Chapter 25
That was Brandon. Corey and the Albanians moved up their meeting. It’s happening tonight. When Thea and I get back to the condo, I’m rattling off instructions as I get dressed in all black. I have on cargo pants, a black turtleneck, and black boots. She’s listening and nodding, but I’m not convinced she’ll remember it all. I pray she never needs to remember it all.
“Give me your hand. Do you feel that ridge? Press it.”
I slid all my suits aside, so I could run her hand over the back wall of the closet. She finds the little latch and presses it. We hear a soft click before I push the door with my hand over hers. I reach inside and down, grabbing the flashlight. I hand it to her. She looks over her shoulder at me then flicks on the light.
“If anyone ever breaks in, or our guards tell you someone’s on their way, you come straight here. Go inside.”
She steps forward, and I follow her. This isn’t some magic The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe shite. This is a fully stocked panic room. I watch her as her gaze sweeps the small enclosure. It’s big enough for about four people— normal size people, not the men in my family sized people.
“There are nonperishable foods over here. There’s a case of water I switch out once a year. Have you shot a gun before?”
She shakes her head. That’s something we’re unfortunately going to remedy. She may need to carry one sometimes.
“This is a gun safe even though it doesn’t look like one. It’s biometric just like our front door. There’s not much that can get through our door, but it’s not completely impenetrable. Don’t worry about what’s in here. If anyone in my family is with you, they know how to get into it, and they know how to use what you’ll find.”
“Like your mom and Mair?”
“Yes. Mair isn’t that experienced yet, but Dillan’s taught her enough that she can protect herself and others. She’s still learning.”
“Will I to have to learn?”
“At least the basics. Thea, I know this might be contrary to what you believe as a doctor, but I won’t bend on you at least knowing how to use them. You don’t have to become an expert marksman. I just need you to stay alive until I can get to you.”
“I understand, Daddy.”
She’s scared, and I don’t blame her. Scared, tired, or playful are what she’s feeling when she calls me that. Otherwise, it’s Finn and hopefully now some Gaelic terms of endearment.
“If you come in here, make sure you push the door all the way closed and hit this button. Do you see how it snaps these reinforcements around the door? They only unlatch from in here. Never open this for anyone who isn’t in our immediate family. Not even Joey. Not even his brothers or Ted. No one, Thea. If they don’t share my DNA or gave me DNA, you do not ever open this door unless they give you our code word. We need to come up with something I can tell the others to use if they ever need you to come out of hiding. If they don’t use the code word, you remain silent and hidden. It means it’s either not safe because they aren’t alone or because it’s someone pretending.”
“What’s the code word?”
“We need to come up with that. It has to be something easy enough to remember under stress, but not obvious.”
“Gavage. It’s a medical term for feeding with a tube that passes through the mouth to the stomach. It’s easy to say, but who would use it except a doctor or nurse? Even then, it’s not common in most specialties.”
“All right. I’ll tell the others.”
I lead her out of the panic room and into the living room. I grab my go bag out of the hall closet and put it by the door. She stands quietly and watches. I open my arms, and she falls into them.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone. If it’s more than two days, my dad or uncles will come and get you. I want you to stay with my parents. If all goes to plan, this won’t take long. If I call you on the way home or from the lobby and tell you to go to the guest bedroom, I need you to do that without question. I need you to stay there until I come to you. Don’t offer to help me. Please.”
I remember to tack that last word on there. I lean back enough to see her face before I continue.
“Most things are under our control, but not always. If I call you and tell you to give me space, it’s not because I don’t want to see you. I’ll always want to come home and go straight into your arms. It means something went wrong. I need to get cleaned up or calm down. Sometimes both. I promise as soon as I’m ready, I will come to you. I swear.”
“I believe you. I’ll remember all of this. I promise. I know you’ll be careful, so it should go without saying. But I can’t help it. Please be careful. I love you.”
“I will, and I love you too. I’m coming home to you, Thea. Always.”
I shouldn’t say that. I shouldn’t make that kind of promise because I can’t guarantee tomorrow, let alone always. But it’s what I want. Our kiss is over far too soon, but I have to go. We exchange another I love you, then I’m gone.
That motherfucker.
“Who is that?”
