This Life II Read online

  The control room was past a living room area, two sleeping areas, and a garage.

  “You’re here already,” I blurted out when I spotted Eric by the computer screens. “I thought you were coming up tomorrow.”

  He looked at us over his shoulder and offered a two-finger wave. “Came up early with Autumn.”

  That was good. We’d wanted him with us this summer, but he’d stayed in Philly for as long as he could before taking his niece and parents on a vacation somewhere.

  “Are Pat’s boys here too?” I asked. We were expecting three of my brother’s crew to join us tomorrow as well.

  “Not yet,” Liam replied. “My boys are picking them up in the city tomorrow morning.”

  I nodded in acknowledgment and turned my attention to the six computer screens on the wall. Four of them were blank. The other two had satellite footage of someplace.

  “All right,” I said. “What’ve we got to work with so far?”

  Conn was the last to enter, and he closed the door. I surveyed the room and what was basically the foundation of our new management. Me, Liam, Eric, Pat, Kellan, and Conn. A few more would join us soon, but aside from my father, Uncle Thomas, and Colm, only these men had my complete trust.

  Eric spoke up. “I assume finding John and taking down the Italians aren’t mutually exclusive when it comes to strategy.” He was correct. “I don’t have a whole lot, but I did find this.” He zoomed in on one of the satellite images. “It might send us in two different directions.”

  A new image popped up on the second screen too, and I compared them. Both were grainy closeups of a guy stepping out of a van—two different vans in two different locations. I couldn’t see his face, though his hair and…was that a cane? Either way, it was clearly the same guy.

  “Who is he?” Pat asked.

  Liam answered. “We have reason to believe he’s the son of Gio’s closest adviser. He’s climbed the ranks quickly, and in the footage we’ve gotten our hands on, he’s always close to Gio or someone else who’s part of his inner circle.”

  “We think he might be here in the US,” Eric said. “This last image is from two weeks ago. In Chicago.”

  I hummed. It made sense for Gio to put someone in charge of what he wanted done on American soil, and if this guy was the one, I wanted Emilia to see this. After all, she’d been in more contact with the Italians than the rest of us. Maybe she could identify him as one of the fuckers who’d stopped her outside the compound a few months ago.

  “Do you know the location of the first closeup?” I asked.

  Eric nodded. “That’s from Italy, and there’s more.” He inserted a flash drive underneath the desk, then powered up three of the other screens. “This is all I have, but it’s a good start.” He paused. “Given who they are, I started my search at local police stations in Italy where we know Gio owns property.” Good call. “We know of four villas, and I’m looking into another one in Naples. But which one he calls home is anyone’s guess. They’ve all got tight security.” More satellite images appeared on the screen. “They’re building a case against the Avellinos in Lazio, hence the footage I found.”

  “I wonder if I’d make a good hacker,” Pat mused.

  “You wouldn’t.” I flicked him a quick glance before I lit up a smoke and pointed at one of the screens. “Are the villas the same size? Does one or another strike you as more of a summer residence or whatever?”

  Eric shook his head. “All I’ve got for this are old real estate listings and Google Earth, but they’re about the same size, equally extravagant.” He pulled up pictures of the villas, or a fucking slideshow of them, taken on multiple dates, and guards were constantly around the properties.

  “Well, we already knew we were heading for Italy,” Liam said with a shrug. “We need to figure out which one of those is Gio’s actual home.”

  I nodded pensively and took a drag from my smoke. There were too many variables and scenarios to consider when we had two missions, and I had to break them down. “All right, listen up. Why we wanna locate Gio’s main residence is clear. It’s the likeliest place we’ll find A, the man himself, and B, info on his warehouses around Europe. But,” I stressed, “would he be at home if he’s keeping Uncle John alive somewhere? He sure as hell wouldn’t have John hidden away in the basement. He’d have a location nearby—or he’s away from his home. Away from his wife and kids.”

  “Or me dad’s dead,” Liam drawled. “The good-bye note seemed final.”

