CHAPTER 27
Quinn
“You know she’s watching from the Southside hedges,” Mac asks the statement as we climb into the car.
“Fuck my life,” I mutter. “Of course she is.”
I inhale, trying to focus on the issue at hand and not the vixen I married. There is no one in the world like Luna Mancini. I’ll never admit it, but I did underestimate her.
She knows there’s something in the woods.
She knows how to handle herself in a fight much better than I expected.
She knows there’s value in watching us leave the compound to fix this issue. Did not expect that. Not to mention she’s a dog with a damn bone. She stays out for hours, watching, listening and walking. So much walking.
Then she stood in front of Finn and me and all my men, smug assholes laughing at her, with her shoulders square and her chin up. And she actually almost held her own.
“That’s some girl you married,” Collin mutters from the front passenger seat.
“Apparently,” I exhale. Not a girl. A menace. A headache. Maybe a damned mastermind too.
Our SUV pulls out of the gate and I realize I should have planned some decoy vehicles to throw her off. “Have some men come get this truck at the warehouse and bring it back here. Then have a second team report to the house an hour later then another an hour after that.”
“You got it,” Mac replies as he pulls his iPad from the back pocket of the front passenger seat in front of him.
I glance at the hedge as we pass by. I can’t see my wife in the shrubbery but I know she’s there. Watching. A spy in my house. In my damn bed. Or, bedroom, at least.
I’ve checked on her every night, out like a light, curled up on the couch.
I’d insist she take the bed but the couch is huge and she’s a wisp of a thing.
Tall, muscular and with curves I’ve unfortunately noticed would fit easily into my palm, but she’s slim.
She always looks serene and comfortable in the dead of night.
Dark hair mussed around her angelic face.
She has delicate features. There in the dim light of the moon through my bedroom curtains, she’s cute. Soft and sweet.
Then she fucks all that all the way off trying to kick Finn’s ass in the dirt.
I don’t know that she’s ever looked more beautiful than when she was using her tight body so well, moves so fast, so clever. Eyes focused, muscles taut, cheeks flushed.
Then Finn had the audacity to look at her. To look and to wink. At what’s mine? He’s on latrine duty for two weeks. Maybe more.
Mac said I was jealous.
Finn is a boy. Being possessive is not the same as jealousy. She’s the don’s wife. He can’t fucking wink at his don’s wife. Idiot.
“So,” I get us focused. “This is just a new group of street kids trying to steal a few kilos, right?”
“That’s what it sounds like. Should just take a simple show of force so they know this is us they’re dealing with and not some little rival gang of pimply teenagers.”
“Alright,” I say, still feeling tense, but not about this.
“You know how this goes, boss. Easy in, a little flex, easy out, home for dessert.”
·····
“The Doc, now!” I scream as I open my car door. I turn and pull out Collin behind me. His blood is everywhere. Men and dogs rush to meet us so I command, “Move back. Síos! Back!”
“Shae! Sheila!” Mac calls right behind me as we enter the house.
“Quinn? Wait, is that Collin?” I hear Luna’s voice in the shuffle.
“Stay back,” I tell her.
“What happened?”
“He was shot,” Mac answers for me in a dry, smartass tone.
My wife smartasses right back, “You don’t say.”
“Doc’s coming. Go to the blue room,” Shae says when I pause in the foyer.
“Not his room?” Sheila questions her mother, sounding frantic.
“No, no stairs, go to the blue room,” Shae replies, also frantic. It’s not unheard of that I bring an injured man back here but it’s not a regular occurrence. It’s never been a Quinn before. She takes in all the blood and scurries away to get more help.
“What I meant,” Luna starts.
“Luna. Not now,” I bark. My tone shuts everyone up.
“Sorry,” she says, sounding genuine.
I get Collin into the bed in the blue room, the closest clean room to the front door, I’m guessing. Damn it. He looks so small right now.
“What the hell was that?” Mac asks behind me as he helps with his younger brother’s feet. It’s a question he has muttered at least twice already since we were ambushed. He’s in shock. Doesn’t matter how normal mafia life is, it’s different when it’s your own brother.
I would know.
“Not a damn street gang,” I reply absently as I start to rip open Collin’s shirt.
“Here!” Sheila hands me some scissors to cut the rest of it off.
“Doc’s here,” Shae says, rolling in an IV drip and a cart of medical equipment we keep on hand for exactly this reason.
“What have we got?” My long-time medic, Seamus, asks as he comes in, hands already in his gloves.
“Shot to the shoulder,” I answer.
“He’s lost a fuckton of blood, though,” Luna says. She’s not frantic. She’s calm, watching the Doctor as he works.
Seamus asks questions and Mac answers as we all stand by and wait. When the scalpel comes out, Mac turns to the handful of people at the edge of the room, anyone who isn’t me, him, the doc or Shae and Sheila—who have both done some EMT training for times like this—and shouts, “You lot, out!”