I swung by and picked up Brandon on the way to Dillan’s. It came as a surprise to everyone that things got moved up by several days and is no longer happening in Brighton Beach, but I believed Brandon when he called me. I wanted to tell Thea her dad would be with us, and I’d watch out for him. But I can’t promise anyone coming home alive any better than I can promise I am. I didn’t want her to panic, either. I remember when I was really young— like four and my brothers were still toddlers —how my mom would try to entertain us when my dad went out at night. I didn’t understand why my mom would look at the door and windows so often until I was much older. Those nights are some of my earliest memories. My mom was waiting for my dad to get home. She was checking the windows to make sure no one who wasn’t a guard was near her children. I don’t want that fear for Thea.
“That’s Gareth O’Brien. He’s the new leader down in Trenton.” I point to a guy to the far right. I don’t see any of his men around.
No mob boss likes the official term skipper. I don’t know who thought nautical terms would be impressive titles for various members of the mob. And the fact that we don’t have the same hierarchy as the Mafia or the bratva leaves us as the butt of plenty of jokes. The cartels aren’t as rigidly structured as the Mafia or bratva, but they have more than we do. Hence the name mob.
“Did you expect him to be here?”
“No. Not at all. This isn’t the bratva or the Cosa Nostra.”
So that leaves one more motherfucking option. Fucking caremonda. Face of a penis. Fucking carechimba. Face of a vagina— cunt. That one fits.
“Is that Pablo?” Sean wants to know as he comes to lie on his stomach next to me.
Brandon’s on the ground, too. He made it down without a single groan or gasp considering his bruises. It’s a testimony to his past and running with a gang. He’s more like us than I guessed.
“Yeah. What the hell is he doing here? How is he involved?”
I’m thinking out loud as all seven of us— my family plus Brandon —lie on the ground facing a warehouse. None of us has an answer to that since no one expected him to be involved. Pablo Diaz is equivalent to me, Luca in the Cosa Nostra, and Aleksei in the bratva. Second-in-command. He’s Enrique’s heir. The next in line to be jefe of the Colombian Cartel. He’s been a motherfucking pain in my goddamn arse since we were kids. Whiny little bitch. He wouldn’t shut up about his loose tooth when we were seven, so I knocked it out for him.
We have dark camo paint on our faces and ears with black beanies on our heads. Our green eyes are recognizable enough. We don’t need our shock of red hair giving us all away. The camo paint makes our eyes stand out more, but from a distance, people often can’t make out the difference between our eye color and the ice-blue the Kutsenkos and their Andreyev cousins have. They just see sets of two glowing, floating circles coming toward them. With camo paint on, the darker eyes the other two Kutsenko cousins have, along with most of the Mancinellis and Diazes, appear like soulless empty pockets. Fitting. Empty eyes, empty heads.
Unless we’re not wearing our NVGs when we move in, Corey will know our green eyes in an instant, which means I have to be doubly sure my future father-in-law stays behind me.
Dillan’s on the other side of Sean, but we all have ears like dogs, so I hear him when he whispers to me. “I thought you believed Joaquin wouldn’t be interested enough to hack anything.”
I look at my cousin. “I still don’t think he is. I think this was Alejandro and one of his minions.”
I glance at Brandon because I’m certain he’s confused as fuck by all the names. I would be because there isn’t a small family among us. Three of the Four Families are Roman Catholic, and the other is Eastern Orthodox. We joke that’s why our families are so big. No one wants to admit the truth: three of the families knew they would need more soldiers.
“Alejandro and Pablo are cousins. Their uncle, Enrique, is their jefe. Enrique has a younger brother who’s Pablo’s dad. Enrique also has two younger sisters. One spawned Alejandro, and the other spawned Javier, Jorge, and Joaquin.”
I won’t get into how Pablo had a younger brother, Juan, who fucked up so badly the Kutsenkos made sure he could never go near Maks’s wife again. That’s an entire story of its own.
Brandon’s still confused, and I don’t blame him. I’m going to have to share a little more of the Diazes’ inner workings. Motherfuckers.
“Pablo’s Enrique’s heir, same as I am Dillan’s for now. He’s a jack of all trades, master of none. Alejandro heads their security. He’s the top enforcer and plans a lot of their missions. This is a business transaction, so not his usual role. Joaquin is a hacker, so he’s their intel gatherer. Jorge is a CPA like me. He does the active accounting and investments, but he’s also a forensic accountant like me. Javier is an attorney like Enrique.”