  “In which case, the Avellinos really do wanna take us all out since they’re still stateside.” I mean, we got reports from Philly every day, and it wasn’t unusual to hear about sightings. The Italians were digging and purposely showing their faces in my city.

  It was pissing me off.

  “We also gotta consider that whatever we strike first,” Kellan said, “is gonna make it difficult to find Gio later. He’ll be ghost the second he knows we’re coming for him.”

  True.

  And we couldn’t take Gio out first either. It would cause mayhem in Italy’s underworld, not to mention the rest of Europe. Southern Europe was Avellino territory, but they had dealings with gangs and syndicates from the East too. Germany was somewhat neutral, due to the heavier presence of authorities. Everyone was careful there. The British Isles were the only part of Europe that were fairly safe for our family. My generation had distant cousins and uncles who kept both Ireland and England in our pockets. London, Manchester, Dublin, and some other cities were SoM strongholds, although London was special. We’d been in a sleepy turf war against several crime organizations over the past fifty years, and I wasn’t sure which neighborhoods were ours these days.

  This was gonna be one hell of a shitshow, and we hadn’t started yet.

  “If we go after Gio first, everything he owns will turn into a meat market,” I said. “Vultures will come outta every hole in the ground to get a piece—property, turf, collectibles, whatever. It’s a crossfire we don’t wanna get caught up in.” I eyed the guys, and Liam nodded with me in silent agreement. “Moreover, we don’t wanna fight suicidal Middle Easterners and grenade-launching Nigerians over shit that’s gonna be ours. I say we go for the assets first, because that’s gonna piss him off—and he’s arrogant enough to wanna handle it himself. He wouldn’t go outside his borgata.”

  “It’s pride too.” Liam pushed up the sleeves of his button-down. “His family is bigger. If it gets out that he can’t keep an Irish clan from the US on a leash, forget it. Others will think of him as a lesser man. They’ll move in and see if they can take advantage of him too.”

  “Speaking of,” I said and turned to Eric. “Still no successor for Gio?”

  The time I’d researched Gio’s family closer, wondering if I’d find a threat, a son to get rid of, I’d found Emilia instead. As far as I knew, she was the only one, and she wasn’t even related to Gio by blood. He’d only married Emilia’s mother.

  “None so far,” Eric replied with a frustrated sigh. “I keep looking, but…his family ties aren’t as easy to find as his villas. I can’t even find a copy of his birth certificate, much less a marriage license.”

  I frowned. “You’d find the birth certificate here, right? He was born in Chicago.”

  “Yeah, nothing.” He turned toward the screens again while there was a knock on the door. “I’m gonna reach out to a friend. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything.”

  Two of Liam’s boys were at the door, and they were carrying bags that smelled of Chinese food.

  “Finally. I’m starving,” Pat said.

  Given that there was no place to sit in this room, unless your name was Eric, we decided to take the food to the living room area down the hall. The light was poor without windows, but it was secure and we could talk freely.

  Conn hauled out beers and sodas from the fridge in the kitchenette in the corner.

  Shoptalk lulled as containers were opened across a coffee table, and the L-shaped couch becam
e occupied by hungry Irishmen. Liam and I took the opportunity to speak in private by taking our seats in the only two chairs available. While the others bitched about Conn stealing all the dumplings and Pat getting orange chicken everywhere, my cousin and I started discussing crews.

  “One has to stay in the US,” Liam reasoned quietly. “We should make a move on our own turf—something that gets back to Gio. A distraction that grabs his attention.”

  I narrowed my eyes and chewed slowly on a spring roll. “Proof of us being at home,” I concluded. He nodded. “We need two crews in Europe, so the question is if we can stretch ourselves that thin.” I nodded at him and balanced my plate on my thigh. “How many can you spare that you legit trust with your life? Because I don’t have that many.”

  He cocked his head, thoughtful. “Why two crews over there?”

  “Partly for backup,” I answered, “and partly because I wanna strike Gio hard. I want everything he owns.”

