Page 66 of Alfie: Part Two

“It’s not like he’s actually running them,” Kellan said. “He has people for that. Associates.”

Right. Duh.

“Fucker never loses more than twelve percent in the washing either,” he added. “Not counting taxes.”

I shook my head, mindfucked by the concept. “It’s a whole new world for me. I don’t know where to start, aside from making sure it’s a business with a heavy cash flow.”

“More than that, businesses with a steady influx of transactions you can manipulate.” It was West who said it. Like he was some expert mobster.

Shan nodded at West and continued. “Preferably smaller transactions, though construction has been a friend to organized crime for decades. In short, you don’t want to trip the IRS’s radar.”

Kellan took over next. “Barbershops and salons, anything where you pay for a service rather than a product—then restaurants, of course. Dry cleaners. Bars and nightclubs. You hire someone to run it, and you bring in an associate for bookkeeping. Ours usually take two percent, give or take. Everything will look legit, and the money will come out clean.”

I raked my teeth across my bottom lip. Clearly, I had a lot to think about.

“Given what you earn, you might wanna spread your money around too,” Kellan added. “Two or three businesses should cut it. You never wanna put all your eggs in one basket.”

That made sense. “Is that what you do?” I wondered.

Kellan and Shan exchanged a look before Shan inclined his head and answered. “Yes. We’ve been doing this for years, so our money is always on the move. We invest in other businesses, we buy some of them outright, we buy real estate in need of remodeling under the guise of flipping it, we run a couple charities, and we own vacation rentals in Europe.”

Well, fuck.

“The latter sounds interesting,” West offered.

“It’s easy too,” Kellan said. “Alfie, if I were you, I’d get one local business and then invest in property in tourist-heavy areas overseas. But not where you can step on any cartel toes. They’re territorial and emotional as fuck. They think with their guns because their dicks and brains are too small.”

I laughed and wiped my mouth with my napkin.

Shan looked curiously at West. “Do you plan on getting involved in this side hustle?”

I watched my man, curious about his answer.

“I think it would be easiest,” West confirmed. “If we go in with my money, so to speak, everything will look legitimate from the start. Nobody would come around asking from where he got his capital.”

As much as that heated up my already lava-hot soul, it made me a little worried too.

I slipped my hand onto his thigh. “You don’t gotta do that, honey. I don’t want you involved if it makes you feel uncomfortable in any way. There’s a reason I go by O’Dwyer in the syndicate. To create a semblance of distance between work and private.”

Kellan did the same, but for the opposite reason. They didn’t want Sons outside the inner circle knowing his personal life; the rule of thumb was to say nothing about anything. Everyone was on a need-to-know basis. Hence, why everyone knew him as Kellan Ford. He’d always be Ford to me. But after he’d married Shan, he’d hyphenated to add O’Shea to his passport. Well, one of his passports.

“If I were uncomfortable in any way, I wouldn’t have offered,” West assured. “That’s not to say I don’t have stipulations. I want some of that money to do actual good.”

That was fair—and something I’d considered already. For as long as I had known him, he’d had his own monthly charity fund. A sum of money he gave away to various nonprofits.

“I have ideas for that,” I promised. I looked to Shan. “Is that difficult setting up? ’Cause I was talking to my mom the other week, and she said something about her neighbor who goes to a food bank. They ran out of food last month because some fuckers abuse the aid.”

Shan nodded with a dip of his chin. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of exploitation in food banks and certain welfare programs. Some do it so blatantly too, zero shame when they roll up in their luxury car and pick up groceries.”

Yeah, that. Like, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew someone with a leased Mercedes could struggle to make ends meet; I wouldn’t judge anyone based on what they drove, but evidently, this was a whole thing. A big problem. Usually smaller criminal outfits, like family-sized, had created a system to just take whatever was supposed to be going to people who were actually struggling.

For fucking real. Man up and steal from the government and people who had money, like a respectable person.

“Right, so fuck those cunts,” I said. “But it made me wanna do something with delivering groceries to old people like my mom and stuff.”

At first, I thought I had their instant approval, but Shan’s signature fatherly smile faded toward the end, and he turned to West.

“Is Giulia even sixty?”

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