I can tell Brandon wants to know what roles we each have as he looks around. He’s going to be my father-in-law, which is all the more reason I want to tell him as little as I can about our family jobs. Less he can testify about if the feds pressure him and less he’ll confess if any syndicate captures him.
“I’ll give you a copy of the family trees I’m going to make for Thea. I knew something was in the works when Thea got those pages at work. Someone was trying to scare her away from me. I wondered if Joaquin was the one responsible for hacking the hospital system and heading whatever operation they were sucking Thea into. I still don’t think he did it. He’s too lazy for that when I know he has other stuff already keeping him busy.”
“Then who did?”
I told Brandon about the pages Thea got and the brick through her window when Corey first arrived. It didn’t thrill him to find out about either. Before I can answer, my phone buzzes in my back pocket. I turned it on dark mode and dimmed it all the way while we were getting ready. We all do it.
It’s a web search results alert. This explains so damn much. The more I’ve thought about the hospital messaging system, the more I became convinced it was an inside job. It’s also why I didn’t think Joaquin did it. But someone did, and it wasn’t for their own shits and giggles. So, I did a little digging into the background of the fuck nut she was dating when I met her at McGinty’s.
Tony isn’t short for Anthony. It’s short for Antonio. I said nothing to anyone when I met Thea because Tony disappeared from her life. But I wanted to keep an eye on him just in case. I found out his last name and did a background check on him. That’s usually Sean’s job, but any of us can do it. Some drunken disorderly showed up, which came as no surprise. But nothing more significant triggered the DOJ or FBI.
“It was the nurse Thea dated. Tony De Luca. His family were Maldanodos.”
That draws everyone’s attention. Brandon’s super pissed.
“She was friends with him for a long time before they dated. She hung out with him outside of work, and I met him at a baseball game. Bastard.”
After the fucked-up messages came to Thea’s beeper, I dug some more. Thank you Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and their meticulous ancestry records. Still less noticeable to hack their system than the commercial ancestry databases. Tony De Luca— forgive me for not guessing that a douchebag with the most Guido sounding name might not be mostly Italian American.
Oh, no. He’s only like a third Italian. He’s a jumble of other shite, too, but out of that jumble one part of his ancestry stands out. His mother’s grandfather was a Maldonado. Sounds Italian to some, but it’s a Spanish last name. Not just Spanish, but fucking Colombian in his case.
I catch myself before I run my hand over my face in frustration. I didn’t dig deep enough. I let my immediate fear for Thea’s safety distract me from finding the fuller explanation. I’m slipping up, and it’s going to cost us if I don’t get my shite together. Thea’s not the distraction. It’s not knowing what to do with all these feelings that are new to me. It’s too much time thinking about the future and not enough time paying attention to the present.
This is my fucking fault. Or at least part of it.
Brandon leans close enough, so only I hear him. “This is not your fault. It’s that fucker’s. I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking it about myself, too. But we didn’t do this. He did.”
I nod, but I don’t feel any better even if he is right.
I scroll the full results to make sure I miss nothing. I have time because Pablo’s here with his henchmen, but Corey hasn’t shown up, and neither have the Albanians. Fucking way past fashionably late. But the Albanians want the Colombians to wait for them, thinking it makes their balls bigger than they are. Corey probably doesn’t want to step foot here since I’m certain he went for Brandon and couldn’t find him. But he’ll show. He just doesn’t want to be alone with the Trenton mob, the Cartel, or the Albanian syndicates. The moment he isn’t useful, they’ll kill him. The goal is to get Corey away from either side while we run the bust, so we can deal with him.
I lean forward on my elbows to see Dillan. “His family’s been around since the Cabreras.”
Looks like the Maldonados married into the Cabrera family. Enrique’s father, Josue, was still in Colombia back then. He killed the Cabrera jefe and took control. From the dates, Enrique was still super young. Like preschool young. It was Enrique’s uncle who moved to the U.S. and took out the Cabreras up here to become the New York jefe. Enrique arrived in America to attend boarding school when he was twelve.
From this point, I know the story clearly. His uncle went down for racketeering in the U.S. He had a shite ton of crimes in Colombia, so the U.S. government let Colombia extradite him because they wanted him out of America. The feds figured the Colombians would kill him faster than they could. He lived and is the jefe down there because rivals murdered Enrique’s father twenty-five years ago. It’s questionable as fuck whether it was fratricide. In the meantime, Enrique stepped into his position as the NYC jefe when they dumped his uncle’s arse back in the Amazon.
