Page 116 of Mob Knight

I don’t expect the sudden shift, but we’ve discussed everything I can know. If there’s more, he’s decided it isn’t safe for me to know. I won’t press the issue because I don’t want to keep talking about it. The painkillers have only taken the edge off my headache.

“No. At least not for food or drinks.”

I waggle my eyebrows, then shoot him what I hope are bedroom eyes. Another term that made little sense when I first learned it. His hand wraps around my throat, this time squeezing enough to make me lift my head higher.

“You have a concussion, stitches in your head, and a sutured hole in your leg. I’m not fucking you, little girl, so stop tempting me.”

“I proved my mouth still works.” I open wide.

He squeezes as he pounces. His mouth commands mine, and I submit. My hands clasp around his neck as his kiss drugs me. We’re breathless when we pull away.

“Sean and Shane are paramedics. Do you really want Shane to guess why I drag him up here to see if you still have a concussion?”

My cheeks are roasting as I shake my head.

“Then be a good girl and don’t tempt me.”

“Fine, Daddy.” I sound anything but agreeable.

He looks at his right palm before scratching it.

“My palm’s getting awfully itchy to land across your soft arse. Maybe I will get Shane up here after all.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cormac

As much as we both would’ve loved me doling out a spanking, we both know Joey’s not up to that. She yawned right after I threatened to get Shane, so I crawled back into bed with her until she fell asleep. She’s in a deep sleep because she didn’t react to me climbing out of bed. I watched her from the door for a good two minutes before shutting it silently. I’m back in my dad’s office with the others. There are nine of us now because my dad and uncles are here, too.

Three brothers married three sisters and wound up with six sons. Seamus and I are just bigger enough than our cousins to be noticeable. We inherited our dad’s size and that side of the family’s hair, which is lighter than the red some of my cousins got from our moms. But it’s like being in a hall of mirrors when we’re all in one room.

I texted them when Joey fell asleep, so they know about Pablo’s call. But we couldn’t discuss it on the phone, and no one wanted to text back and forth. So, now we’re where we can talk about it. I recognized my mom’s and aunts’ expression when I walked past the living room from the stairs. If our retaliationdoesn’t live up to their fiercely protective expectations, they’ll strike back at whoever hurt Joey and Sean and whoever blew up my home.

Each of them was a mob daughter and mob sister. All three are mob wives and mob mothers. Two are the boss’s aunts and one is his mother. No three women better exemplify the phrase “mobbed-up” than Saoirse, Siobhan, and Breda O’Rourke. Hell, they didn’t even have to change their last names when they married. The O’Rourke clan division into separate families happened a few hundred years ago, but both sides keep having sons to carry on the name.

When Uncle Donovan was boss, they terrified the pish out of him. When he thought about getting some of us involved too young, Aunt Breda—Finn, Sean, and Shane’s mother—put a hit on one of Uncle Donovan’s men. The guy lived—barely and only because she let him—but my aunts and mom made sure Uncle Donovan understood he might’ve been the head of our branch, but they were the neck that held it in place.

The men in the Four Families might be physically bigger and stronger than the women in our families, but the world would do well to understandnothingwe could come up with will ever match the lengths these women will go to when they’re protecting their family. They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Whoever said that first hadn’t met a syndicate mother. Hell hath no fury like a mother. Period. Full stop.

“What do you want to do, Cor?”

Dillan and the others will defer to me. Dillan might lead our branch now, but whoever this is, went after my soon-to-be wife. It means I’ll lead whatever mission we go on, but I won’t plan alone.

“Niko told us to speak to Gabriele, but we never did. That was before Joey and Olivia met. They were supposed to have lunch today. Shite. Did anyone let them know?”

“Yeah. Thea saw Maria at work, so she passed along the message.”

Finn’s wife is a neonatologist at the same hospital where Maria Mancinelli—who’s Salvatore’s niece and Olivia’s sister-in-law—is a radiologist. If my mom and aunts are mobbed-up, then Maria Mancinelli is the most unassailable woman anywhere. She’s currently—by birth and by marriage—a Mafia niece, daughter, sister, wife, aunt, and soon-to-be mother.

“Thanks. I figured someone let her know since Luca isn’t pishing vinegar at me, but I wasn’t sure. Luca wouldn’t go to this extreme because my girlfriend stood up his wife, and both explosions happened before Joey and Olivia’s lunch date. Then again, is he secretly pissed he’s about to be related to us? That now Jesus might do business with both of us?”

“None of that explains Gabriele’s involvement if Niko told the truth.”

We all snort at Shane’s comment. Nikolai Kutsenko could look God in the eye and lie. That’s the level of chutzpah—audacity—the man has. He and his family rival the Diazes for being the most psychopathic.

We’re all a little touched, as Granny would say. Not quite right in the head. I don’t believe any of the men in my family are natural sociopaths, but no one does what we—the men in all Four Families—do without having some trained sociopathic tendencies. The bratva and Cartel are depraved. Considering what I’ve done, that’s saying something about those motherfuckers.

It’s not like theCosa Nostramen are any better. Gabriele Scotto’s relationship with the truth is even more distant than any of ours. He’s a lawyer too, so he can bend the truth so far an angel would believe they’re a demon. Fuck. He could turn an angel into a demon. His name hasneverfit.

---