Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Fiero
Ten nights to go.
“Say that again.” I swirl the amber liquid in my glass, watching it catch the low light of my office.
Across from me, Remo shifts his weight. He doesn’t like repeating bad news.
“The Irishman wasn’t here for business,” he says carefully. “He was here for her.”
My grip tightens imperceptibly on the glass.
“For Pfeiffer.”
Remo nods once. “Turns out Callum McAllister owes the Irish a hundred grand. The money he lifted from our casino was taken to pay them back.”
A pathetic, desperate man with no sense of consequence. The sort of man who always believes luck will turn just in time to save him.
“So, why did he gamble the money?”
Remo shrugs. “He’s an addict. Selfish. Thinks he’s impenetrable. God knows why but he has an ego the size of the Empire State. I’m afraid to say it but you taking Pfeiffer played right into his sense of grandiosity. He thinks he’s free and clear and his little niece is doing all the hard work.”
A humorless laugh scrapes out of my throat.
“Of course he does.”
Remo doesn’t smile.
“Anyway, the Irish are still out of pocket. He managed to convince them that us taking Pfeiffer meant he was under our protection.”
I snort, a smile touching my lips for the first time all day.
“Apparently—and I quote—he said ‘if you want your money back, you’ll have to take Pfeiffer. If you take her, the Italians will give you anything you want.’”
The glass in my hand stills and a dangerous quiet flickers in my chest.
Remo locks his gaze on me. “Is it true?”
A slow breath expands my lungs, pressing painfully against the healing wound in my side.
“Is what true?”
“That you’d give them anything they want just to get her back?”
I lift my gaze to his.
“Is she really that important?”
A dark, violent feeling coils tight in my chest. After the last twenty-four hours, I can safely bet that Pfeiffer McAllister is that important. Just not for the reasons Remo would hope.
“Of course she is.”
Remo’s eye’s thin and he digs deeper. “Why?”
“Because she’s ours to ruin, not theirs.”
I have never in my life lied to my brothers and it surprises me how easily that untruth slipped out of my mouth.
Remo’s expression says it all. He wants her to feel pain—real, undeniable, physical and emotional pain. He wants her to bear the equivalent of fifteen years’ of hurt, multiplied by four—because that’s as close as we’ll get to exacting revenge equal to the pain she caused.
But the more time I spend with her, the more I doubt she was even aware of what she did. She seems to have no recollection of her life around that time, other than the fact someone abused her—with his hands.
I wish she’d tell me who it was because I would track him down and impale his skull with metal skewers while he was still breathing.
I’d burn his eyeballs with the flame from a Zippo, seal his lips together with a hot glue gun.
I’d inflict pain in ways I haven’t yet conjured in my twisted, satanic brain.
“What do you want to do about him?”
Remo’s question snaps me back to the here and now.
“About the uncle? Leave him, for now. When the month is up, feed him to the kids.”
The younger recruits in our clan could always use a bit of torture training but volunteers aren’t easy to come by in this line of work.
“And the Irish?”
I run my tongue along my teeth. “We already killed one of theirs, plus his side-kick. They’ll have got the message we’re not fucking around. I also took a bullet from Saint Fucking Patrick, let’s not forget that.” I heave in a pained breath as if to labor that point.
“But, I don’t want any more rookie attacks on our businesses, so set up a meeting and let’s figure out a more sensible truce. We can cut them a deal on one of the shipments coming in from Cuba. That should pacify them.”
“Consider it done,” Remo concludes. But he doesn’t leave. Instead, he continues to eyeball me like he knows I’m keeping something from him.
“You have a week and a half, brother.”
Don’t remind me.
I feign ignorance. “To what?”
He lifts a shoulder. “To break her.”
“Oh, right. That. I’m well aware.”
He shifts forward, resting his forearms on the desk between us.
“You still want to, right?”
“Of course I do.”
“Because the way she came skipping down from the eighteenth floor the other morning… doesn’t look like you’ve been making her life hell up there.”
I bite down on my cheek to stop the smile. She came skipping down?
“Don’t worry, Remo,” I lie. “I’m playing the long game.”