Chapter 25 Stan
TWENTY-FIVE
STAN
TWO WEEKS LATER
“I’m not happy about this,” I chided as I took a seat in Rory’s town car.
Luc rolled his eyes. “The perks of being the Capo is that you don’t have to deal with this bullshit posturing.”
“Like you’re not as capable of this nonsense as O’Donnelly is,” Rory countered with a smug smile. “You’d have done it this way too if you were the head of the four factions.”
Luc might have scowled at her, but he didn’t argue. Because she was right.
That had nothing to do with twinspeak, either. Fraternal they might be, but they couldn’t read each other’s minds.
Rory just had the irritating capacity to constantly be correct.
When I yawned, ignoring their posturing with one another, my sister turned a concerned look at me. “Burning the candle at both ends, frate?”
Purposely, I stared out of the window. “Kitty’s having nightmares.” Less frequently, but they still disturbed her too often for my comfort.
“I have to commend you for leaving her, even if she is safely tucked away at home.” Luc toyed with his cell phone. “I’m not sure I’d be capable of doing so if the tables were turned.”
“Stan has an endless capacity to be efficient.” Rory’s words were discomfortingly similar to ones I’d thought about her.
“I appreciate that about him. He might be an emotional pain in my ass, as are you by the way, but at least he can be called upon to perform how he must perform, to enact what he must enact, and show ruthlessness when he must be ruthless.”
“And when don’t I do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Luc. How about you contacting O’Donnelly when I told you not to? When I said you should wait for him to call a Summit? This is his time to show his strength, not ours.”
“Why?” I inquired, not wanting to touch her statement. Rory’s compliments were often backhanded.
Endlessly ruthless and perilously efficient—definitely an inscription worthy of my tombstone.
“Because he’s the one trying to shape the free world, frates,” she dismissed. “We only want to manage our slice of his kingdom… and if we remain loyal, our kingdom will naturally grow.”
Luciu turned in his seat. “What do you know that we don’t?”
I snorted. “What doesn’t she know?”
That earned me a glower from him but a smile from Rory. “Correct, Stan. Ten points to you. As a reward, you can be the one who goes to Ohio.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
“You heard me.” She retrieved something from her pocket and handed it to Luciu. “Here. Hunter says it’s on there.”
“He kept this out of Star Sullivan’s reach?”
“As far as he can tell. You know what hackers are like. Lock something away and you’re basically throwing cat nip at a clowder of—”
“Why the fuck do I have to go to Ohio? You know I hate goddamn Ohio.”
“Isn’t it time you overcame your dislike of the Tigers and those Grays.”
“I’m well aware that you know they aren’t the real names of their godawful teams, Rory.”
She studied her nails. “What gave it away?”
“That I’ve seen you watch football with Hunter,” I sniped.
“Remember I told you that Rachel gave me a lead on one of the Anjou rubies? They finally found a necklace on the Sinners’ compound—”
“What?!”
For close to two decades, we’d been seeking a set of rubies intrinsically tied to our bloodline—the once-royal house of Anjou-Valentini had possessed a treasure so grand that it came with a curse of its own.
“When the Valentini queen drips in the blood of the earth, only then will the family’s star continue to rise.”
Of the six items—earbobs, a tiara, a necklace, matching wrist cuffs, a ring, and an anklet—we were missing the necklace and bracelets.
Since Luc’s ascension, we’d uncovered the bulk of the pieces. Waging war against the Italian mafia might have forged us, but we remained superstitious and none of us wanted to mess with a curse—that meant finding the remaining items was a priority.
Even for my ever-practical sister.
You could take the kids out of Sicily, but you couldn’t take Sicily out of the kids…
“She sent me a picture.” Rory hesitated. “I believe they’re part of the set.”
I took note of her unease. Some of that discomfort was part of the joys of being pregnant, but… “What aren’t you telling us, and why would I want to leave the city at such a pivotal moment?”
“Because those rubies are our goddamn safety net. I hate being tied to this damn curse. I want them in our safe. I want the rubies to be ours again, as they rightfully should be. Especially when we’re about to wade into a war with the Albanians and whoever is backing them!”
“What’s wrong with the rubies?” Luc queried. “There must be something. You’re being cagey and you’re never cagey.”
Rory harrumphed. “The settings are the same, but I don’t think it’s our necklace. I think it’s formed from the links of the cuffs…”
“So they might not be our rubies at all!”
“No, Stan, but I’m telling you, goddammit. The settings are the same. See?” She tapped her phone screen a few times, then shoved it at Luc, who tilted it so I could see the picture too.
