Page 199 of Don’t Say Mafia

Maddox snorted at that, and I grinned as I kept eating.

Why couldn’t women be as good as Mrs. Bentley’s burritos? I’d never fall asleep during sex if they were.

I was halfway through the burrito when Maddox cleared his throat. It was a subtle sound, but it was also the sound he made when the joking part of the conversation was over.

“Carl’s panicking,” he said.

I didn’t look up right away. “Carl wakes up panicking.”

“That’s true,” Maddox went on evenly.

I lifted my gaze. “So that’s why you’re here? To calm him down? You just decided to take a detour to my place first?”

“No.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m confused right now.”

“Carl is panicking,” Maddox replied. “He’s just not the reason I’m here.”

I swallowed, set the burrito down, and leaned back against the counter. “Continue, and maybe start with why you’re being deliberately vague right now. You’re losing hero points as we speak.”

He exhaled through his nose, his eyes flicking briefly toward the windows like the city might be listening. “Cruz wants you to handle something downstairs.”

I straightened at the mention of my best friend. “Cruz?”

“Yes.”

I picked up my glass and took a slow drink. “And why didn’t Cruz just text me?”

Maddox’s mouth twisted. “He’s busy.”

I lowered the glass. “Busy with what?”

He shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

“That’s new.”

Maddox pursed his lips. “I know, and I’m not thrilled about it.”

I’m sure he wasn’t. Maddox was Cruz’s cousin. But even if they weren’t family, Maddox would still have been annoyed that he didn’t know what Cruz was up to. Besides keeping burritos in his suit pockets, Maddox also kept files on all of us in his head. He was the group stalker and prided himself on knowing everything about everyone in our group before anyone else did. If he didn’t know why Cruz was being vague, that meant Cruz was deliberately hiding something from him.

“Interesting,” I murmured.

Maddox’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the word I’d use.”

“It is when I’m being handed a mystery instead of an explanation,” I said. “All right, so what does Cruz want me to handle?”

Maddox typed something on his phone before answering. “There’s a guy in the high roller area,” he said. “He’s quite the spender . . . and he’s from Boston.”

Someone listening to the conversation would think we were discussing a VIP, but I knew exactly what Maddox was talking about. My lips curled in disgust. “He wouldn’t happen to be Irish, would he?”

Maddox’s mouth curved slowly. “You’re catching on.”

Ah.

That explained Carl’s panic.

Boston money wasn’t an issue. Boston Irish money, in our casino, was something else entirely.