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Nodding to the guards on the way through the building, I entered the office and found Finnan behind his desk.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he barked.
“Your bride-to-be can be demanding,” I replied, hoping he didn’t read into my statement too much. She was demanding, but in a way that I liked.
“She’s got a mouth on her, that’s for sure.” He leaned back in his chair, interlacing his hands and resting them on his stomach. “I hope that fire is an indication of what she’s like in bed.” He laughed at that, and I joined in because it was better than pulling out my Glock and putting two bullets in his brain.
Sloane wasn’t mine…
… but I wanted her to be.
“We should go if you want to make the meet,” I said, glad that my voice didn’t betray the murderous rage I actually felt.
Finnan rose from his chair, buttoning up his suit jacket as he did. He was the same height as me but not as broad through the shoulders. He’d inherited the clan after the death of his father, so there’d never been a need for him to bulk up the way I had.
“Found out who the rat is yet?” he asked as he passed.
Christ, it had only been five hours since I’d last seen him. “No.”
Finnan’s jaw muscle ticked. “Then what the fuck have you been doing today?”
I bit my tongue. “Cleaning house.”
“Found out another shipment got jacked this morning… this time, it was a lorry that turned up empty. That’s two shipments in less than a twelve-hour period.” He rounded on me, jabbing his finger into my chest as he said, “Find the fucker who’s fucking us over and deliver me hisfuckinghead on a spike.”
For a long minute, we stared at each other from only a few inches apart. I watched as Finnan stowed away his anger methodically—like it was a real effort to gear down after an outburst. When he rolled his shoulders back and straightened the fall of his jacket, he asked in a neutral voice, “Is everything set for today?”
I didn’t let him see me breathe out a deep breath. “I have both buyers meeting us ten minutes apart. They’ll have to pass each other in the hall and know they’re in direct competition for our business.”
“Good. There’s nothing more I like than messing with these fuckers.”
When we got to the main entrance of the warehouse, Finnan hung back and waited for me to precede him. I was the dispensable one here—not him. I tapped the door, letting the guard on the other side know who it was. He opened it, his AR-15 strapped across his chest and held in place down by his side.
“Boss,” one of them said as Finnan passed.
I scanned the surrounding buildings even though this was still technically a ‘safe’ zone. I never relaxed when I was guarding the boss. Reaching around to the small of my back, I gripped the handle of my Glock and started forward.
When we made it to the car, I opened the door and waved in Finnan.
Once I was in the driver’s seat, I shifted the car into gear and peeled away from the building. The roads were slick with rain, the wipers on the Rover picking up speed as I accelerated. We were going to one of the dummy offices the clan owned, always changing the location of meets in case the businessmen we worked with foolishly decided to share insider knowledge with the cops.
Today, we were heading to a corporate building not far from the restaurant where I’d taken Sloane. We were meeting up with two different businessmen who wanted in on our freighting business. The kicker was that each of the men vying for a piece of our pie were rivals, and Finnan was banking on the fact that the two men would try to outbid one another if they knew their competition was interested.
We arrived first, and Finnan took a seat at the head of a long table inside the boardroom. I stood behind him, my hands clasped in front of my hips.
“It’s imperative that we squeeze as much from these assholes as we can,” Finnan said, casually brushing lint from the sleeve of his suit jacket.
“Yes, sir.”
“We don’t get this deal, then we don’t have the funding we need to expand our trade operations. If it doesn’t happen here, you need to make it happen out there.”
What he didn’t need to say was that if shit went sideways tonight, I had his blessing to coerce one of the two men into an understanding—one that would involve the safety and well-being of their families. “Understood.”
We didn’t have to wait long for the first of our potential investors to arrive. Sean Doyle entered the boardroom flanked by two men. Dressed in expensive suits, one looked like a lawyer, who wore his disdain for us on his slightly too-feminine face. The other looked like a younger version of Doyle, and I figured it was his son, learning how business was done when you wanted to get into bed with the mob.
That was perhaps the first mistake Sean Doyle had made. He’d shown me how much he valued his son’s input, which would make threatening him all the easier.
“Mr. Quinn,” he said to Finnan. “This is my son, Cian, and my lawyer, Mr. Byrne.”
