Page 13 of Tainted Love

But either way, I’m aware I’m drifting off, albeit against my will, and while I balk at the idea of losing consciousness, and jerk awake several times, it’s not long before I abandon the sweatshirt and socks because I'm too warm, and fall into a deep and surprisingly contented slumber.

Chapter Eleven

CIARAN

“What’s going down?” I ask Callum as soon as I’ve given Liam instructions to keep Maricela guarded at all times. “I thought things were quiet.”

“Well, they are where the Viper’s woman is concerned, but we have another issue. It appears there’s been an attempt to encroach on our territory,” he advises as we make our way to his vehicle.

I don’t need to ask where we’re going, since if we’re heading out it can only mean someone’s been picked up and we have some interrogation to attend to.

“What area in particular?” I demand, thoughts ticking through my head at breakneck speed.

“All the way from the Bronx to as close as Harlem,” Callum informs, causing me to turn my head sharply in his direction.

“What the fuck?” I’m not easily shocked, but I’d expected some small fry chancer doing a bit of poaching, someone we were going to have to teach a lesson. Not a full-scale mounted assault on great swathes of our stomping grounds. “That’s a lot of territory,” I mutter, realizing things have taken a far more serious direction.

Callum nods. “Not something that could’ve been pulled together overnight, and certainly not anything that could ever be plausibly written off as accidental.”

I mull over the news. Our territory stretches from Woodland Heights in the Bronx, right along the path of the Hudson River, to Hell’s Kitchen, which is where Ár n-áit is situated. But we also have a lot of extended family who live out in the Belle’s Harbor and Breezy Point areas of Queens, so we cover a lot of the terrain in that direction, too.

We aren’t so far from Little Italy, where the Rossi family have the Cosa Nostra compound, but their territory mostly stays to the East River side of Manhattan. They’re bordered on the other side by the Bratva who are situated in Brooklyn.

“Why does it feel like we’re getting push-back from the Famiglia?” I ask my brother with a shake of my head. “It makes no sense. They’re hemmed in more closely by the Russkies.”

“Agreed. Makes me wonder if this shit with Orla was just something to divert our attention from a planned takeover.”

His assessment fills me with disquiet. For the most part, the individual factions of the criminal underworld here in Manhattan co-exist in a state of careful respect, which works much in the same way as the nuclear deterrents’ strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction - Or MAD - because people would be mad to try it since neither side would survive the resulting fallout of a full-scale war.

“Or maybe it’s a ploy. Pit two sides against each other, so the third, who’s waiting on the side-lines, can sweep in and take the lot.”

“Fuck! Do you think we’ve been played? Maybe the Viper wasn’t behind Orla’s death, after all.” Callum’s voice holds a note of unaccustomed panic. “Everyone knows his calling card. The snake could have been a ruse. Something put there to point us in the Viper’s direction, so we took action making it look like we drew first blood instead of mounting a retaliation. Where the hell does that leave us except in a full-scale war? What the fuck should we do?”

I pinch my bottom lip between my thumb and forefinger and contemplate his words. There’s no doubt he could be right… and it would not be a good thing for us. “Well, even if we let the girl loose straight away, it won’t change the fact that we humiliated the bastard on his wedding day in front of all those other pompous arseholes who were in attendance. That’s as much of a slight as taking his woman, so we’re completely fucked over on that score.”

Callum’s response is an indelicate snort, which could mean anything.

“All the more reason to see what information we can obtain.”

He nods his head as we pull up outside an abandoned warehouse, then leans back and cracks his knuckles, the sound eerily loud in the silence of the SUV. He stays in the vehicle though, so I wait him out as my brother obviously has something else on his mind.

“You don’t think this has anything to do with Emylyah, do you?” he asks. Róisín’s best friend just so happens to be married to a prominent member of the Bratva. If Callum’s theory is right, then it’s the Eastern European contingent that has made this play. It’s a disquieting notion for both of us.

“You think their friendship isn’t genuine?” I ask, knowing that’s what he’s wondering.

“It’s convenient, isn’t it?” he replies, staring sightlessly out of the front windshield as he taps his fingers on the steering wheel in agitation. He hasn’t, and most likely won’t, come right out and say it, but I know what he’s really thinking. It’s not something Callum talks about, but he’s my twin, and there’s nothing he can keep from me, no matter how much of a secret he thinks his own sexuality is. The fact is, my brother's a closet bisexual, and he happens to be involved with Emylyah’s brother-in-law, who holds a similar position in the Bratva as Callum does in the Irish Mafia.

I’ve never mentioned it because I always saw it as a positive association. Networking, if you like.

Now, with this new threat hanging over our heads, we all need to ask ourselves if we haven’t been infiltrated from the inside. If the people we’ve accepted into our inner circle as friends and lovers are actually there for far more nefarious reasons.

Do I ask him?

I turn in my seat to look at him, and although he doesn’t acknowledge it, I’m sure he can feel the weight of my stare boring into his head. His expression is pensive, and I know he’s fighting his own demons. In the end I decide I trust him to make the right decisions himself. We have other things to worry about right now, more important issues, so I throw him a bone. “Well, how about we don’t make any snap decisions before we find out more? Róisín and Emylyah have been friends since school, after all.”

Callum huffs out a breath, then slaps his hand on the steering wheel like he’s made a decision. “Okay.” The syllables are like bullets falling from his mouth as he leaps into action. For a moment, I almost pity whoever is on the other side of the warehouse door, because now my brother has several points to prove, and that doesn’t bode well for the enemy.

Chapter Twelve

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