Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 110550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110550 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 369(@300wpm)
“Henry,” I barked. “I want a list of every hit man in this city going back thirty years. Put the ones that suddenly vanished off the map on top.”
“Already on it.”
“Boss, how can we be sure this guy is the lieutenant and not the mastermind?” Blake asked. “Bernardi probably took off to Rockchapel because he heard the boss was dead, and there was no one to protect him.”
“We can’t be certain of anything. I do know this much, the kind of money, patience, and planning that it takes to achieve their supposed purpose is massive. There’s killing all of us and then all of you. Draining our accounts, ending our allies, and protecting the throne so someone worse doesn’t take it and put them back where they started. To get this close requires a fearsome intelligence that Snyder did not have.”
“Didn’t he?”
I shook my head. “Choosing a warehouse with so many exits, then a shipping yard office with none proves it. If it was me, I would’ve led us into that warehouse and blocked all the exits. If it was me, I wouldn’t have walked into a room with no windows, making it impossible for me to notice the biker gang surrounding the place. Not to mention he didn’t bother to check if there were witnesses before he dumped Sunny off the overpass.
“He was a strong opponent, but cocky. Stupid. The person truly behind this is neither of those things. They can’t be. A cocky, stupid brute wouldn’t have gotten so close to getting everything they wanted.”
My men nodded, faces chipped from granite. I could see them working through my logic, and coming to the same conclusion.
“We’re doing everything we can to find the Brotherhood and discover how they’ve gotten past our defenses,” Henry said. “We’ve tapped every rat in the city. We’ll know something by the end of the week.”
I shook my head, rising to my feet. “No, don’t bother wasting the coin. From this point, we assume everyone is dirty, especially our informants. If they were doing their job, I would’ve heard about the Brotherhood before they had a gun to my head.”
“If they have money to hire the best plastic surgeons, they’ve got money to pay off snitches. Not just to keep us in the dark,” Blake said slowly, “but to spread the word too. How else have they been recruiting?”
“I’ll pull a few in,” Henry agreed. “Lean on them till something useful comes out.”
“I like what I’m hearing, gentlemen. You have three days.”
They inclined their heads and swept out, leaving me to my steepled fingers and Father’s words in my ear.
I couldn’t be with Mackenzie. That was still true.
She was too young for me. That was true too.
Focused icy rage wasn’t that of a boyfriend avenging his girl. It was that of a man protecting a person under his charge.
Convince yourself you’re not reacting out of love, son. Convince yourself you’ve never felt love.
Because its control is unbreakable.
MACKENZIE
Minestrone splashed in the bowl, breaking my attention from River. “Here you are.”
A blonde woman with a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders mumbled thanks, put the bowl on her tray, and continued down the food line. My eyes found their way back to River.
He sat at the edge of the lunch table, deep in conversation with a girl about my age. Maybe I kept staring at him because I hoped the prickling on his neck would prompt the guy to pull me in for a deep conversation. Not to say he was ignoring me.
When we arrived, River threw his arms around me—holding me tight and close for a solid five minutes. Neither of us saw the need to pull away, though when we did, River gave Laurel the same attention—praising her and saying how happy he was she was safe. My daughter was smitten with him in three seconds flat, and when he was that wonderful, it was impossible for me not to feel the same.
But there’s so much we need to talk about. Like where the heck we’re standing right now.
I glanced around, marveling at the shelter. When Sunny, Laurel, Sienna, and I took off that morning, I wasn’t expecting him to turn right instead of left for North Quay or Rockchapel. He drove farther and farther into Leighbridge, pulling up to the curb in front of New Bridges Shelter.
In the two hours I’d been here, I searched for an employee, administrator, manager—someone in charge. But from what I was seeing, that person was River.
River asked me to hop on the serving line with Marty and Nathan. He was the one telling his people and Sunny’s where this went or where to find that. All questions and requests were going through him.
If I had to come to the conclusion that he was running this place, I had to wonder how. New Bridges was nothing like the homeless shelters Sienna and I used to frequent. The serving tools I was using were spotless stainless steel. The appliances were bought within the last five years—bought, not donated.