“Only when they’re really nervous, which is almost never,” Enzo replied, amused.
“Damn right it is,” Calliope said, spinning back to the screens. “Now, close the door. The goats mess with my signal.”
Enzo did as she asked, then leaned on the doorframe, watching his brothers try not to vibrate out of their own skin. They’d just met the woman every hacker forum whispered about like a myth.
“Here’s what I found. These guys aren’t sophisticated. If anything, they’re painfully obvious. You should kill them just to put them out of their misery.”
Ansel and Elio exchanged wide eyes but said nothing.
Three pictures popped up on the screen in an inverted triangle: two above, one below. A circle appeared around the lower picture. The guy was mediocre at best, attractive only if weak-chinned, middle-aged, polo-wearing white dudes were someone’s thing. Which, of course, they weren’t.
“This piece of shit here is Grant, the director of WERC. Your Brioni’s sweetheart,” Calliope said, sarcasm threaded through her words, though she never broke eye contact with the monitors. “He’s their errand boy. Practically a low-level lackey. He does most of the heavy lifting, but these are the men who take the profit.”
Seven’s fingers tightened around Enzo’s, his jaw tensing. His mother was out of the woods, but the wound was still fresh, still raw. It might take months, years even, before Seven felt safe enough to breathe easy again.
She pointed to the two men above Grant’s picture. One had graying, greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore an expensive button-down, but the left side of his face drooped like he might have suffered a stroke or had Bell’s Palsy. The man on the right was about two hundred pounds overweight and looked sweaty even in the photo. She was right. They didn’t look like criminal masterminds.
“These guys,” she said, highlighting their photos. “They’re the ones making the sales, moving the ‘product,’ and keeping ninety percent of the profits. You two were right about Grant,” she told his brothers. “He’s been pocketing money he embezzled from the charity and siphoning it to an offshore account.”
The boys looked like they’d been handed medals of valor, grinning so hard their cheeks hurt.
Calliope’s lips twitched, but she didn’t dignify their hero worship with a comment. “My guess is that Tweedle-Ponytail and Tweedle-Double-Chin have no clue Grant was sloppyenough to steal from their cash cow. If they found out, they’d probably take him out for you. But where’s the fun in that?”
“Yeah, no,” Seven muttered. “These three are mine. I’m gonna peel each of them like a grape while they beg for their lives.”
“Sick,” Ansel whispered, reverent.
“I already sent you the info. Have your Brioni call Grant and tell him they’re onto her and she wants a meeting with his bosses or she’ll talk,” Calliope said, tapping a few keys. “That’ll motivate them. They’ll try to arrange the meeting on their terms, but have her demand it be somewhere quiet, preferably a location under a Mulvaney shell company, obviously.”
“Don’t you think they’ll suspect something if she wants to meet alone?” Ansel asked.
Calliope spun around to look at him. “Usually, yeah. But like I said, these guys are morons. They’ll be so happy she wants to meet somewhere secluded, they’ll be patting themselves on the back right up until the trap springs and they realize they’re the ones boiling in the pot, not Brioni. Possibly literally.”
Elio looked at Seven. “You’re really going to murder these guys?”
Seven stepped in front of Enzo, leaning his weight back against him. Enzo’s arms slid around his waist without thinking. The gesture was automatic—protective and possessive—and it calmed him more than anything Calliope was saying. “Yeah. It’s what we do. You guys have done your part. You don’t have to do anything else except keep your mouths shut about what you know.”
“But…could we—” Ansel began.
“Could you, what?” Seven asked.
Elio ran his top teeth along his bottom lip before saying, “Could we help?”
“Or at least watch?” Ansel added. “Please?”
Enzo’s eyes widened. “You want to watch three men be tortured to death?”
Ansel rolled his eyes. “Don’t say it like it’s weird.”
“Yeah, you don’t get to marry the public executioner and then call us ghouls for wanting to watch in the town square,” Elio said.
Calliope chuckled. “They’ve got you there.”
“Ma will kill me if I take you to witness a murder,” Enzo fretted.
Elio snorted. “Oh, please. If Thomas Mulvaney greenlit it, she’d probably call it a required assignment and make the whole family watch and take notes.”
“You’re barely old enough to drive,” Enzo said.