  We’d be idiots if we underestimated the Avellino family or if we got too cocky. Because the truth was that Gio had accumulated a lot of land and wealth in a very short period of time. He’d inherited a borgata and a reputation through his mother’s family, but he’d also completed his own hostile takeover and brought the organization to a new level. He’d become boss around the time we were lowering my grandfather into the ground a decade ago, and since then, Avellino had only grown. Not only had he taken what we couldn’t handle in Europe when so many of us had been thrown in prison, but he’d branched out too. His family had once dealt mainly in heroin, and now they were all over the map. They delivered trafficked girls from Eastern Europe to men in southern France, they worked auto shows much like we did, they hosted art exhibits in galleries owned by shell companies and made millions by stealing paintings and replacing them with fakes, not to mention they were in the casino business in both Monaco and Macao.

  All that said…he’d fucked with the wrong Irishman when he’d had my mother assassinated, and nothing would stand in my way of ruining him for good.

  I wasn’t only going to kill him. I was going to kill everyone he loved.

  “That will send a good message to any other organization in Europe,” Liam noted. “The harder we come at Avellino, the stronger our reputation will be.”

  I inclined my head.

  “What’re youse whispering about over there?” Pat jerked his chin at us.

  “How small your cock is,” I replied.

  The guys cracked up, and my brother flipped me off.

  One of Liam’s boys came back down to the basement and alerted us that the rest of our family had arrived. My stomach twisted with nerves and anticipation, and every fiber of my being demanded I run out to pull Emilia to me…but. Liam and I had something good going here; we worked well together and were on the same page. I wanted his two cents on how we were gonna divide our crews before I joined the others.

  2

  Emilia O’Shea

  I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, soaking up the last sunlight of the day as the rays filtered through the trees. The forest grew denser for every second, it seemed.

  You were born for this role.

  I exhaled softly and clasped my hands in my lap.

  All summer, I’d had Grace’s voice in my head. The anecdotes from when she and I planned the wedding, the advice she gave me at my bachelorette party… Hundreds of tiny moments I’d been forced to cling to because there would be no new memories of Grace. Those short months we’d had together in May and June, that was it.

  So I’d latched on to the memories I had. I’d written a lot down.

  Now I had her advice and my internal pep talks warring against anxiousness about the future and general fear, resulting in a constant state of unease.

  I can’t do this.

  Yes, you can, dearie.

  No one had told me to shoulder the role Grace had played for decades, but who else would do it? The syndicate had lost its heart, and already, restless men grew frustrated and impatient. Not everyone had a family. To those men, Grace had meant the world. She’d listened, offered support, cooked, chided, joked, and lifted spirits.

  Viv, Finnegan’s aunt and Shan’s sister, might seem like an option—and she’d certainly helped me a lot these past few months—but she wasn’t involved the way I was. She wasn’t married to the man everyone viewed as the new boss to the entire syndicate.

  I was.

  I opened my eyes and peered down at my lap, twisting my fingers anxiously. It seemed that no matter how dark it got, the diamonds around my finger were going to find a source of light and bounce tiny rainbows of color off the flawless surface.

  Next to me, Nessa stirred in her sleep and tried to get comfortable.

  Then I met Shan’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

  His expression always softened around me, for reasons I didn’t know, but for me, it was only a reminder of how much he’d changed since we lost Grace. He was sharp and rarely drank to ease any pains, but he was tired and easily distracted. Often lost in thought, the grief evident.

  Almost everyone had lost their footing. Some had bounced back, some were trying, some were in denial, some didn’t have recovery on their radar. Shan was one of the latter.

  “Wh… Are we there yet?” Alec asked sleepily from the passenger’s seat.

  Shannon cleared his throat and checked his watch. “Few more minutes, lad.”

  I took a shaky breath and held it.

  Fuck. No more shakiness. I had responsibilities, both as Finnegan’s wife and…and, no, I couldn’t say it. No one could replace Grace. She’d been the mother of the Sons of Munster. I couldn’t be a mother. For chrissakes, I was eighteen years old.

