Page 135 of They Break Beauty

That had only managed to go so far, though, but with Brianna now here in the mix, I had a feeling she’d be able to assist with that. She had this uncanny way of making even an ice-cold bastard like me relax in her company.

I wanted to be getting to know her right now.

Instead, I needed to rein Levi in.

Jesus fuck, Hellraiser.

27

~Levi~

I’d done it.

I’d been right on the money. The intel from that sleazeball, Kyle, had proven to be a vital piece of the puzzle that I’d gone without all this time in my pursuit of that motherfucker, Malcolm Lynch. I’d had to go about my mission in a roundabout way.

Sure, it had enabled me to lay eyes on Lynch and track him down once.

But beyond that, it hadn’t been possible to replicate.

Until now.

Now that I had the true name of his shadowed organization.

Osiris.

With the program I’d built in operation with that new intel plugged in, it had managed to pull up half a dozen mentions of that name. Places they’d been, deals they’d made, even details of a covert investigation into them from Nico Marchetti. He was the heir to the notorious Marchetti Syndicate—mafia, basically. Either he was vetting them now that they’d started making waves and looking to work with them, or he had a beef with Malcolm Lynch too and he’d discovered he was the man behind the operation of Osiris.

If it came to it, I could go through him.

Only if it became absolutely necessary, though.

Going that route came with complications for many reasons. But it wasn’t merely the whole mafia thing. It was the fact that one of my contacts, Rina, absolutely despised the ruthless bastard.

Rina, who Mason had recently called upon.

To him and Colt, they believed her just to be an actual contact of mine who I’d exchanged favors with over the years. She was a hacker extraordinaire, as Mason put it. Her skills were equal to mine. That was on the down low, though. Her family and the circles she walked in weren’t aware and she was very careful who came to know. Mason was only privy to it because of his closeness to me, somebody whom she trusted implicitly.

You see, she was much more than just a contact to me, or even an asset. We were close. We’d been friends for five years.

There was an understanding between us that was very difficult to find. She got where I was coming from with my quest, and my reaction to the kidnapping. Although she’d never actually suffered through that herself, there had been several attempts to do so. There’d also been at least three attempts on her life over the years. Her father, Santino Leone, had many dangerous enemies and as his daughter—a mafia princess—she was a chief target of those enemies.

I scrubbed my hand over my face as I focused back on my conspiracy board, all the clues, evidence, and key intel I’d obtained, linking patterns with red string across the cork surface, color-coding the push pins, the whole nine. I hadn’t left out a single relevant detail.

“Fuck,” I ground out.

There was no way around it now.

I’d reached a point where I had to dive deeper into my investigation or reach out to the likes of Nico to pool our intel.

With either option, it posed a risk of what I was doing finally being detected, of me exposing the fact that I was looking for Osiris and Lynch.

And that could very well mean them launching a preemptive strike against me before I got any closer. Before it was me on their doorstep striking.

While I wasn’t above taking such risks, it wasn’t just about me.

What I did would impact my brothers and Brianna.

So, I needed to tell them.

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