Page 37 of Savage Lover

“If this is an example of your surveillance skills, I’m not worried,” I scoff.

“This is me telling you exactly what’s going to happen. And it’ll happen anyway. Because that’s what you sleazy, arrogant shitheads can’t seem to comprehend. You’re always going to lose in the end. There’s more of us than there is of you. We’re smarter, better trained, better funded. I’ve got the whole city behind me. But you’ll keep breaking the fuckin’ law anyway. You don’t know anything else. You can’t be anything else.”

“Huh, maybe you’re right,” I say, nodding slowly. “But you sit behind a desk filling out incident reports for $65K a year. While I’m sipping champagne at parties with your boss. So I guess I’ll take my chances.”

I saunter away from him, still feeling his stare boring into my back.

When I join the others in the restaurant, my father says, “Who was that?”

“Some cop.”

“What did he want?”

“To inform me that he suspects that our family may, at some point, have been involved in illegal activity. Apparently, the police frown on that.”

Papa is not amused. He scowls, his thick gray eyebrows drawing together over his broad nose.

“Did something happen last night?” he demands.

Fuck, he’s worse than Aida. Every one of them is like a bloodhound, sniffing out weakness.

“No,” I lie.

“Find out who he is and what he actually wants,” my father says.

“I will.”

With that, we return to the discussion of the Steel Works property. Fergus Griffin admits that he’s had his eye on it for a while.

“It’s going to require an insane amount of capital. Plus every favor we’ve ever been owed,” he says.

“If I was mayor, I could get it done,” Callum says.

“Williams is up for reelection in eight months,” Papa says.

“Hard to beat the incumbent,” Fergus says.

“Not impossible, though,” Aida says.

“I’ve only been Alderman for a year,” Callum steeples his fingers. “It’s a big jump.”

“The campaign will be expensive.” Fergus frowns. “The Russians cleaned out our cash reserves.”

“We’re short at the moment, too. We splashed out big on the Oak Street Tower. Won’t see the return until it’s all leased out,” Papa says.

“We might need to bring in another partner,” Fergus says.

“The Braterstwo?” Callum says.

His father flinches. He hasn’t quite accustomed himself to the fact that Mikolaj Wilk, the Braterstwo boss, kidnapped and married his youngest daughter.

“Perhaps,” Fergus says stiffly.

“We’ll look at our options,” Papa says.

The meeting wraps up quickly.

As I’m driving Papa home, he says, “Catch your brother up on everything we talked about.”

---