Chapter 15 Stan
FIFTEEN
STAN
“I appreciate you doing me a solid, frate. Even if I wish I were the one who’d obliterated her.”
“Jen might not have liked her mother, Luciu, but I doubt she’d want to sleep with the man who killed Diana.” Rory wriggled in her seat for the tenth time in five minutes. “Less of the posturing, more of the gratitude.”
Hunter ignored the bird Luc flipped Rory’s way and pressed a hand to her lower back. “Why would she return to the city at all?”
Rory stopped squirming, instead leaned forward to give her husband better access, and sighed as Hunter rubbed there.
Watching her relax had me grimacing. Rory was more prickly than a porcupine without being pregnant.
For her to relax told me everything I needed to know about how much pain she was in.
“Money?” Luc tossed in easily.
Hunter snorted. “Pussy’s a commodity that can be sold in every city. She had no reason to return.”
Rory’s brow furrowed. “What’s your point, Hunter?”
“My point is, unless she had a death wish, why would she come back?”
“From her wailing and pleading, I’d say she’d have preferred to stay alive,” I mocked. “Now that I think about it… Dante and Diana appeared to know one another. There were signs I should have picked up on sooner.”
“A plant?” Rory slipped in, groaning then hissing at whatever knot Hunter uncovered.
“Why bother?” Luc sipped his espresso. “Why would the Albanians return her to the city? They had to know what’d happen if we found out.”
I drummed my fingers on the dinner table. “Don’t you shepherd Maxim Lyanov around the city’s galas because Dubrov was related to someone in the Bratva ranks?”
“True. Vlad wasn’t Bratva, but his brother was. A vinnitta?” Luc queried.
Rory jolted. “You think this is revenge?”
“I think I don’t trust Russians. If Jen wasn’t so touchy about that whole murdering him thing, I’d give her a round of applause. You owe her another bauble at least, Luc.”
Soru rolled her eyes. “Men can be so dumb—”
“Rory, why must you insist on sitting at the table when you’d be more comfortable on the chaise longue?” Matri chided, sweeping into the room with the staff behind her, bearing trays of food.
“Because I’m Sicilian, Matri, not Roman. I don’t lie down to eat.”
“It would help your back. You’re going to have to make concessions the closer you get to your due date.” She clucked her tongue. “Now, less business. More eating.”
Luc’s final say on the matter was, “I’ll discuss the situation with Lyanov,” before we started lunch.
Matri spooned some vegetables onto her plate. “Are you sure Kitty won’t mind us eating without her?”
“I doubt it. If she has any luck, Hunter and I will be gone so she doesn’t have to face the bulk of the family over shepherd’s pie.” That earned Rory a tsk from Matri. “Who’s Jared Brückner, Stan?”
I glowered at Hunter. “You don’t have to tell her everything, fucker.”
Hunter shrugged. “She’s prettier than you.”
“Who is he, Custanzu?”
Rolling my eyes at the full name, I retorted, “He’s a teacher.”
“Was a teacher,” my brother-in-law corrected. “He’s been missing for a long time now.”
Glee filled me. “He hasn’t showed up on any databases?”
“Only as a missing person. Why do you want to know?”
“Doesn’t matter. I just wanted confirmation he was still missing.”
With Martinez having overheard Kitty’s confession about murdering Neev’s high-school Spanish teacher, I wanted to make sure all our ducks were in a row.
“He’s looking constipated, soru. That means he won’t tell us shit.” Luc smirked at me. “Did you get any updates about the Albanian warehouse we’re scoping out?”
“A lot of movement,” I replied. “Drugs. Guns. The usual.”
“Is it small potatoes?”
“Not as big as yesterday’s investment but definitely of interest.”
“We should raid it.” Rory turned her attention onto Luc. “You handle it. Stan has enough on his plate with Kitty.”
“When?”
“As soon as. Look for contracts, clues, anything that’ll help show the depth of their ties to the Favaros. I don’t understand how the Italians leaped into the fire with them.”
“Use my Stiddari. Aside from that snake in the grass, I trust the rest.” Neither shoved it in my face that I’d trusted Dante until he’d turned on us.
“And the Albanians are bound to be pissed with us. Not only after the raid on the brothel, but we’re not going to win any popularity contests with them after we sent back their men in pieces. ”
Luc whistled. “You must be worried about Kitty if you don’t want to hover over my shoulder.”
“I saw enough action the other night, but… if you need me to hold your hand, vicchiareddu, I can,” I jeered.
He didn’t have much of a chance to answer because my cell buzzed.
“No calls at the dinner table!” Matri complained. “I’m letting you talk business, but no calls!”
“It’s Luigi,” I demurred. “I have to get this.”
