“Maggie. We’resisters.”
“That’s exactly my point,” I hear Maggie reply. “Wearesisters. And yet you fly out to Vegas to conspire with that scheming bastard behind my back. What exactly were you planning?”
“You can’t deny, darlin’, it needs explaining,” says another voice.
Uncle Gus. So he hasn’t crawled back to Ireland yet.
“I never—” Tara begins, but a loud slapping sound cuts her off.
“She’s out to it,” Gus says. “You want to go more gentle, Maggie-me-girl. I’ll take over if you like.”
“I don’t need your help,” Maggie hisses.
Luca takes another step down and the stair creaks. He glances at me, shrugs, and calls out: “Hi, there.”
There’s a shuffling and then a dead silence.
“So I thought I’d drop by and see how my favorite in-laws were doing,” Luca says.
Fuck. Is that howIsound when I’m being a smart-ass?
“Come down nice and slow, boy-o,” Gus calls. He sounds as jovial as Maggie. “And we can all have a catch up. Is Howie with you?”
“You think I’d take him into something like this?” Luca makes a motion for me to stay where I am, and then he continues down the stairs.
“Something like this?” Maggie says then, her voice high. I’ve heard her sound like that before, the night she almost killed me. The night Luca almost killedher. She’s afraid of Luca. Always has been. “What exactly does that mean?”
Luca disappears around the corner at the bottom of the staircase and I can’t see him anymore. My heart is galloping, my head thumping in time.
“You know why I’m here, Maggie,” Luca’s voice says. There’s a dark promise of death in the words that makes me shiver.
“You expect me to believe you came alone?” she spits. “Gus, call the guards.”
“I don’t like other people cleaning up my messes,” Luca continues. “And that’s what you are, Maggie. I should’ve killed you that day you held a gun to my husband’s head.”
It occurs to me that Luca’s talking this much to make a distraction forme. Probably to give me time to get the hell out of here. But that’s not happening.
I step over the creaky stair and continue down to the bottom of the stairway, leaning up tight against the wall on the bottom steps. I clutch my gun tight.
I hear a whimper. It must be Tara, coming to. “Luca? Help me,” she whispers. “Please.”
“Gus,call the guards,” Maggie says again.
“Well, now,” Gus says casually. “Before we do anything hasty, I do believe young Howieisstanding on those stairs, and I’d like him to come down and join us.”
We’ve lost the element of surprise, so I inch around the side of the wall and take in the room. It’s a low-ceilinged but spacious wine cellar, the overhead light making everything an unpleasant shade of orange. In the middle of the room, Tara is tied to a chair, her face bruised, blood running from her nose. She whimpers when she sees me.
Maggie stands behind her, the gun in her hand trained on Luca, but when I appear, she swings the gun wildly towards me instead. Uncle Gus is to the side, half-sitting on an upright keg of beer, grinning at me.
Luca has his gun on Gus. I guess he feels Gus is the greater threat.
“Hullo, there, Howie,” Gus says. “Good to see you again. Sorry about Chicago, eh? I’ll have a word with those Italian bastards about it.”
“What about the assassin in Vegas?” I ask. “Does Luca get an apology for that?”
Gus just smirks.
“And what about Jim O’Leary, huh? I guess he was your kill, too?” I ask.
