Page 51 of The Mafia's Omega Queen

Blowing out a harsh breath, I tell her everything. The attacks on the compound. Bianca. Haylee. The shit-stains, Archie and Lionel. I even tell her about my near brush with death. There’s no way I can leave anything out, especially if I’m planning on asking her to risk the lives of her crew, her mates, and her own. The explanation ends with explaining all the horrible shit I did to my mate. Because that’s something she needs to know, too.

She’s never known me to be such an asshole to a woman, and there’s a very good chance my actions toward Haylee will keep her from wanting to help us. But I do make sure to include that Haylee is punishing me for my sins and all that goes into the punishment, without any of the explicit details.

After all, Kali is like a little sister to me, and I highly doubt she wants to know how much pain my knot is in.

“Wow. That’s… Vinny, that’s a lot.” Understatement of the damn century.

“I know it is, Kali, but as you can imagine, there are very few I can trust anymore because somehow these assholes are offering them something that I don’t. Or won’t. It could be just about anything that I’m unaware of that my men and women want, but I don’t know because they won’t tell me.”

“I get it, Vincenzo. Of all people, I get it more than you know. We have had our own fair share of issues here.”

“Kali,” I hiss, ripping my feet from the desk and sitting upright. “If you’ve been having issues, why the hell didn’t you call me?”

“Because, as you’ve just stated, you have a shit ton going on over there yourself.”

“We’re family, Kal. You could have called me.” My fingers fork through my hair, gripping it at the scalp and tugging.

“We are family, Vin.” I can hear the smile in her voice as she talks. We’ve lost so much family in the past years that family is starting to become short in supply. “That’s why we’ve agreed to help you guys.”

“We?” I raise a brow even though she can’t see it.

“Yeah, we,” a masculine voice pipes up next. Shit, I didn’t even realize they were in the room with her. If I had to guess by the deep tenor of his voice, I’d say it’s Duke. “Any family of Kali’s is a family of ours.”

“We’ve got good numbers,” a second male voice chimes in, sounding like Jameson, “how many do you need?”

“Honestly…” I switch my phone to speaker as I pop open my laptop and pull up the current spreadsheet of who currently has our backs. Which, yeah, it’s not a lot. “However many you can spare.” I don’t expect them to be able to spare more than ten without putting themselves at a disadvantage in their own territory. Shit, even with them, we may not have enough to do this effectively without many casualties on our end.

That’s the one thing we want to avoid at all costs. The loss of too many lives. These men and women who’ve already agreed to pledge their lives to the cause know what they’re getting into, but that still doesn’t make the loss of life any easier.

“Done,” Kali says. “Oh, and Vincenzo…”

“Yeah?” A sliver of unease skitters down my spine. She’s not the sweet girl I used to know when we were kids, and I have to remember that. She’s now a hardened gangbanger, leading her own crew. She could ask for anything, and I’d be stupid enough not to grant it.

“I want to meet Haylee when we get there.”

Oh. Oh, fuck. I’m so screwed. Those two together in the same room is just asking for trouble. And while I’ve already told Kali everything that I’ve done, I can only imagine what other information she’s going to get out of my princess.

“Of-of course,” I stammer, “I’m sure she’d want to meet you, too.”

Kali snorts down the line. “Is the big bad mafia man scared of me meeting his mate?” Kali’s mates chuckle right along with her.

“Nah. I’m more worried about what kind of destruction you two are going to cause. We’ve already had to repair the house one too many times, and I know the moment you get here, it’ll be like a tornado ripped through it once again.”

Kali gasps in mock outrage. “I’m not that bad!” This time it’s her mates that snort in the background. “Hey!” she whines, “I’m really not.”

“If you say so, firecracker,” Ryker mutters. A thud sounds across the line. “Oww, why you hittin’ me, woman?”

“Because you’re being an ass.”

“Give us two days, and we’ll be there,” Jameson’s voice floats through the receiver again. “We’ll be thirty deep, including us.”

Thirty deep. With our own numbers, that would put us in the ninety-count range. Much more than we’ve had with us during the few instances when we’ve been attacked. That should be enough. Or at least I’m praying it is. We need to take one of the major players out of the game, or we risk their retaliation without the numbers at our back.

“That work, or do we need to scrounge up a few more?”

“Thirty is perfect,” Arden says, startling me, my head whipping up to where he stands in the doorway. When the fuck did he show up? And how the hell did he get in without me noticing?

“Arden, my man, that you?” Jameson asks. Jameson is basically their version of Arden. The man is almost as good on a computer as Arden is.

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