“Anyone. I’m going to check the place out again to see if it’s bugged, but I need you to be strong. I need you to be the badass cop I first met who would have handed my ass to me.”
Again, I nodded. “I will try. What about you? I know you feel bad about Jefferson. You shouldn’t feel bad.”
“My dear Amelia, I am a mobster. That is who I’ll be, and so I guess we’re not playing games anymore.”
I knew what he meant in saying that. He’d talked about changing; today showed me it wasn’t that easy.
Not easy at all, and I couldn’t blame him.
It was just that we were right back to square one. I was a cop, and he was a mobster. Like he said, the games were over. We could pretend to be whoever we wanted to be, but truth was truth.
Chapter 3
Luc
* * *
I waited until Amelia fell asleep, then I left her.
It was late but not late enough to turn in and not get shit done. The time to relax and watch the situation had long passed. Now, it was time to change things up.
Time to change.
Change everything and utilize my skills and abilities.
I’d grown soft. Over the last few months, I’d grown fucking soft and allowed the image and handle I had on things before I left for LA to slip out of my grasp.
I had to get that guy I used to be back. Now more than ever because now was when it mattered to me.
I was in love with her. I was obsessed with her.
Amelia, my goddess. Today, things could have gone way wrong.
Who is the rat? Who is the fucking rat?
Throughout the day, I’d gone through a list of people who’d been in the house with us since we’d been in Chicago. No one stood out to me.
I wasn’t here all the time, so I didn’t get to see all the people who came in and out.
Each time I’d been here, it was just me, Raphael, Amelia, and occasionally Millicent. Dad and Claudius had come by yesterday morning. That was it. All I knew of.
The part that was missing was, who was here when Amelia and Raphael were talking about the key and the safe in the library.
The place had to be bugged. Maybe the phone lines. Maybe they had some sort of device that would still let them listen in.
Based on that theory, the first thing I did was get one of my guys to check out the phone lines. I waited for confirmation of that being done before I entered the meeting room, where the crew were all waiting for me.
They were all here, all the main guys who made up the core of the team, and a few others. The total was about twenty.
All hands on deck. Pa was here, as was part of my team, my boys Louis, Saul, and Donny. Missing from my team was my best friend, Maurice, but he had his own task of taking care of Gigi in LA with the rest of my team.
Claudius and his men were here too. We called them The Four.
Gio, Jude, Alex, and Dante. Like Claudius, they had a cross tattooed on either their necks or their cheeks in memory of their fallen ones. They operated as a separate unit. We trusted those guys the most, as they could shift from being bodyguards to mercenaries to assassins. My guys were good, but these guys were who you called when you needed to get shit done, like yesterday. Like Claudius, they killed without thinking about the consequences. Often because their targets were the worst kind. People like Victor who needed to be killed on sight.
I needed them to stay here with Raphael and Amelia.
All acknowledged me with respect as I walked in. It felt like forever since I’d acted as my role as capo for the Rossi family. Claudius and I had the same title, but now I was boss. Or acting boss,whatever. This was the first time I’d stepped up in this way. We were both leaders but normally, for something like this, we’d have been sitting side by side, taking orders. Orders that would have come from Raphael. Our boss.
