Chapter Eighteen
Maverick
Rory and Livy were waiting for us when we got home yesterday. Amelia seems to have forgotten all about the incident, but I haven’t.
The fact that Rory thought he had the right to take Olivia from school without telling her mother still doesn’t sit right with me.
Yes, I know he has known her practically her entire life. I know Amelia trusts him, and he’s been there for Olivia since she was little. But that doesn’t automatically give him the right to step in and make decisions regarding Olivia as if he’s her parent.
She’s not his daughter.
He doesn’t get to change her plans, remove her from school, and simply assume Amelia will be fine with it afterward. I don’t give a damn how harmless his intentions were. For several terrifying minutes, Amelia believed her daughter had been taken.
That alone should have been enough for him to realize he’d crossed a line.
I need to have a good, long conversation with the man, but it’s going to have to be put on the back burner for now.
Right now, I have several very angry men pacing inside my office…and a new threat to deal with.
“Explain it to me again,” I say, pouring myself a glass of whisky.
It’s barely afternoon, but I’ve already decided today calls for it.
I need a vacation.
Preferably somewhere warm and quiet, with my two pretty ladies at my side and no one trying to threaten, rob, betray, or murder anyone for at least a full week.
At this point, that might be asking too much.
“We received a call this morning from some man in Ohio claiming he had important information for the person in charge of the Moretti family,” Foster explains.
“If he did,” I slowly swirl the amber liquid around my glass, “why didn’t he simply reach out to me? I may run a not-so-legal empire, but contacting my people has never been particularly difficult.”
“I believe the technical term is criminal organization,” Skip offers from the other side of the room.
I look over at him.
“What?” he says. “You said ‘not-so-legal empire’ like you occasionally forget to file the correct paperwork.”
Spike snorts from where he’s pacing in front of the windows.
“Continue,” I tell Foster.
“The man didn’t have a direct number for you. He called one of the businesses connected to the family and apparently kept demanding to speak to the man in charge.”
“Which business?”
“The import company in Columbus.”
I take a slow drink.
“And the person answering the telephone believed the best course of action was to send this stranger directly to you?”
“No. They transferred him to someone else, who transferred him to someone else, who eventually contacted me.”
“So my morning is being disrupted by a game of telephone that began with some unidentified man in Ohio?”
“Pretty much.”
“Wonderful.”
I finish my whisky and immediately pour another.
The vacation is no longer merely a pleasant idea but a medical necessity.
“When we received the call, I contacted Luca,” Spike explains. “He asked me not to reach out to the man until we’d spoken with you first. You were busy yesterday, and none of us wanted to interrupt the time you were spending with your new family. So, here we are.”
My new family.
Those words settle somewhere deep inside my chest.
Amelia and Olivia may not officially carry my name yet, but the men in this room already recognize them as mine. They know I consider both of them family, and they respect that enough to give me an uninterrupted day with them.
“I see.” I place my untouched second glass of whisky on the desk. “Have you looked into the man, Foster?”
“He’s clean,” Foster answers. “Chris Olsen. Forty-seven. Widowed. Father of one. Works as a truck driver for a major shipping company.”
“In Ohio?” I ask, suddenly much more interested than I was a moment ago.
“Um...” Foster pulls out his phone and looks through the information he gathered. “Yes. The company’s main warehouse is in Ohio, but he travels throughout the eastern United States.”
“Interesting.”
I lean back in my chair and steeple my fingers beneath my chin as several pieces begin sliding into place.
A truck driver.
A major shipping company.
Ohio.
A man who somehow knows something important enough to seek out the head of the Moretti family.
That combination could be a coincidence.
I stopped believing in coincidences a very long time ago.
“Luca, would you please ask my brother to join us?”
Nodding, my second leaves the room.
“What’s going on, brother?” Spike asks.
“Did your research tell you the name of the shipping company Mr. Olsen works for?” I ask instead of answering.
“I didn’t dig that far into it,” Foster admits. “I only grabbed the basic information. Give me a second and I’ll find out.”
His thumbs move rapidly across the screen while the men around me continue pacing.
“You wanted to see me, fratellino?”
Stefano walks into the room with Luca close behind him. My brother takes one look at the men gathered inside my office, then turns his attention to me.
