Page 59 of Filthy Hot (Five Points' Mob Collection 5)

"You didn’t pick up?" Finn queried quietly.

"When I was with the high school mattress?" I snorted. "Course I fucking didn’t."

I had so many goddamn regrets from a life led astray at an early age, and not picking up that call was one of them.

"What do you think he wanted?"

"I’ll never know, will I? But maybe he knew he was being followed? Maybe there was something shady going on? You know that triggered that spat with the Albanians." I reached up and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "I just have a feeling."

Finn sobered up. "Really?"

I hummed.

Gut instincts and me didn’t get along well. Hadn’t done since I’d listened to Finn that day and found my brother being raped by a priest. Now, when I got the stirrings of one, it always set me on edge.

I grimaced. "I just think I need to see this out."

"What’s your game plan? I assume your da thinks you’re going to have her killed?"

"He’s dumped it on my desk," I confirmed. "He won’t check up on things as long as she stops digging around. She doesn’t write under her full name so he doesn’t even know she’s a woman."

"It is weird that he’s trying to silence someone who could give him closure on Paddy’s death," Finn agreed, his brow furrowed. "Okay, so, you’re going to have her continue her investigation on the downlow?"

I shook my head. "No. I asked her to have all her material ready for eight PM tonight."

"You’re going to finish the investigation yourself?"

Slowly, my smile grew. "No. It was enough of a challenge to light a fire under her ass. I spoke with a lot of her past bosses. She’s not the kind of woman who likes to have something taken away from her, and she’ll carry on working regardless.

"I scared her today though."

I knew for a fact that wasn’t something that happened often.

Finn mocked, "Your ma would be proud."

I rolled my eyes. "I don’t get my rocks off by scaring women, Finn, you know that. She just had to understand the severity of the situation. If I hadn’t taken an interest in what she was investigating, she’d be dead by now. She needed to realize that sniffing around, in situations like these, leads to repercussions."

Repercussions that a woman, who’d been shielded and cosseted all her life, would never understand.

Even when her family had been targeted, her father had paid to make sure their enemies were taken down.

While Dagger Daniels wasn’t in the mob, he definitely had a ‘kill first, ask questions later,’ policy.

"And she’s learned that lesson?"

I shrugged. "For now. I’m sure she’ll find a way to get into the faces of the wrong people along the way."

"You want to bang her?"

"Got a dick, don’t I?" I picked up my phone, scrolled through the gallery, found a couple of pictures of her, then showed her to him. When he whistled, I hummed. "Exactly."

"You want to keep her alive to have her as a side piece?"

"Not sure a woman like her could ever be a side piece," I admitted with a low voice.

"What’s that supposed to mean?" Finn sputtered.

I didn’t have a clue, didn’t even know why I’d said it, just knew that I meant it.

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