Chapter One
In which we wonder, should we be worried about Wallace?
Wallace
“Holy fecking shite, cousin. That’s some artistry right there.”
My cousin Michael and I are standing in front of a massive cave entrance, black smoke billowing out of the opening, roiling in circles as it soars up into the air, staining the blue sky grey.
My cousin Catriona just gave me the best gift; a chance to cleanse the world of the toxic residue of a stupid, vicious bastard and his legacy of extortion and murder.
French pharmaceutical billionaire Hugo Dubois built this underground facility in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to play with his poisons and by kidnapping Catriona, he guaranteed his grisly demise.
“We need fire,” she’d said. “Precise, perfectly targeted fire. Everything needs to be burned down to ash. We can destroy every record of what happened here, but you… you, Wallace, need to cleanse it first.”
Such a gift.
I’d started with the pinpointed accumulation of accelerants. Petrol is too easy, sloppy. But diesel fuel, I can work with. Denser, less volatile but when it lights up, one blaze leads to the next and so on… the blue flame devouring its meal until it reaches the next banquet, growing in size.
The blue morphs into reds and oranges and the first blast of heat warms my skin. The twelve blooms of fire I’d set unite into a towering burst of flame, roaring up to the ceiling of the cave and spreading over it like a river, the glow lighting up the dark space like it’s high noon.
The controlled fire consumes everything in its path, flames dropping down to the floor like rain. What’s left when I’m done is inert, meaningless, and gone back to the earth again as cinder and ash.
“Fire’s a living thing, ye know,” I murmur, flicking my pearl-handled lighter.
On. Off.
On. Off.
Michael’s watching me closely, a small frown between his eyebrows. I’m still staring at the collapsing ruins of Hugo Dubois' tunnel, but I can see my cousin out of the corner of my eye.
“Fire breathes. It must be fed. It moves, it dances, and it runs.”
Michael folds his arms, leaning against the jeep.
“No question but that you’re an artist with your work, boyo.
A large-scale operation like this, does it…
” He’s searching for the right words, but he should know by now that he can say what he wants to me.
“Dinnae it bring back bad memories for ye? Do ye need something to distract ye after?”
I flutter my eyelashes at him. “Ach, how sweet. Are ye offering your services, then?”
“You’re mighty entertaining, arsehole,” he sighs. “Keeping in mind I’m eventually gonna be Chieftain of the MacTavish Clan when my father decides to tell us all to sod off, I’m trying to see…” He shrugs, “I want to know what to do for my family.”
“That’s possibly the most noble thing you’ve ever said,” I slap him on the back. “And you’ve been one of those sincere, gentlemanly types that gives a shite from the beginning. You’re gonna be exhausted by the time ye actually sit in that chair.”
Michael’s watching the last of the flames flicker inside the cave entrance. “How long does this take before the fire dies out?”
“I have it set to snuff itself out from lack of oxygen in…” I check my watch, a big chrome Patek Philippe my father gave me, “...in seven minutes. Give it another hour to let the residual heat lower to acceptable levels and we’ll drench the fecker.”
“Seven minutes?” Michael turns back to me. “Yer talking mince! You’ve got it nailed down to seven minutes?”
“Aye.” I grin at him, and even for one as hardened as Michael, it must be unsettling, because he almost takes a step back before stopping himself. “Seven minutes. And dinnae ye worry about me, cousin. I’m braw.”
“Should we be worried about Wallace?”
I pause in the little passageway from the bathroom to the main cabin on one of the MacTavish jets, heading back to Scotland. My cousin Ethan’s the one talking. The nerve of that bastard. As the clan’s enforcer, he’s put more men in the ground than I have.
“Ye’ll never find a man more talented with a flamethrower,” Logan says, the only other cousin possibly more unhinged than I am. “Why would ye be bemoaning such a talented member of the clan?”
Michael, the earnest bastard, rubs his face tiredly. “Because there’s never been a MacTavish who’s broken under pressure. I dinnae want Wallace to be the first.”
There’s a metric tonne of us MacTavi, the plural of our clan’s name created by Logan’s wife because she complains that we always travel in a clump. “A herd of MacTavi,” she says.
I’ve got dozens of cousins, all in the family business and everyone’s getting married and popping out more bairns and at some point, there won’t be enough room in Scotland to hold us all. There’s something fine, though, about always having a cousin at your back when needed.
Not that I ever have.
My cousin Edin called me spooky once, though said in such a loving tone that I canna help but think she liked that about me.
I am a spooky son of a bitch, I know it.
People will glance over their shoulder at me and step out of the line for their coffee order, move aside on the sidewalk, or cross the street. Even my fellow firefighters when I worked in the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. voted me, “Most likely to have started the fire in the first place.”
Never to my face, of course.
“I perform a valuable service for the clan.” I step back into the main cabin, enjoying their startled expressions, aside from Logan, who grins at me.
“Something I enjoy, a skill none of ye have. Though Logan, I did appreciate your talent in flattening the Kelly warehouse into matchsticks with that C-4 last month in Belfast.”
“Thank ye,” he says graciously. “A true compliment from a professional such as yourself."
“Our concern is that ye insist on working alone, most of the time,” Michael leans forward, rubbing his hands together. “Ye live alone, away from us all. Ye dinnae come to parties or the pub unless we drag ye out of your cabin.”
Settling in my leather swivel seat, I arch my back a wee bit. It’s still sore from hanging upside down to place the final accelerant.
“Yer main concern, then, is that I dinnae get shitefaced enough with the rest of ye? That’s your proof of stability?” Laughing, I shake my head. “Accept it, Michael. None of us are stable. Every MacTavish man-”
“And several of the women,” Ethan mumbles.
