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I note Rocco’s already on his knees with his hands behind his head.
“That’s it, be smart,” Julien says.
“You’re fucking up,” I tell him as he kicks my gun out of my reach. My men all do the same, put their weapons down, even if they’re reluctant about it. Matteo gets behind the wheel of our truck and starts to pull it away.
“I don’t know. Maybe I am. It’s hard to say, really, but when you aimed a gun at my face all because I wanted to have a conversation with that traitor bitch—” He shrugs casually, and my blood boils.
“Don’t talk about her that way. You have no fucking clue. She didn’t betray anyone.” I’m extremely aware of Cormac and Seamus in the group behind me listening very closely. “You’re lashing out because of what happened to Adam.”
“I’m changing with the times. The alliance is dead. Adam is dead. That girl is trouble, and I was going to do you a favor by taking her off your hands. And yet here you are instead.” He shakes his head and looks over his shoulder. The truck is moving down the block and into the new convoy. “I really hope you didn’t have actual drugs in there.”
“I can say with confidence that you won’t be very happy by that score.”
“That’s okay.” He says, backing away. “Let me be clear. This wasn’t about hurting you. It was about letting you know that Icanhurt you, and Iwillhurt you, if you don’t hand that girl over. Be smart, Ronan. Be reasonable. We can have a good relationship again and become friends, if only you start thinking with your head and not with your dick, okay?”
“Fuck you, Julien.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He slams his visor back down and shoves his gun into its holster. “Until next time, my friend.”
Then his men pull out. Rocco reaches for his gun, but I shake my head. There’s no point in trying to hurt them now. They leave Niall and Joey behind, and once they’re down the block and rejoining their fleet of vehicles, I go make sure everyone’s okay.
“Just bruised and annoyed,” Niall says, rubbing his shoulder. “How the fuck did that just happen?”
“It’s a good question,” I tell him, keeping my voice very soft. “Something we’ll have to think about.” I turn back to the rest of the group. The stares I get in return are ugly and unhappy. They expected a big victory today—a bunch of captive thieves with even more drugs and loot on the way after we squeezed locations out of them.
Instead, we lost a truck and a whole lot of pride.
“Everyone back home,” I command, and they don’t move. Not instantly, the way they should. “Don’t fucking stand there. Get moving.”
Slowly, the street clears. But I notice Cormac giving me looks and talking softly to the other soldiers, and I know exactly what they’re saying.
Chapter 30
Valentina
Itake a long drink of wine and lean my elbows on the bar. Bloody Strike is loud tonight, and the fights have been pretty good overall. The boys are happy, anyway, and the money’s flowing into the bookies, and the bookies are paying Ronan’s guys, and overall, there’s a solid profit to be made.
Not that I really care about any of that. It’s just that I can’t help myself. Whenever I’m around this sort of stuff, I start thinking about the operation and how it could be more efficient if only we took bigger cuts or tweaked the odds slightly more in our favor or lowered the price of drinks to encourage gamblers to get drunk and make bad choices.
I keep all that to myself. I probably shouldn’t be here tonight at all—there have been some ugly looks from the Irish boys this evening, and I really don’t blame them—but I can’t stand sitting back at Ronan’s all the time. I need to get out, to be around people, or else I’m going to go absolutely insane, but that’s why I’m hiding out at the bar alone. When life goes wrong, I find it’s better if I drown myself in noise and company instead of sitting around and letting it fester.
I glance over as Niall extracts himself from the crowd and takes the empty stool next to me. He asks for a whiskey and swirls it when the drink arrives.
“Didn’t you know?” I say to him when it’s clear he’s sticking around. “I’m toxic. I have a communicable disease.”
“What disease is that?”
“The disease of fucking up and being wrong.” I finish my glass of wine and gesture for another. “There’s a reason that seat’s empty.”
Niall snorts and stares at his glass as he tilts it side to side. “Did you talk to Ronan?”
“Only a little bit.” I glance back at the booth where Ronan’s deep in conversation with some of the cousins and uncles. He’s dealing with the fallout from the botched job earlier in the evening, and he hasn’t had much time for me. He said it wasn’t my fault, that he didn’t blame me in the slightest, but that was all. And I’ll admit, I wish he would sit here instead of Niall, but I fully understand why he can’t—he’s the head of the family and he has to work out what happened.
I still wish he were here anyway.
“Don’t listen to the chatter, all right? I was the one that got a gun pointed at my head, and I don’t blame you even a little bit for that.”
I hunch forward when my new glass of wine appears. “I just don’t understand how it happened.”