“Sir? I thought I’d better call. Ms. Kitty isn’t answering her phone and she said she’d be straight in and straight out again—”
“What?!” I roared, jerking to my feet, the chair behind me knocking back to the floor with a clatter.
“What is it?” Aurora demanded.
“Who’s on the line?” Luc growled.
I ignored the pair of them. “How long has she been in the hospital? Have you kept an eye on the doors?”
“Yeah, but she didn’t come out the front. And it’s been around a half hour?”
I scanned the call log on my phone. “She contacted me ten minutes ago.”
“Kitty’s gone missing again?!” Luciu’s fist bounced off the table. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Hunter put a trace on her cell phone,” Rory inserted calmly as I whipped around to glower at her. “Be grateful he did.”
Unapologetically, Hunter tapped his cell a couple times, then slid it over the dinner table.
Mostly pissed that I hadn’t thought to ask him first, I scanned the map then frowned when I saw where the blue dot bobbed.
“Where is she?”
I scowled at Luc’s interruption. “You remember her address, Luigi?”
“Sure do, boss.”
“Head there. Knock on the door and make sure she’s all right, then wait out front.”
“She’s gone home?”
“Yeah. It looks like it.” I didn’t understand what the fuck had happened to make her change her mind about returning here in those ten minutes. “See you soon. I’m on my way.”
Once I ended the call, I picked up my chair and shrugged into the jacket I’d hung on the back of it.
“Luc, has O’Donnelly Jr. gotten in touch?”
“No. Why?”
“She asked Star Sullivan to keep what happened the other night on the down-low. Wondered if she’d stuck to her promise.”
Rory’s brow furrowed. “Why would Kitty do that?”
“Because she wanted to recuperate here. She didn’t want her family to see her like…” I wafted a hand in front of my face.
“But she’s going home now?” Hunter questioned, equally perplexed.
“Yeah. I don’t get it. That last call, she was coming back here. What the fuck changed between then and now is beyond me.”
I rang her but she didn’t answer, which was a concern in and of itself.
When I dialed Star’s number, she answered with a grouchy, “I was going to call you but—”
“But, what? You had to get your nails done?”
“Oooh, someone’s bitchy today. No, actually, I just got out of a meeting. Some of us do work. She’s safe. I tried to head them off but Aidan insisted.
“You know, for someone who helped burn down a cathedral, he’s a little too much of a choir boy for me sometimes.”
Seeing as my brother and I had handed Aidan Jr. the archbishop who’d been murdered within said BBQ in the city’s cathedral, I was in no position to judge.
Instead, I cleared my throat. “So, she’s with her brothers?”
“Yeah. Something about how she’d be healing better at home with her ma. Honestly, these Irish are such momma’s boys.”
Casting a look at my mother, who studied me worriedly, I didn’t think I could judge Aidan Jr. on that score either.
“Anyway, Conor took my phone away from me during the meeting because Brennan threatened to shoot it if I didn’t stop checking my emails, so this is the first time I could get in touch.
“You might be interested to know the Irish’s take on that den of iniquity over in Nolita.”
“Can I hand you over to Aurora?”
“That block of ice? No. I’ve decided—it’s you or no one.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Fine. But you’ll have to hang on because I’m about to head into Midtown.”
“That’s beyond your multitasking capabilities, huh?” she commiserated.
Lips pursed, I growled to my siblings, “I’ll be back later. She’s with her brothers.”
Rocking back in his seat, Luc cackled. “Someone’s about to get their ass handed to them.”
Hunter snickered until Matri whacked him in the arm. She was smiling, though.
I flipped them off, then, to a worried Rory, stated, “Star has an update on the Nolita brothel. I’ll loop you in as soon as I know more.”
“Be careful. We don’t want to make enemies of the Irish.”
“I know, I know.”
As we parted ways, they took my departure as an invitation to gossip and I heard the back end of something Luc said: “…telling you. This is nothing. He turned into a berserker the other night. I’ve never seen him like that before. He pulled off someone’s ear—”
“Is that even possible?” Matri squawked.
“Apparently! Seeing as he and Kitty did it!”
“What?!” Shocking Rory was tough. Kitty and I had conquered platinum status on the ‘stun my sister’ special achievement award if her bellow was anything to go by. “They both did it?”
“Even better, she cut a ‘V’ into that bastard’s cheek.”
“Talk about meant to be.” Hunter whistled. “Holy Christ.”
“Got that right,” I muttered.
Sticking my cell between shoulder and ear to better ignore their chatter, I headed into the foyer.
Like a dumbass, I checked out my hair and the state of my face, well aware that I was about to meet the in-laws for the first time.
There was no changing my features, which lacked the nobility of my siblings’, leaving me looking like the bastard kid of an Anjou-Valentini king and his maidservant.
“Stan? I don’t have all day, ya know?”