In my peripheral vision I see my men file out, then notice Luna, obeying Mac as well. I look up and catch the sight of her ponytail swish out of the doorway, shocked she actually listened to him. To anyone.
“Mac,” I say, putting a firm grip on my second’s shoulder. “We’ve got him. He’ll be okay.”
My cousin and best friend doesn’t reply, he just watches.
I do too. My grandad paid to put Seamus through medical school and every other expense he’s ever had in his life, and I’m grateful for it.
He’s not some sketchy nurse practitioner who does house calls for drug lords.
He’s an actual surgeon and he’s part of our clan.
Lives on the property. Currently prying open my cousin’s skin.
“Let’s give the doc some room,” I say to Mac. We’ve been staring for a while now as the Doc has gotten out more tools. Shae has suctioned out blood, blood, and more blood. Mac looks pretty green.
We do see a lot of wounds, guts and filth in this life. But it’s usually the other guy, not a member of our clan and never a Quinn. I tear my eyes away from Collin’s pale face.
“Come on, Cormac. We’re going.”
“K,” he says.
I lead him out into the hall and pull the door closed behind us. I harden my voice and order my second, “Go shower now.”
“K,” he repeats, even weaker this time. I watch him go deeper into the house to the back staircase that will lead to his quarters. Once he’s out of sight, I breathe in and out.
He’ll be fine.
It’s not like me.
Like… he’ll be fine.
I shake myself and head back to the front of the house. I’ll need to step up security and tell the men to—
What?
I reach my left hand up and run it down my face, squeezing my eyes as I go.
Because I must be in shock. Seeing things.
There’s no way in hell Luna Mancini is…scrubbing the floors?
“Luna?”
Her head snaps up, surprised to see me.
“Is he okay?”
“He will be. What are you doing?”
She looks down at the mess. Her arms are red up to the elbow. The rag she’s using is drenched. Her floppy sweats are stained at the knees too. There’s a mop and bucket next to her and the white marble floors are pink now instead of red like earlier.
“I…I needed to do something. I couldn’t just sit around. Sheila had dropped this stuff here so I grabbed a rag and just started cleaning.”
“Someone else will get it,” I lift my chin toward the staircase. “Go back to bed.”
“I’m almost done, might as well finish,” she shrugs casually.
I narrow my eyes at her so she adds, “I’m not trying to fuck with you.
” At that, I glare. She huffs a small laugh.
“Right now. I’m not trying to fuck with you right now.
It’s just, that…that’s your cousin in there.
If I saw Zeno come in, unconscious, bleeding out, I don’t know what I’d do. ”
“You’d handle it,” I say without thinking. Her mouth parts in surprise. “Things go wrong. Men get shot. It happens. You call the doc and you handle it.”
“Right,” she says. She looks away with a strange expression. I can’t tell if she likes what I said or not. Either way, I believe it. She’s very capable and calm under pressure.
“Up, now. Finish with the mop at least,” I order, not liking the sight of her on her hands and knees. Finn can come do this fucking job. But I also know she’s not going to just quit this close to the finish line.
“Okay,” she says.
I take a clean rag from the pile dumped nearby and use it to pick up the soiled ones and throw them in the trash can that Sheila wheeled in here.
“You’re…helping me?”
“Aye.”
She swipes with the mop and I go behind her, drying the shiny surface with a new rag under my boot. After a few minutes she speaks up, “So, if it wasn’t a street gang then who—”
“Don’t push your luck, Mancini,” I say.
She doesn’t look at me but she fights a smile, “Worth a shot.” She gasps and looks up, “Shit, I’m sorry. Too soon.”
I can’t help it, maybe it’s the stress or the sleep deprivation. I throw back my head and laugh.
“You are a fucking menace, Lasa,” I say, shortening her nickname. She frowns so I add, “Lasairéan means flamingo.”
She rolls her eyes and mutters, “You were right. I don’t like it.”
“I figured. Búraló is better.” I say, meaning it. The word not only means wolf, just like the rest of us, but it can be translated as an explosion too.
She asks, “Going to tell me what that one means?”
“No,” I say, then turn and stalk to the door. I shift with my hand on the doorknob, stealing one last glance at her.
Her dark hair is up in a messy clump on her head.
She’s in a thin tank and I think what she wears as pajama pants, stains of pink and red everywhere, sweaty, and only wearing one rubber glove, I just noticed.
Her eyes are trained down onto the floor as she works.
She’s really scrubbing too, some muscle behind each push of the mop.
But she’s got a playful smirk on her face. A real one. That I put there.
I clear my throat—clogged up at the sight of her raw and honest. Helping, in the dead of night, in my house, cleaning my cousin’s blood—and quickly shut the door.
Yeah. I’m fucked.