“As all of you know, Stefano headed our New York operations until quite recently,” I begin. “He was also the one who made decisions for Kentucky, Virginia, and Ohio.”
“If you’re about to ask me to go back, Maverick, I don’t think I’ll agree.” He lowers himself into one of the chairs across from my desk. “As you suspected, I rather enjoy living here in Palm Springs.”
“Never, fratello,” I assure him. “I would never send you back. I like having you beside me instead of on the opposite side of the country.”
“Aww.” A faint blush spreads across his cheeks.
That’s my brother.
Sweet to his very soul.
Too soft for this world, despite everything this life has forced him to become. He led New York because our family needed him to, not because he ever wanted the power that came with it.
The fact that he survived that city without allowing it to harden every gentle part of him is something I will always admire.
It’s also why I will never send him back.
“Well,” Foster says, drawing everyone’s attention toward him. “I found the shipping company.”
Stefano looks at the name displayed on Foster’s screen.
The warmth disappears from his face.
I see the recognition immediately.
“What’s this about?” Stefano asks, leaning forward in his chair. “We shut that company down years ago. I personally saw to it that the asshole who was running it could never use those trucks to move so much as a box of tissues again.”
“And yet, according to his current employment records, Chris Olsen works for them,” Foster says.
“That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not,” I murmur.
Stefano rises from his chair and takes Foster’s phone, studying the information displayed on the screen.
His earlier warmth is gone. So is the sweet, blushing man who walked into my office only moments ago.
This is the man who controlled New York in my absence.
The man who may have hated every moment he spent sitting in my chair but still ensured no one dared challenge the Moretti name while he occupied it.
“I physically traveled to Ohio and dealt with this myself,” he says. “Their assets were seized, the trucks were stored away, the man in charge is dead, and every contract they had was terminated. There should be nothing left.”
“Someone may have reopened the company,” Spike suggests.
“Not without us knowing,” Stefano replies. “I don’t think you understand how much real estate we control, Spike. If you search the Moretti name in Ohio, you’ll find nothing connected to us. That doesn’t mean we aren’t there.”
“He meant no offense, Stefano,” I say, attempting to calm my brother.
My brother may have a gentle soul, but he does not appreciate having his competence questioned. Especially when it concerns territory he once controlled.
“My apologies,” Spike says. “I’m only trying to understand what’s going on.”
Stefano inclines his head, accepting the apology.
“We established a shipping company in Cincinnati, Ohio, seven years ago,” I begin.
“Officially, we transported merchandise to major retailers throughout the eastern United States. Furniture, clothing, appliances, food. Anything that could be loaded onto a truck and delivered without attracting attention.”
“And unofficially?” Foster asks.
“It served as the foundation for an extraction network.”
Skip stops pacing.
“What kind of extraction network?”
“The kind that removed people from places they were unlikely to survive.”
No one interrupts as I rise from my chair and walk toward the windows.
“Interpreters whose names had been handed to enemy forces. Journalists who exposed the wrong government officials. Religious minorities being hunted for their beliefs. Women threatened with execution for attempting to escape abusive husbands. Children who were going to be forced into militias.”
“Refugees,” Spike says.
“Some of them,” I answer. “Others would never have survived long enough to earn that designation. Governments make people complete paperwork, attend interviews, and wait months…or years…for permission to flee. The people we helped didn’t have years. Some of them didn’t have days.”
“So you smuggled them into the country?” Bones asks.
“We rescued them,” Stefano corrects sharply. “There’s a difference.”
“Legally, there really isn’t,” Foster points out.
“Which is why we didn’t ask the law for permission,” I say.
Rules and regulations mean very little to a person with a gun pressed against their head.
“It wasn’t our cleanest operation. We bribed border officials, falsified travel documents, altered shipping manifests, and moved people through warehouses that never appeared on any Moretti record.”
The Shadows listen without interruption.
“But we never stuffed desperate families inside cargo containers or treated them like merchandise. They traveled in secured vehicles with food, water, medical care, and armed protection. Once they reached this country, we gave them new identities and transported them to homes scattered across the eastern United States. We found them jobs, enrolled their children in school, and gave them enough money to begin again.”
“We didn’t charge them,” Stefano adds. “Not one dollar.”