anything, and I knew it was because these men didn’t quite trust me yet.
They’d raised me for the last seventeen years, yet I hadn’t been able to fully prove myself to them.
“What do I owe the honor of this in-person meeting?” I asked before walking past them and into the kitchen to grab a bottle of Porterhouse Red Ale before twisting the cap and taking a large swig. “Is anyone going to tell me what this is about?”
“I’m sure you’re aware that Leon Barganella has become more of a thorn in our sides since we’d hijacked a shipment of theirs outside of Palermo,” King said.
“I am,” I responded, especially seeing as I had lost two men in that battle, only a small percentage to the number that the entire Cosa Nostra had lost, not counting the shipment of weapons they’d prepared to send to the UK. “Has he made a move yet?”
I turned to look through the large, floor-to-ceiling windows in my penthouse that showcased the entire Boston skyline.
This particular unit was in the South End, and it made me feel invincible.
Almost as if I were on top of the world.
I didn’t want to see it come crumbling down, and sensing the uneasiness with these two men, I spun back around.
“Has he made a move yet?” I repeated.
“Nothing much yet, but word on the streets is that he’s looking for something more than revenge at this particular moment.”
I looked at my uncle. “More than revenge... What is he looking for?”
Cillian stepped forward this time. “Barganella is working with the Bratva.” I arched my brow, especially because I knew Kingston’s wife was one of them years earlier. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how bad it will be if the two of them team up together to strike us.”
“No,” I responded. “What are you needing from me?”
For the men to have come all this way, I knew it was more than to fill me in on the threat. They looked at one another, and I saw the look they exchanged. “In order for the Bratva to help them, they want something in return.”
“So, we take whatever that is, and the problem is solved, yes?” I asked.
King chuckled. “Sort of, but they don’t want money, territory, or future favors. They want Barganella’s daughter.”
“Leon has a daughter?” I asked, especially seeing as I had not uncovered that in the extensive research I’d done on the family before our hijacking.
“He does. Only, the mother fled to the United States while she was pregnant. She delivered the baby here, then put her up for adoption before she was dragged back to Palermo and murdered.”
“Fuck,” I said. “So, where’s the daughter now?”
“That’s the thing. No one, including Leon, knows. The adoption wasn’t a documented one, so the trail has died there.”
“And you want me to search for her?”
King shook his head. “No, we’ve done what Leon has been unable to do, and we have found the girl.”
“She’s here in Boston,” Cillian added.
“Ahh.” It now made sense. “And you want me to make her disappear?”
Again, they exchanged a look between themselves.
Cillian cleared his throat before responding.
“We actually want to dangle her in front of him. Leon’s empire has been crumbling for years, and he not only needs the protection of the Bratva, but he also needs money, and lots of it.
They’re willing to pay a lot for the girl. ”
“Which family is it?” I’d done a lot of research on the Bratva as a whole and had even had some run-ins of my own with them over the years.
“Bocharov,” Kingston said. “And Ekaterina’s father had clashed with them over the years, so she knows the lengths they will go to in order to get what they want.
They intend to use the Sicilian girl as a wife for one of the sons.
Once the union takes place, their alliance will be in effect, and all hell will rain down on us. ”
“And you know this as a fact?” I had to ask.
“Yes. They’re extremely dangerous. More to us than Barganella and his organization.”
“They want the girl, so I’ll make sure that neither gets her,” I responded.
“Not exactly. Our use for her will be decided soon,” Cillian said.
“Okay. You got a name for me?” I asked them.
“Aurora Winslow. She’s twenty-four... a labor and delivery nurse at Mass General... lives in Cambridge... graduated from BU.... has no children... and is in a relationship with her college sweetheart, Drake Smythe,” Cillian provided.
“Tensions are escalating between Barganella’s organization and ours, and they can absolutely not have the Bocharov empire on their side as well.
We cannot allow another massacre like those in the past in New York, Cleveland, and even here in Boston.
We need to get our hands on her, then draw Barganella out of his fortress so we can make them both disappear. ”
“Why do the Bocharovs want her that badly? If the Barganellas are experiencing hardships, what do they have to offer the Russians?”
“Mainly legacy. Their bloodline is dwindling, and like our own grandfather and your great-grandfather, they are desperate to produce heirs.”
“I’m sure there are other Russian families with women for them,” I said.
“They want to expand their own empire, which is why they’re willing to get into bed with the Sicilians. We have a lot of resources tied up on the Southern coast of Italy, so we can’t allow Leon Barganella and his empire to expand.”
“I’ll get the girl,” I told them both.
“We knew you would. My brother would be very proud of the man you’ve become,” Kingston told me, referencing my father, Princeton.
I just hoped he was right, because I’d never once met my father as he’d died before my birth.
I’d been fed glowing tales about him during my youth, so it’d been quite the surprise when I realized the reason he’d been on that street that night.
He’d dishonored the Brannington name, but I’d erase that shame one of these days.
This would go a long way in doing so, at least where other Irish were concerned.
I’d spent the next hour talking to the other men before they left.
Once they did, I forgot about the fight I had tonight.
It was one of the few things I truly enjoyed in life.
Feeling as if I were always under someone else’s thumb, unchecked violence I could administer brought me a certain level of control, and it allowed me to unleash this never ending wave of frustration inside of me that only got deeper with each day that passed.
All that would have to wait tonight though because I needed to find out everything I could on my target—Aurora Winslow.
A beautiful woman whose life now had an expiration date.