Shane keeps his head down, but I hear him on the other side of Brandon. “How?”
“Tony’s Maldonado family bent the knee and kissed the ring when Enrique’s uncle assassinated the Cabrera jefe. By then, they were lesser Cabreras. It’s Tony’s maternal side that wound him up as a De Luca and growing up in Trenton. She never married his father, so he got her last name. From what I can tell, both sides of Tony’s family have been out of organized crime for two generations. That begs the question, how the fuck did he wind up working for Pablo?”
It does explain why he knew the families when I named them at McGinty’s before I called Enrique, Salvatore, and Maks.
One thing I looked at along with his DOJ and FBI records was his bank account. Nothing raised an alarm. I could account for where all his money went. He wasn’t a cash guy, so the records show where he blew his paychecks, and it was all on entertainment. None of the places belong to the Diazes. Most were ours until I banned him. A few were bratva owned. After I called the other families, there were no transactions at any establishment the Four Families own. Just chain restaurants or liquor stores.
Fucking-a.
“It was when Margherita was in the hospital. Tony’s an oncology nurse. He must have met Pablo when his mom nearly died. She got out of the hospital a few days before those pages came in. She’s still recovering at home. Our moms just sent a ton of meals over there like three days ago.”
That takes some huevos. Pablo accepts food for his barely alive mother from my mother while using my girlfriend to fuck us over. I can’t fucking kill him, but I can make him wish he was dead.
Sean elbows me and jerks his chin in Brandon and Shane’s direction. I watch Gareth jump from the loading dock and run to his car. Its engine has been running the entire time. He’s driving away the moment his door closes.
Cars flick off their headlights about a hundred yards away and roll into the loading docks with rifle muzzles sticking out windows. Then there’s Corey. His fucking bike is a goddamn homing beacon. I see Pablo step forward and say something to Corey right before the bike goes silent. We keep watching in silence as Pablo talks to Corey and the Albanians’ newest leader. We aren’t moving in yet because we’re waiting for a few more people to show up to the party.
It”s another five minutes, but Ewan O’Malley joins what should have been a tête-à-tête between Ewan and the head of the Albanians, their kyre. Instead, Corey looks like a fucking Ping-Pong ball between Pablo and the Albanians. Ewan’s ignoring Corey entirely. That means they already consider Corey disposable. Fuck. One of them’s going to kill Corey before Brandon or I get to.
If I were five, I’d stomp my foot and hold my breath because it’s fucking unfair. But I’m not. I signal all of us to move forward. My family and Brandon lead the way with thirty of our men coming out of the trees surrounding the warehouse in north Jersey. They call it the Garden State for a reason. Perfect hiding places. Everyone has their NVGs on since we’re in the pitch black to make our arrival more of a surprise.
I’m not interested in anyone but Pablo, Ewan, and Corey. Even the Kurti fucker can die for all I care. Our men know to leave Ewan and Corey alive, and it goes without saying they can’t kill Pablo.
On my signal, still in the darkness cast from the trees, my men do their job. One Colombian, Albanian, and Boston Irish drop after another. Faster than any of them can return fire. Our men know how to line themselves up with their targets to make sure they waste no bullets, and no one’s left standing.
Once friendly fire won’t hit us, Dillan and I step forward. I have my rifle raised and my goggles still down. So does Dillan. Pablo knows one of us is Dillan, but he can’t be sure who I am. Ewan takes a step to the left, and I shoot between his feet.
“I didn’t miss, buachaill leanbh.” Baby boy.
Ewan doesn’t speak fluent Gaelic, but I’m certain he knows that phrase. Dillan and I keep creeping forward, not taking for granted the possible arrival of more men from any of the three syndicates. When we’re as close as I want to get for now, I stop. I flip up my goggles.
“What the feck, Pablo?”
He laughs. I didn’t expect much more from him. We use feck around the other syndicates on purpose. Let them think we’re a bunch of twats clinging to the motherland. We prefer to be underestimated.
I twist to my right and put a line of bullets from the front fender to bumper of his Maybach. The top end of Mercedes luxury cars. I know the rounds didn’t pierce the metal since it’s reinforced like all our cars, but it’ll be a bitch to fix.