“Are unhinged as feck,” I finish.
“Aye, doolally,” agrees Logan.
“Well, ye are one doolally bastard, it’s true.” Michael glares at an unrepentant Logan, who’s finishing off the bottle of Scotch from the bar cart.
“This is pure bampottery,” I sigh, pulling another bottle of Macallan from its hiding place behind the vodka. No one ever drinks the vodka stash we keep on the jet unless we have Bratva allies on board, so it’s turned out to be an excellent space to hide the good stuff.
Holding it away from Logan, I continue. “Let me do my work. Stop fretting like you’re my mother. I’ll come by and play cards and take all your money once a month, aye?”
Michael pouts. The future Chieftain of the MacTavish Mafia pouts. “Fair play,” he says at last. “I’ll drop it.”
“Fecking finally,” Logan groans dramatically. “That concerned shite was putting me to sleep.”
There’s a horde of black SUVs waiting for us when we land on the private airstrip outside of Edinburgh, Miss Kevin, the Chieftain’s personal assistant, is waiting by the biggest one, waving at me.
“Mr. Wallace MacTavish-Taylor, the Chieftain would like to speak with you. The business, he says, is somewhat urgent.”
I leer at Michael’s irritated expression as I climb into the car. “Sorry, no cards tonight. Yer Da wants to speak with me on urgent business.”
“Sod off,” he growls, everyone else cheerfully laughing at his expense. Because that’s what we do, when we’re not watching the other’s back, we’re giving each other shite. We’re arseholes.
Instead of the even more opulent and extravagant clan seat overlooking the North Sea, the Chieftain of Clan MacTavish still lives in the mansion he built for his wife Mala when they first married.
The fact that my grandmother, the Lady Elspeth rules that estate with an iron fist might be why, of course.
His mansion is stone, a Georgian style building with an enormous amount of land around it, because Uncle Cormac bought out the owners of the neighboring homes and demolished them. When the head of the MacTavish Mafia wants something, it’s in your best interests to sell it to him.
The outside lighting is just turning on as we pull in, the Edison bulb strings over the swimming pool and the ones surrounding the house illuminate it in an intimidating, I'm rich as feck and I know I’m scaring the shite out of ye, sort of way.
Huh, that would make a grand title for a magazine article, maybe. Something from Architectural Digest?
“He’s in his private office,” Miss Kevin says, giving me a smile and a little, approving pat on the shoulder. They’re one of the few people brave enough to touch me without permission.
“Wallace!” Uncle Cormac comes around his huge ironwood desk for a hug. “I hear ye did some fine work in Morocco. Catriona was bragging on ye.”
I give a modest little shrug. “The lass gave me some grand material to work with. The only thing left in that hole is the vaporized soul of Hugo Dubois.”
“I always did enjoy a whiff of brimstone,” he agrees. “I dinnae get that much these days. Ye’d be surprised to know how much of my life is devoted to paperwork.” His mouth twists as if he’d just smelled a dirty diaper.
“Ach, my father says the same,” I laugh. “That administrative shite seems to get worse every year.”
“Aye.” He looks mournful for a moment before shaking it off. “I hate to send ye back out straight from a mission, but I have a task for ye in the states. You’ve heard of the Banner Syndicate in New England?”
Frowning, I try to recall. “They’re not much of a syndicate; they picked up most of their money by jumping in on the move to legalize cannabis. They did well because they had the fields and warehouses in place that they were already using to grow it when it was illegal.”
“That would be them,” he agrees sourly, offering me a seat on one of the leather chairs surrounding the fireplace. “Robert Banner was killed in a car accident two and half years ago, most likely by his second wife and her arsehole sons. They’ve barely kept it afloat.”
This makes me laugh. “How the hell do ye fail in cannabis production? That’s a special kind of stupid.”
“I told ye they were eejits. They’ve been trying to recover by stepping in on our territory in Boston. They need a lesson in boundaries.”
I can feel it, the low burn that starts in my fingers, my feet. The kindling of a blaze inside me that can only be stopped by sending it outward. Burning that cave in the Atlas Mountains to ash and bone should have been enough to hold me for a while.
A Chieftain-sanctioned burn, though… It’s enough to set me off again.
“How big a lesson are we talking, then?”
Uncle Cormac leans back, his expression cold.
“They killed six of our men and stole two tractor-trailer trucks. They have an office building outside of Boston. I want it burned down to the ground. I’ll have already disabled the insurance policy for the property.
” He smiles malevolently. “I want it to cost them.”
Pulling out my lighter, I flick it on and off, on and off. “Fatalities?”
“Nae, it’s their legitimate face. No need to hurt an innocent. Watch the movement. If there’s security, make sure ye give them space to get out.” He’s eyeing my hand, flicking the lighter. “Take a couple of days, scout the area, aye?”
“Of course.” Standing, I shake his hand. “A clean job. In and out.”
“There’s a good lad. Ye always have a plan.” Rubbing his forehead, he sighs, “If only I could get a couple of your cousins to do the same.”
“You’re not saying the name Logan…” I laugh. “Understood, though.”
As I climb into my McLaren Artura and head away from the estate, I feel it again. The tingle, the low-key burn, the fire whispering secrets in my head.
Yer talking mince! - Scottish slang for “You’re kidding me.”
Doolally - Scottish slang for unhinged or a little nuts.
Pure bampottery - Scottish slang for “This is ridiculous.”
Eejits - Scottish slang for moron, or irretrievably stupid.
Braw - A delightfully multipurpose bit of Scottish slang that in this case, means “I’m fine,” or “I’m good.”