Page 84 of Consumed By the Mafia

Cris pushed out a breath. “They’re probably trying to let the dirty cop angle take center stage while they dig up all the information they need to make their charges stick.” He lifted the paper slightly and a wicked smirk tipped his lips. “But I’m gonna fucking frame this.”

Ryoma studied the paper. It was an almost too-bright image of Brendan Coughlan himself, obviously straining against the officers behind him, his body pointed at a man in another FBI vest. The fed was mostly facing away from the photographer, and Coughlan was clearly enroute to a waiting vehicle. From the look on Coughlan’s face, he was either cursing up a storm or issuing a stupidly violent threat. Regardless, his arrest was visual, and in that sense, it suddenly became palpable.

Coughlan was in custody.

Ryoma exhaled and smiled briefly back at his friend. “That’s a good one.”

“You can frame it,” Felicity said, “but it’s not going up on the wall. Put it in your office or something.” She laid her head on his shoulder and stroked her hand up his chest, resting it over his heart. She had some bandages on her knees from thetumble to the concrete and a lesser scrape on the underside of one arm, but none of her wounds would scar. For which everyone was grateful.

Cris lowered the photo. “I know, baby.”

Ryoma moved back to one of the two chairs in the room. His own wounds had been stitched and wrapped, but he was technically supposed to be taking it easy. Whatever the fuck that meant. “How’re you feeling?” He didn’t want to sit in silence. He wasn’t thrilled with talking about the takedown, but if he had to choose, he supposed silence was worse.

Silence would dredge up the angry, unsatisfied beast in his chest.

“Like I got shot,” Cris replied, deadpan. Felicity made a sound of disapproval and he stretched the arm she was technically pinning until he had hold of her thigh. “You know I hate bed rest. Makes me twitchy.”

Ryoma attempted a chuckle. He did know that.

Another knock sounded at the door, and before Ryoma could push back to his feet the door swung open. Ryoma stood anyway as Cris’s family filed in—most of them, anyway. There were only two chairs and he wasn’t about to take a seat from a pregnant woman, or his boss.

“What the fuck is all this?” Cris asked, voice suddenly gruff. “Did someone die?”

Ryoma felt his throat constrict. No one in that room was missing Abby, let alone the way he was. She wasn’t who his friend referred to. That didn’t stop the words from driving a freshly sharpened knife through the wound of her continued absence. He hadn’t heard a word from her, directly, sinceshe’d told them to evacuate the tower. The last he knew at all was that she’d spoken to Brandi, and almost immediately after, sent Brandi one confounding and equally concerning text message. Then her phone’s signal had disappeared.

“You’re the only one who almost died, jackass,” Romeo said sharply.

We don’t know that.Ryoma bit the words back.

“I’ve been out of the car all of three minutes,” Grace said. She was waving Romeo off when Ryoma refocused and he imagined he’d missed the part where her doting husband had asked her to take a seat. “If anyone should be sitting, it’s the man with the hole in his leg.”

Ryoma blinked, caught off-guard by the statement. He hadn’t seen all of them the previous day, but he was fairly certain he was the only one in the room that description applied to. Sure enough, multiple sets of eyes shifted his way expectantly. He shook his head until he found his voice. “I’m fine, ma’am. Thank you.” He should go. Things felt okay between him and Cris, but he wasn’t sure where he stood with the rest of the family. And even on the best of days, moments like these were reserved for blood. He inclined his head. “I’ll let you—”

“Stay,” Dante said. The air in the room stilled for a second. He gestured to the chairs. “Grace, Ryoma,bothof you sit. Mikey can find us more chairs.”

“Already on the way,” Mikey offered.

Grace sighed. “So demanding.” She shuffled up to the bedside, reached over, and pulled Felicity’s nearest hand into hers. At the same time, she reached down and gave Cris’s hand a squeeze. “We’re glad you’re both okay. One of you wasunconscious when Romeo was here yesterday, and I wasn’t allowed out of the house until this morning, so I wanted to say it myself.” Then she let go, turned, and ambled to one of the available chairs.

Ryoma watched, unable to move. He didn’t know if he felt honored and humbled or if the thing in his stomach was dread.

He heard Romeo sigh before moving up to Grace’s side and leaning in to press a kiss to her temple. “You say that like it was a punishment, angel.”

Ryoma looked away and finally made his feet move, returning to the chair he’d claimed minutes earlier. He sat, and proceeded to watch the family give brief but nonetheless heartfelt expressions of relief and gratitude at seeing Cris awake and lucid. In their own ways. More chairs were delivered and soon everyone had a place to sit—either a chair or their spouse’s lap, in Iris’s case. They’d formed a strange semi-circle around the bed in order to keep Cris and Felicity included, and Ryoma found it unexpectedly sentimental.

Maybe uncomfortably so.

“Nowwill you say why you’re actually here? This warm and fuzzy shit’s starting to make me think I’m hallucinating,” Cris said after the door closed and the last person had settled.

Yes, work. Work would be fantastic. This would be the strangest fucking work meeting he’d ever been called in on, but Ryoma could deal with that. Maybe there were some stragglers, or the boss wanted to dive right into planning how and when he’d break Coughlan out and slaughter the bastard.

“The job’s not quite done,” Dante said plainly. “Things went a little awry last night and one of ours went missing.”

Ryoma locked his teeth around his tongue. He could only imagine how much trouble he’d get in if he had to refuse an order in the interest of chasing a woman who still carried an FBI badge, but fuck, he couldn’t abandon her. No matter what conclusions anyone else had drawn.

“Brandi and I stayed up late doing some diving,” Mikey said. “Between what we learned from local contacts last night and the scraps we found we were able to piece some things together.” He paused as Brandi passed him a tablet she’d apparently had in her purse. “The source responsible for leaking Abigail’s location, which subsequently got her apartment raided and resulted in that crash last weekend, was Special Agent Dale Morrow out of Arkansas.”

Ryoma felt his brows disappear somewhere in his hairline. They were talking about Abby?What the fuck does that mean?The only thing he clearly understood was why he’d been asked to stay. If it involved Abby, he wanted to know. All of it.

---