“You didn’t answer my question. I’ll ask it only one more time. What the feck, Pablo?”
He crosses his arms and stares. I shoot off his driver’s side-view mirror and make a perfect circle around the hub caps on each tire I can see.
“I know you’re pissed now that I’ve fecked around with your favorite toy. That’s just payback for you breaking my fecking remote-control car when we were nine, you stupid feck. Do you really want me to keep going?”
I aim for him now. He knows I won’t kill him, but I will fecking shoot him. I’ve done it before.
“What do you want, Finn?”
“Well, Santa, I’ve been on the nice list this year. I want Corey. My future father-in-law gets to kill him. I want Cormac and Seamus to beat the shite out of Ewan. My brothers can have your Albanian playdate. You and I are going to talk about you being such a little bitch that you used my fiancée to get to us.”
I haven’t proposed yet, but she will be.
“You’re not engaged yet.”
“How would you know? I flushed the last bug you tried to put outside my door. I know you’ve gone nowhere near my place since you killed the last guy working security at my building. I’ve watched all the footage. Since Thea’s always with me at my place, you didn’t get shite from hers. I’m certain you weren’t in bed with us because I’ve never been good at sharing with you. You and I are gonna chat.”
I signal my brothers and cousins to move forward. The rest of our guys fan out to guard the perimeter. I hear Dillan whisper into his earpiece. As he and I inch forward and the others pass us to get to Ewan, Corey, and the Albanian kyre, three truck engines roar to life. By the time my family’s dragging the three men back toward the unlit area, the three trucks are pulling up. More of our men pour out and load the full contents of the warehouse. It’s an Albanian one, so it’s not that big. But there’s plenty for us to take. Yup, the hosts of the party were fashionably late. Did them no good.
Dillan and I go up opposite sets of steps to get onto the loading dock. Our rifles still point at Pablo. I come around in front of him and put the barrel to his forehead while Dillan strips him of all his weapons. We know where to look. When Dillan’s tossed everything far enough away that Pablo has no chance to get them, I shove the barrel forward, pushing Pablo back three steps. I swing it around and ram the butt into his chest. He stumbles back, but Dillan pushes him forward.
“Why, Pablo? We cut you some fecking slack because of your mother. You use her being in the hospital to go after a woman. Does your mamasita know how big a shitbag she raised?”
“Don’t talk about my mother, hijueputa.”
“Considering you have a gun at your chest and one at your back, I wouldn’t call me a son of a bitch. I think I’m in a better position to talk about your mother than you are mine. Why Althea?”
“Since you’re sniffing after her like you’re the dog in heat, I decided you could chase your own tail.”
I pull my knife from my pocket and flick it open. I hold it up for Pablo to see. It’s the same one that gave him a scar from his right collar bone to his sternum. Dillan sees me lower my gun, so he grabs Pablo’s arms and pulls them behind Pablo’s back. He wraps his right calf around Pablo’s legs and pushes him to the ground. He gets zips ties around Pablo’s wrists faster than a cowboy can lasso a bronco. I grab Pablo’s shoulder and pull him back while Dillan moves to Pablo’s legs. He puts his boot on Pablo’s kneecaps and starts increasing the weight. Before Pablo can try to wrestle away from us, I rip his shirt open and slice from his left collar bone to his sternum.
“Stay away from my woman. Maybe your dad shouldn’t have taken so many field trips to Colombian jails. Maybe he wouldn’t have raised two pedazos de mierda malparido.” Despicable pieces of shite.
Malparidomeans badly born, but it translates to despicable. It’s more insulting in Spanish than it sounds when I use it in that context. I put my blade to his cheek and nick the skin.
“Do you want a scar to match Luca’s?”
Luca has one that runs from his cheekbone to below the collar of his shirt courtesy of his former best friend.
“If you won’t give me an answer to why you targeted Thea, then tell us what you hoped to gain by getting involved in this shitshow between the Albanians and the Boston Irish. How’d you get the feckers from Jersey involved? You know we’re going to crow like fecking roosters to Maks about this.”
“He already knows.”
That gives me pause. I glance in the direction where my brothers dragged the kyre. “He can’t kill him, so he’s letting you. What’re you getting out of that deal? The chance to feck us over? Sounds like Maks is getting twice the deal you are since you have no product left. We’ll make sure the Kurti family knows their leader died doing a deal with you. They’ll go after you, which does the bratva and us a favor. All the while, you’re still everyone’s little bitch.”
