Page 9 of Her Keeper
The Carusos.
Oh my God.
The moment I thought of them, I realized I already knew who had done this. Who else had been attacking us for the last several weeks, right and left? Who else was infringing on our territory, going after our soldiers on the street and hassling the families of our men? My father and Irish Brennan had been refusing to do anything about it, for reasons I still didn’t understand, and now…
Now they’d gone after the head of the Rossi house. Just like they’d gone after our businesses.
And though they wouldn’t have had to have any special information to know where the head Rossi lived or what his schedule was like, they’d had inside information to go after the businesses.
It didn’t take a fucking genius to start connecting some dots.
Penny had been selling information to a reporter—or so she said—and her presence in my office had coincided with an escalation of the attacks. And now they’d come after my own father. Had they used information Penny had given them?
Maybe.
I hated the thought, and hated even more the knife to the guts that came with it. I felt like I’d been stabbed in the back. Betrayed. Submarined. All by a girl I’d let come into my life and heart like I’d been waiting for her.
I knew she was a rat, and I knew what my family did to rats. I knew I should hate her with every ounce of my being—especially if she was responsible for this attack on my family.
But I couldn’t stop thinking that I was missing something. It just didn’t feel right for her to have betrayed us like that. I’d known the girl for years, since we were young, and she’d never been anything but sweetly sunny and happy. The sunshine to my shadow.
The brightness in the face of my cold soul.
It didn’t make any sense to me that she’d have done anything like what I was accusing her of.
Yes, the signs were all there. Not proof, necessarily, but connections that would make it hard for her to deny anything. Yes, she’d said that she was being blackmailed, but I couldn’t imagine what anyone might have on her. The girl had never done anything wrong in her entire life.
Unless she wasn’t the person I thought I knew.
I pulled myself out of that deep thought and glanced up at my brother. Regardless of who Penny may or may not be, she’d sold information to someone, and the timing lined up with all the attacks. It looked bad, and if anyone else knew about it, it would most certainly lead to her death.
I didn’t want her dead. At least not until I had the full story out of her. But if I was going to keep her alive, I was going to need help. And there was only one person I trusted when it came to being on the same page as me.
“Joseph, I need you,” I said sharply. “In the hallway.”
He didn’t even ask for clarification. He glanced at my father once, his expression torn between concern and frustration, and then rose to his feet and strode from the room. Moments later I’d joined him in the hallway and closed the door firmly behind me.
And moments after that, he knew everything I knew about what Penny had done, including the connections I’d made between her presence and the attacks on Rossi operations.
Joseph looked nearly as shocked as I felt.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asked softly.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Have you ever known me to kid about something this important?”
“Good point.” He blew out a soft breath, his eyes going to the side as he thought. When they came back to me, I could see that he’d made some decisions.
Thank God. Hopefully he could see a way through this, because my vision was entirely clouded.
“We can’t let Dad know this happened,” he said sharply. “He’ll kill her the moment he hears. But I don’t believe she’d actually do that. You must be missing something.”
“Yes, I was just asking her to clarify when I was interrupted by a call to come here,” I noted wryly. “That doesn’t change the fact that she’s already admitted to speaking to the reporter.”
Another hissed exhalation from Joseph. “Yes. Where is she now?”
“At my office.”
Joseph grabbed my arm. “You left her alone? Does she have a guard?”
