Page 30 of Mob Bride

“And you think dealing with this single-handedly is going to avoid that? That you’re the best person for this?” Finn crosses his arms even though he’s sitting on a sofa. He gives me the same mulish look he has my entire life.

“I think too many hands in the cookie jar just wind up crumbling them all.” Shitty metaphor, but it’ll do.

“I think there’s something more personal at stake.”

My head whips around to my twin, and I glare at him. He knows exactly what I’m thinking. I can tell the moment he decides to lay off. We don’t have to say anything. That’s part of the whole twin deal.

My brothers and cousins stare at me. It’s not to intimidate me. It’s out of frustration, but they know I’m done talking. They’ve gotten as much out of me as they’re going to get, and that irritates them. That’s just too bad.

“Look, I know this isn’t how we normally do things. And I know when any of us think we can do a job on our own, somehow it goes to shite. I need you to trust me on this. If anyone gets wind of all of us being involved, we’re going to risk our lives and Carys’s too, and we’re going to risk finding out nothing. Do you want to be the reason something happens to Meredith’s daughter? Do you want to be the reason the investigation goes to shite, and they bring somebody else in who includes us in it? It’s better off if there’s only one of us involved. She already knows and trusts me. Mostly.”

I know that’s a reasonable explanation. That doesn’t stop Sean looking at me, knowing there’s more. I haven’t told him anything. He just understands. But it’ll be about a heartbeat before Finn and the others figure it out too: there’s a woman involved, and I’m way too attracted to her.

“What else is going on?” I steer the conversation away from me onto anything but me.

“What’s the deal with those construction sites?”

Well, shite.

Finn’s question doesn’t steer it away from me. At least it’s not about Carrie anymore.

“We had a slowdown thanks to Pablo interfering as usual. The fucker just can’t mind his own business.”

Pablo Diaz is second-in-command of the Colombian Cartel. He’s in the same position Dillan was as a nephew set to inherit. Enrique has no children. His oldest nephew, Pablo, will take over the reins when the time comes. Enrique’s so fucking stubborn and wily, he’ll probably outlive us all even if he’s the one with the most targets on his back. Nothing comes in or out of the Americas without him knowing because most of our producers are in Latin America.

“What’s Pablo done now?” Seamus demands.

There’s no love lost between the two of them because of shite that went down most recently with his wife, Tiernan, while they were dating.

“You know him. He just always has to be up everybody’s arse about everything. He doesn’t like that my mall construction is moving faster than his. He had a bunch of guys call out sick, and he blames me—” I look over at Cormac— “when he should blame you.”

“What? I just did what I was told to do.”

Seamus and Cormac always stayed out of trouble the longest. They flew under our parents’ radar the most. But Dillan’s little sister, Colleen, was the ringleader. She got us in and out of trouble. When she couldn’t get us out of trouble, our parents doled out punishments to all of us, but Cormac and Seamus always got off with the lightest. With them, she meted out her own type of justice when we were alone. She was the sweetest little dictator you could ever meet. She told you what to do with ponytails and a smile. You couldn’t not go along with her even if you knew nothing but trouble lay ahead of you.

“I told you to bribe some of his guys, not his entire work crew. And one guy went to Pablo and squealed. He told Pablo he’d have to pay the douche double to get him back on the site. Needless to say, he’s not alive anymore, but it means Pablo knows all about it and doesn’t think it’s Niko anymore.”

Niko no longer handles their construction projects. Christina, his younger brother Bogdan’s wife, does, but she’s about to give birth to their second kid any day now. Niko’s taken over. It’s been a while since we’ve fucked around with Kutsenko Partners’ construction projects because Christina scares us more than all of those shitbag men combined. She’s got way more connections than we do, so she can sink an entire project with one word to the right person in the city planner’s office where she used to work.

We have no issues fucking around with the Cartel’s and the Mafia’s projects. So that’s why we went after Pablo. Partly as retribution and partly to make sure our build finishes first. We can make a point of that when we pitch to other companies for other projects. That’s just how it works.

It’s tit for tat with everything in our life. When we gain something, we expect it to be taken away. It’s just a question of who’s doing the taking now. None of us can kill each other because of our senior roles in the families. It would upset the balance. However, there’re times where we’re in situations where it truly is life or death. When that happens, all rules are gone. You shoot to live because nobody wants to die.

“Well, it’s going to cost us more than I wanted to spend.”

Finn’s our accountant and notoriously tight-fisted. He has a conniption if he can’t account for everything down to the last five pennies. Even that much discrepancy puts him in a snit.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Finn snaps at me, which makes me shrug.

“Huh? Gotta spend money to make money.” I grin at him, and he flicks me off. I’m extremely ready to stop being the center of attention. “How’s Ally doing?”

Finn immediately relaxes, and a huge smile spreads across his face. From the way everyone’s marrying off, you’d never imagine none of us in the syndicates planned to get married, never planned to have kids, never wanted to pass this family business along to the next generation. Slowly, each of us is settling into our version of domestic tranquility and having kids.

Finn couldn’t be more ecstatic. “She’s doing well. She doesn’t always feel so great. Her emotions are kinda supercharged. Days at work that would normally be hard are now really a struggle. But she loves what she does, and she knows how important her work is. By the end of the day—even though she might cry now—she’s glad she can help.”

My sister-in-law is a neonatologist, so I can imagine how working with sick babies must be rough for her. She sees the worst of the worst and tries to cure them. Being pregnant and confronted every day with the tragic things that could happen would be difficult on anybody. Seeing it when you’re growing your own baby? That’s what I can’t fathom.

“Any morning sickness?” Sean jumps in and makes me cock an eyebrow as I look at him. It’s not like any of us are ignorant to those sorts of things, but something in his tone makes me wonder. He shakes his head at me.

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