Page 26 of Trouble

I lobbed a folder on his desk. “Of the Isaac thing, yes. There was a recording of our father ordering Jeremy’smurder.”

“It was lost in the fight with Brigs a few months ago,” Louissaid.

“Hmm.” Perkinson flicked through the folder, an eyebrow arching as he got to a couple of CCTV print-offs. Finally, he closed the folder and looked atus.

“All right. Say I believe your motive. I take it you’re here because you need manpower. What do I get out of putting my men’s lives on theline?”

“Forty-five percent.” Louissaid.

“You will rule London with us and our brothers. Once our father is dead,” Icontinued.

“Seems to me you have quite a long ways to go before your father is, indeed, dead. If you want my help with it, how about we say seventy-five percent.” Brian Perkinson leaned back in his chair and raised both eyebrows at us. “Because if you’d had any other choice, you’d never have sought outside help for this littleendeavor.”

“Forty-five.” Louis’ voice was as cold as the steel our Family was named for. “Because if you say anything other than yes, you know you’ll never get a foothold in this city. We know you’ve been trying for months to find a way to take our Family out. Wanna know why we haven’t smacked you down yet? Because you’re no threat to the Steel empire. You haven’t got the strength, Brian, and you never will. Not without us. We only come to you because the other minor Families have gathered around you. It’s a courtesy. We could easily have gone to any of their patriarchs and offered them the same deal, and you fucking know they’d snatch it up with both hands and turn their backs on you. And, once the dust’s settled, they’d be the Family who got to rule alongside us. Wanna continue playing in the gutter like arat?”

“Or are you ready to step up to the fucking silver platter we’re offering you?” I finished, folding my arms across my chest and leveling him with my bestSteelglare. I knew my twin and I had a reputation for being the most easygoing of William Steel’s sons, but any British criminal worth their salt knew you only pushed a Steel sofar.

Brian’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened, but after a few seconds, he nodded. “Fine. Forty-five percent. But I need to see some commitment from you before I lend you so much as a cup of fuckingsugar.”

Louis and I exchanged a glance. We’d expected asmuch.

“S’long as we can keep it below the radar, you’ve got the Steel empire available, Perkinson. What do youneed?”

He pulled out a folder from a drawer in his desk and slid it across. I opened it and saw a printed-off picture of a man’s face on top of a small pile ofpapers.

“I need this guy gone. And I need you to see to it,personally.”

I pressed down the numb sensation spreading from my gut to my limbs. A hit. Of course he wanted a hit. It was the number one way of showing loyalty in our world—once you took a man’s life for someone, they had you in theirpalm.

“What’s he done?” Louis asked, when I couldn’t take my gaze off the picture. He looked like your standard thug: bad skin, broad neck, coldeyes.

“Thought he could skim a couple of thousand off the top on the latest heist he did for me. I need to send a signal to the rest of my men. You know how itgoes.”

We did know. It was just how it went in our world—a life was not worth more than a measly few thousand pounds, not when loyalty was on theline.

I’d killed before for the same reason—both Louis and I had. And every single time I’d hated it with every fiber of my being. I’d done it, because it was “for the Family.”Or so I’d told myself, when I’d wake up in the middle of the night with the memories of men I’d murdered haunting mydreams.

This time, it’d be a man who’d never crossed me in anyway.

I stared at the picture and wished with everything I was that I could have been someoneelse.

“We’ve got a deal.” Louis’ voice didn’t betray the emotion I knew was tightening his chest as he leant over the desk and shook Perkinson’s hand. I knew he felt like I did, though we’d never talk about it—I knew we wouldn’t. Talking about it made it too fuckingreal.

I also knew he always cried in the dark solitude of his room after ahit.

I dragged my eyes from the image, inviting the numbness to spread into my chest as I looked at our new ally. If we wanted to save ourselves and our brothers from our father, this was something we had to do.For the Family. Only this time, it wasn’t a meaningless motto spoken to keep us inline.

“We’ll take care ofit.”

* * *

Norman Wallis sat slumpedin the chair we’d tied him to not twenty minutes ago, blood and brain matter leaking from the hole in histemple.

He’d begged for his life. They didn’t always. Sometimes they threatened and cursed, and that was so much fucking easier to dealwith.

I glanced at Louis, who slung back the first of what I knew would be many drinks, leaning against a crate in the abandoned warehouse we often used for this part of thebusiness.

“Jeff’s on cleanup,” I said, purely to fill the silence that’d echoed through the space since Norman had uttered his lastplea.

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