  The breath gusted out of me, and I smoothed down my dress and picked some lint off my leggings. Eighteen years old or not, I was here now, and I had a job to do. The second I stepped out of this SUV, I was going to carve out a position for myself. A long, hellish summer was over. It was time to emerge from Finnegan’s protective shadow and take initiative.

  Grace had known her place. She’d made her own rules and balanced the conservative housewife role with the ballbuster who’d had everyone wrapped around her finger. I was going to do the same.

  Leaning forward, I picked up my strappy heels from the floor and slid my feet into them. I wanted to make a good impression, so I’d dressed up while still keeping it casual.

  I couldn’t be the mother Grace had been, but I could be a daughter of Munster. This was my family now too, and I was going to take care of the criminal bastards.

  As I looked out the tinted back window and saw the other car behind us, Nessa woke up and asked if we were there yet.

  “I already asked,” Alec griped.

  Ness scowled tiredly. “I was asleep, jerk!”

  “Hey. Both of you.” I frowned at them.

  Poor kids were so beyond bored, it wasn’t funny. They’d spent the better part of our time in hiding riling each other up. Alec would shove Ness and pull her hair, and Nessa would make fun of Alec when his voice cracked.

  Yeah, the twins were smack-dab in the middle of puberty.

  “We’re almost there.” I patted Nessa’s arm, then pulled a rubber band from around my wrist to gather my hair into a ponytail. “Are you excited to see your brother?”

  Last time they’d seen Liam, I’d learned, was Christmas. They’d visited him in prison.

  The topic of Liam thankfully distracted the twins, and they rambled excitedly—over each other, of course—about everything they wanted to show their big brother, things they were gonna do, and all the catching up they had planned.

  I was happy for them. They needed a break. They’d been going back and forth between Chicago and Philly all spring and early summer, and then they’d learned their father had been kidnapped. Their aunt had been killed. They’d been pulled away from friends and their home to hide out with us in Washington… Lastly, the woman who was supposed to be their mother had gone on an extended v
acation without them. Granted, Anne had always made sure Alec and Nessa knew she wasn’t their real mother, but Jesus fucking Christ, did she not have a heart at all?

  When Shan slowed down the car, I peered between the seats. There was a gate up ahead. Finnegan had explained that Liam’s place was much like the compound outside my hometown.

  An electric fence was hidden within the hedges.

  I looked behind me again. Colm was driving the other SUV. Sarah was in the back seat with Luna and Viv, and Thomas was in the passenger’s seat. Luna, Kellan’s sister, had been with us most of the summer, but Viv and Thomas hadn’t joined us until today. They’d been in Ireland, where three of their kids still were. If I remembered correctly, Brianna, their eldest, was staying with friends in California.

  I wondered idly if Viv was still pissed at her husband. It was only a few weeks ago she’d learned Thomas was part of the SoM. How he’d managed to keep that from her for over twenty-five years was incomprehensible to me, no matter how “small” his role was in the syndicate.

  The gates opened in front of us, and Shan left the dirt road behind for one that was newly paved. A big, beautiful three-story cabin sat atop a small hill, much like the house at the O’Shea compound, and the road ended in a cul-de-sac. There was a big barn too. Two guys stood outside of it, smoking cigarettes.

  Alec and Nessa were buzzing with anticipation.

  So was I, but it came with a fair amount of resignation as well. I’d traded one safe house for another, and it meant no moving around freely. The private grounds were mine to explore, but I wouldn’t be allowed to leave. No going to the store, no sightseeing, no driving, no nothing.

  Have patience, I reminded myself. It was all part of this life. I’d married a damn mobster. Security wasn’t a given, and the men were doing everything in their power to make things as comfortable as possible, all while planning the revenge of a lifetime. Not that I was privy to any details.

  As Shan stopped outside the house, the front door opened to reveal two more guards.

  Here I go.