Page 135 of Mob Princess

Taking out that restaurant would be a personal blow Salvatore wouldn’t recover from. Even though the bratva destroyed the first home my family had when they immigrated to America, and it’d become a central gathering place for our extended family, we have limits to what we’ll take from people.

Shocking.

I know.

“Marco didn’t order a hit because he knows better than to kill you. But he definitely wanted you fucked-up, and he wanted us to suffer not knowing where you were.” Shane’s been chomping at the bit to go on the rampage.

My twin held it together while they searched for me, but it all crumbled the next day when we were alone. He came to my place, and we went in my office. Lina stayed at the other end of the condo. We were in there for two hours of extremely unmanly sobbing and hugging. He’d known something was wrong even before he got the call. Lina was sleeping, but he said he had a wave of nausea and broke into a cold sweat. We already know the pattern. It happens to us when one of us gets injured or really sick. When I got tonsillitis, he was the one who couldn’t stop puking. He inflamed his throat so much that he wound up getting a tonsillectomy too.

We’re so closely bonded that it’s a level of empathy I can’t put into words. Because our bodies are made exactly the same, and our minds work so similarly, feeling each other’s pain isn’t difficult to fathom. But the telepathy we have and that other identical twins claim to have has no scientific explanation. How we know something is wrong when we’re not together defies explanation, and neither of us questions it.

“He and Liz just bought that house on Grand Cayman. They haven’t even spent a night there. He thinks no one knows he’s stashing shite there. I’m sure Liz doesn’t, but we do.” Finn turns his laptop around, so we can see photos of an exquisite villa on a beach that looks more like a painting from someone’s imagination than could be real.

Ten minutes after Shane left that day, Finn showed up. Our time locked away was only ninety minutes. But it was more hugging and crying. While my bond with Shane is inexplicable on so many levels, it has never felt more significant or stronger than how I feel about Finn. Shane says the same thing. My oldest brother can be a monumental pain in my arse. Even in his thirties, he still likes to flex and make me do things for him. I give in by choice because I love my brother, and it’s usually something trivial, like giving him my seat somewhere.

But he’s protective of Shane and me in a way I can’t explain, either. It’s in his marrow that, until Ally came along, no one came before us. I’ve seen him knock out a three-hundred-and-twenty-pound guy who could have been a Sumo wrestler with one punch because he took a swing at—and missed—Shane.

“What’s he got there right now?” Seamus leans forward to see the house better.

“Amyl nitrate.” Shane grins.

The shite’s a depressant with medical uses for things like angina. But it’s become a party drug. People huff it, and some guys use it like a cheap replacement for a little blue pill if they can’t get it up or keep it up. It’s also highly flammable.

“He’s gonna have a fun time explaining to Liz why her wedding present exploded.” I’m tempted to rub my hands together like some cartoon super villain.

“What’s the product valued at?” Cormac is nearly as tight fisted with money as Finn, so every penny of everything counts.

“The street price is still cheap at ten dollars a vial, but you know the Mancinellis. They’ll make their buyer think those Poppers have some magical ingredient that sets them apart. To them, it’ll easily go for three times that price. From the pictures we have of the shipment, my guess is about two-hundred grand.” Finn shrugs.

In the world we work in, that’s chump change. But it’ll be inconvenient because the profit is likely already designated to help pay for something way more expensive, thus way more important. I’ve been hacking their emails and inventory systems to find any hint, but nothing’s hit yet.

“When?” Dillan’s remained quiet so far.

I laugh. I can’t help it. “His birthday is in two days. Buon compleanno.” Happy birthday.

“Too bad he won’t be there to blow it out. Tanti auguri!” Many wishes. Shane’s chuckle echoes mine.

“Make it happen.” Dillan joins in the laughter, but he appears unsatisfied.

“Do you want us to do more?” My brow furrows.

“Not to the Mancinellis. I’m not satisfied with how things wound up with the O’Malleys. It doesn’t feel done enough.”

We kept Justin at the station for two weeks. The first four days had him strung up, naked, starving, and dehydrated. We barely kept him alive. When he slid toward unconscious, we’d cut him. Nothing deep enough to make him bleed out or knock him out, but enough for the pain to register and revive him.

I worked him over once a day, and my relatives took turns. Cormac, Seamus, and Shane took turns for the night shifts. The second four days had us taking turns with baseball bats and steel pipes. We learned little because Lina was right. The physical pain did next to nothing to get him to talk. But the last six days were slow emotional torture.

We got into his phone and discovered he’d saved a mailbox full of messages from Lina over the years. I pulled up her social media and scrolled photos of her, lingering on ones where he was in the background, or we knew he was there when it was taken. For each photo I showed him, I told him about what we ate for breakfast together that morning or dinner the night before. I told him what movie we watched or what time we went to bed and what time hours later we fell asleep. I never reveal any intimate details. That is for no one but Lina and me. I will never violate our relationship by sharing that stuff.

I reminded him every chance I got that she picked me. That he had no one. That Ewan hadn’t tried to negotiate for him. He knew he wasn’t going anywhere. That wasn’t the point. He knew no one cared enough to try. By day twelve, he was so broken, he shared everything he knew. That’s how I arranged for the photos with Ellie and to attack Colt.

It’s also how I found out who the gunmen were. The one who shot me, and the one who shot Ewan. Turns out it was Mikhail in a building across the street from the hotel. We hired the guy who almost took out Ewan. He’s now a CI.

I hung a photo of Lina and me sharing a lounger beside my parents’ pool on the wall in front of where Justin hung most of the time he was at the station. For the last three days of his miserable life, he had his arms stretched over his head and connected to a meat hook. I made sure he couldn’t turn his head, and he couldn’t spin himself away from that view. We just left him there. No food. No water. Just Lina’s and my smiling faces. Just as he was about to die, Shane and I took him down and tossed him into the vat of acid we keep as one of our disposal methods. He screamed just before he drowned, the chemicals burning the skin from his bones.

Nothing about that made me happy, but it was satisfying.

“Ewan’s home and still recovering. What do you want to do to him?” I know that because the piece of shite texted Lina asking her to video call him.

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