My heart sank. “Fuck.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Luc asked, for once sounding almost desperate. And I got it. I felt desperate too. “The rubies are what matters. Not the setting.”
Aurora grabbed her phone. “There’s no way of knowing until our world implodes.”
“Reassuring.” I stole her cell and zoomed in on the settings.
“Is it better for them to be in the wind?” She pulled a fan out of nowhere and used it to cool down. “We’ll need to regroup after the Summit, and then you can go to Ohio and collect them. The Sinners have kept them safe for us—”
“How long have you known that they located the necklace?”
“Years.”
Her simple answer had us both gaping at her.
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Luc, because Stan lived in his lab, you were repopulating Manhattan with Jen, and I have two brotherhoods to manage? When did we have time for a jaunt to Ohio?!” She wafted the fan harder. “I’ve had to reprioritize the situation thanks to those Albanian idiots!”
“You should have told us!”
She dismissed, “You couldn’t cope with the amount of information that flows toward me on a regular basis.”
Deciding to umpire, I asked, “How did they get their hands on it?”
“Apparently, the Rabid Wolves—”
“The MC over the border?”
“Yeah. They stole it about a decade ago from a rich tycoon and it was hidden away in a safe that got lost after the transfer of power between the last Prez and this one."
“How do you lose a safe?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Stan can ask him when he goes to visit. All I know is that Storm, the current Prez, wants to give them to us if they’re the Anjou rubies.”
As the car came to a stop, Luciu groaned. “Another favor?”
These rubies were the banes of our lives. We owed so many goddamn ‘favors’ because of them, it was turning into a joke.
“Unfortunately.”
“We’re here, Don,” Chad informed us, his voice filtering through a small speaker in the back of the car. “And the area is secured.”
“Fucking favors,” he groused as he switched his cell onto an audio call that I answered before tapping the ‘speaker’ button.
“Don’t lose your head,” Rory ordered. “Listen to what he has to say, answer his damn questions, and don’t give away more than you must.”
“Se, se, se. It’s not like I’ve never talked to the man on my own before,” Luc sniped, climbing out of the car then crossing the small parking lot.
I peered around, making sure that our guards watched him closely, on edge until Aidan O’Donnelly Jr. stepped out of his SUV.
“Luciu, a pleasure to see you again.”
“Don’t lie, Aidan,” Luc mocked. “The last time we caught up, you lost a three-thousand-dollar bet and accused me of cheating.”
“It’s messed up that the Irish and Sicilian heads are this close.”
Rory gave her phone preferential treatment over me so I tuned back into the conversation.
“I appreciate that you agreed to meet before the Summit, Aidan,” Luc insisted.
“Why were the cloaks and daggers necessary? Couldn’t we have met at Finn and Aoife’s place on a Sunday like usual?”
“He goes to the moneyman’s house for Sunday dinner?!”
Rory, now replying to an email, shrugged. “They’re family.”
“I didn’t know about this on Sunday and you called the Summit out of the blue,” Luc grumbled.
“What is it you ‘know?’”
“The Favaros were involved in a child brothel/fighting ring operating out of the building in Nolita we raided recently. We’re in the process of dealing with them.
“If any of them are seen on your turf, I’d appreciate you capturing them and letting us be the ones who dole out punishment.”
O’Donnelly’s look was measured. “What level of involvement?”
“A shell company in their possession owned almost the whole block the brothel operated on.” Luc retrieved the small USB drive from his pocket that Rory had given him earlier. “Here. Take it.”
“What’s on it?”
“Proof. That the president’s in bed with both the Favaros and the Albanians, Aidan. There’s blackmail material, too, if you choose to make use of it.”
O’Donnelly started pacing.
“We, as a family, understand your future plans and wanted to advise you of the situation. But this runs deeper. The eldest Favaro son—”
“Cosimo?”
“That’s right. Cosimo went to school with Devere. But, as I said, we’re dealing with them.”
“Complete eradication?’
“Of course. They’re not a problem but… the Albanians are. Killing off the Favaros is work for one faction, but the Albanians require more heavy lifting.
“They used to be a two-bit bunch of cowboys that caused havoc, not only with their substandard product but, let’s face it, they have the decency of hyenas.
“Their crews were small. Separate. Different leaders. No unification. So why and how are they acting as a unit now? That bombing in Mexico, the front we tore down in Nolita, mass numbers of foot soldiers invading our turfs…”
“Fuck.”
“That means he knows Luc has a point,” I mused.
“Of course he does. Luc isn’t telling him anything he doesn’t know. He’s recalibrating his plans and shifting priorities just like I had to.”