Page 102 of Mafia Star

“It’s Director Hollands from the FBI and Agent Spiegel from the ATF. They’re supposed to just be brothers-in-law. They’re a hell of a lot more than that.” Carmine cocks an eyebrow as he looks around. “They’re lovers.”

Too bad for whoever’s sister they caught in the middle. He scrolls something before looking back up at us and continuing.

“Cormac and Seamus made a deal with Hollands not to reveal their affair to his wife who happens to be a Deputy DNI. Ain’t that some shit?”

So, the cuckolded wife is a Deputy Director at the Department of National Intelligence. One of the FBI’s oversight bodies. She could blow up both their careers, but especially her husband’s. Those two men must be paying the O’Rourkes some big hush money. And no wonder they aren’t backing down.

They both want to make names for themselves in case something goes wrong, and they have to rely on their service reputations. They probably staged that whole fucked-up mess with the press, hoping they could make an arrest stick before the O’Rourkes could get their bribe money back. Because Finn will demand the cash if they don’t do what they’re paid for. The man counts their money like Uncle Scrooge in Ducktails.

I bet they’re also figuring that taking me down despite being warned to back off from Beth will outweigh trapping her in the middle. From Shane’s message, they aren’t trying too hard to stop them. They’re probably gambling on Steve intervening, either by keeping her away or hinting at the threat to make me push her away.

What I doubt anyone counted on was Simms. I wouldn’t put it past the fucker to have known about the O’Rourkes’ plan and have acted today to fuck them over too. He is— was —pretty pissed they didn’t do a better job of keeping his payroll going when the jobs he was doing for them dried up.

I mull something over before looking at my uncle.

“Mikey won’t have told anyone what happened. Uncle Cesare, you won’t say anything when Mikey comes to you with the insurance claim. But Uncle Sal, have you told Maks, Enrique, or Dillan about Simms?”

“No. I don’t feel any need to make that courtesy call. They can figure it out when he doesn’t answer their calls.”

“Good. Then Dillan and his family probably don’t know about what happened today. They have no idea that we know. They’re banking on Steve keeping that message to himself and us chasing our tails to find our why the feds have such a hard on for me. They want us to keep thinking it was all Tres J's. If we’re going to get everything done that Steve suggested, we need to start now.” I glance at my watch. “It’s eleven a.m. in Tokyo and ten a.m. in Beijing. The morning is almost gone there.”

Enzo moves to sit next to Carmine on a loveseat that always looks like it’ll collapse under any two of us but hasn’t yet. He had his laptop with him when he walked into the office. Now he and Carmine plonk away on their keyboards, periodically pointing to something on each other’s screens or their own. The rest of us are quiet for ten minutes before Enzo looks up.

“We’re in, Steve. Here.”

My brother hands our soon-to-be brother-in-law his computer. That’s a cosmic sign of respect and trust. Enzo won’t even let the rest of us check our emails on his computer since it’s linked to all our accounting, legal or otherwise. They swap places, and Enzo pulls over an armchair to sit beside Steve. My new brother keeps glancing at Carmine’s screen to reference something. As the minutes tick by, exhaustion envelops me. I wish I was curled up in bed with Beth instead of killing time in here. I shut my eyes; the others chat while we wait.

“Done.”

Steve’s pronouncement makes me sit up. I glance at my watch. I must have dozed off. We have twelve hours until the U.S. stock market opens. They’ll start getting calls from Asia and Europe within the next few hours.

He hands the computer back to Enzo as Carmine shuts his. Steve looks over at my uncles and Papa.

“If this is all you want me to be a part of, that’s cool. But I’m not done.”

There’s a smidge of defiance in his tone as he looks at Uncle Salvatore.

“None of us are. Do you want to look at what we have? Or do you want to go to your place and get yours?”

Rifles.

“Let me see the options, then I can decide. And I want to tell my parents the truth. If I leave here with you or within thirty minutes of you, they’ll know I’m into something. I’d rather they know I’m not acting alone.”

Papa’s been silent like the others once we got serious. Now he glances toward the door before settling his attention on Steve.

“We tell them as much as we do any of the women. We’re going out. We don’t know when we’ll be back. It might be quick, or we might have to go to our place. If your mom grew up with any active mob ties, she knows what that means.”

The garage. The place where we deal with less cooperative informants or where we punish people. All the syndicates have them. We suspect the Kutsenkos have a warehouse. We think the O’Rourkes have a storage facility. And we’re pretty sure the Diazes use the basement of one of their bodegas. One of the unwritten commandments of syndicate life is don’t snoop around our place, and we won’t blow up yours.

“Thank you.”

Luca frowns. I know he won’t want to leave Olivia and Petra. I guess the cold they thought their daughter was getting was actually the first signs of teething. Apparently, nights are extra rough for my niece, which means her parents aren’t sleeping much. Olivia’s nursing, so she has to get up. But when Petra doesn’t need to eat, Luca is on call. He looks over at me and nods. He doesn’t want to go, but he will for me and for Beth. He speaks to all of us as our underboss.

“We go as a team of seven. We go to McGinty’s. None of them are working tonight, but their men will be there drinking. It’s a clean job. In and out. No damage to that place.”

That’ll send a louder message than trashing the bar too. It’s not about inconveniencing them and making them clean up a mess before they reopen. It’s about them knowing they’re weak, and we know it. In fact, we’re going to make them weaker.

I hear Matteo on the phone calling the guy at our real garage who manages our fleet of cars. He’s getting two SUVs sent over. Once he’s off the phone, we formulate our plan and assign roles. Next to Papa’s office is another door that remains locked at all times because they don’t want Pia and Natalia to open it when they’re here. Behind the wood door is a reinforced steel one that leads to a panic room. It’s also our armory. Steve finds a couple things he likes, and we put the rifles in cases and ammunition in bags.

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