I slam my fist into his nose, barely jerking back in time to avoid the blood splatter. I kick him in the ribs as Dillan transfers more of his weight to Pablo’s kneecaps.
“This all ends with just this if you tell me why you went after Althea instead of just me or any man in my family?”
“I told you. You’re sniffing after her like you’re the one with a cunt. She was easy bait.”
I jerk my head, and Dillan removes his foot. I nudge Pablo’s legs apart until my right foot is between them.
“You’re an heir, so you’re expected to have an heir. Hard to do when I smash your balls.” I draw back my foot.
“Fuck you.”
“No, thanks. I don’t think you’ll get it up.”
I drive my foot into his junk. But it’s nowhere near as hard as I could. He tries to curl into a protective ball, which is the usual reaction to getting hit in the nuts. But I’m still standing in the way. Dillan kicks his injured shoulder to get him flat on his back again.
I speak into my earpiece. “Brandon, finish Corey. I’m having too much fun with Pablo. We’re gonna be here awhile.”
I prepare to kick him again, and I will make him puke this time. He knows it too.
“I’m sorry.”
“I accept. But that’s not enough. You are going to make a motherfucking goodwill tour. You are going to apologize to Althea. You are going to apologize to Laura because she’s going to lose her ever-loving shite when she finds out you went after a woman. And you are going to apologize to your mother for taking advantage of her near-death in the hospital to use one of her nurses to target a syndicate woman. I am going to be there for each and every one of them.”
I slam my boot into his balls hard enough that he curls over again and gags. I put my boot on them and push. He pukes. I step away from him. I didn’t make him a eunuch, but he’s going to be in pain for days. I grin when I think about him trying to piss.
“Meet me at Maks and Laura’s tomorrow morning at seven. Their twins will have them up. I’ll make sure Maks doesn’t shoot either of us before we get on the property. You will apologize to Althea in front of Laura. Then you will apologize to Laura. Once she’s done with you, we’ll visit your mamí and papí. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure Enrique knows why you’re late for work.”
I dig his cell phone out of his pocket and take it to the far end of the warehouse. I come back and zip tie his ankles. He can call for help if he makes it to his phone.
“Don’t forget. Seven a.m. If you’re late, I will tell Laura everything you’ve done rather than sticking with you tried to scare my fiancée.”
I kick him in the gut for good measure. Then Dillan and I jump down from the loading dock. Two trucks are gone with the dead bodies to deal with. Ewan is wishing he was dead by now. The third truck has the cleaners in it. They’re our men who will make sure there isn’t a single trace of a crime scene. They’ll drop the Cartel bodies off at a Mancinelli construction site and call the police with an anonymous tip. The Albanians will wind up as ash in the Sound. Ewan’s men will get dumped at one of the O’Briens’ sites down in Trenton with a call to the cops. That’ll remind both of them who their feudal lord is. They’ll know it’s us, and there isn’t shite they can do. I have plans for Corey.
“Brandon?”
“Over here.”
Corey is alive, but just barely. He’s got three gunshot wounds and at least two knife wounds. I crouch over him, tempted to spit in his face.
“I gave you a chance to survive. I told you to leave Ally alone and to go home. When we say family first, it means you protect them above all else. You don’t make them your targets before anyone else. The Gallaghers are my family. You should have gotten the hint. Now you die.”
I move out of the way as Brandon puts the barrel of a shotgun in Corey’s mouth. I know a taxidermist who asks no questions. He’ll take care of Corey’s body since that’s all that’s left now. Once it’s stuffed and preserved, I’ll have it delivered to Corey’s motorcycle club and have it mounted over the bar. It’ll remind his men to stay in Boston where they belong.
I step away from the others and pull out my phone. There’s only one call I need to make. I don’t hear it ring.
“Cailín, it’s over. I’ll be home soon.”
“Daddy! Thank God, Finn. Do you need space when you get here?”
“I need you naked and in our room. You don’t go back to work for another three days. We still have a lot we haven’t played with yet. Be sure to grab a water bottle on the way. You’re going to need to hydrate.”
“So do you. I plan to suck you dry.”
“Do you really want me hard in front of your dad?”
“Ew. No.”
“Then don’t say things that make me want to do dirty, dirty things.”
“Hurry up, Daddy. I’m already naked.”