“Well, in other news,” Jace changed the subject, draping his arm over my shoulders where I sat beside him, “Brenda thinks she’s come to an agreement with Giovanni to release us from our Big Noise contract.”
The shocked silence was so quiet you’d be able to hear a mouse fart.
“Bullshit,” Angelo growled. “And why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”
Jace screwed up his nose. “Whywouldn’tit be the first you’re hearing of it? Do you and Brenda have something going on that we aren’t aware of?”
Oh shit. Angelo’s deal with Brenda meant she should have runany and alldeals through him before taking it to Jace. But Jace didn’t know that, and he sure as fuck wouldn’t be happy if hedidknow that…
“Angelo and Brenda had a thing,” I blurted out, trying really fucking hard to save my Angel’s ass. And Brenda’s. She was a good manager, even if her husband was an asshole. “They, um, slept together.”
Angelo quirked a brow at me, his lips twitching like he was holding back a laugh. He understood, though, and nodded slowly. “Billie’s right. It was more than a year ago… Our paths crossed in a bar, and one thing led to another.”
Jace wasn’t buying our shit. “Okay so why would that have any bearing on her telling you Bellerose business before the rest of us? Unless it’s ongoing?”
Ah fuck, well that hadn’t been well thought out.
“It’s most definitely not,” Angelo replied firmly. “Billie isitfor me.”
Rhett let out a loud, exaggerated yawn like he could sense there was something more going on and wanted to provide a distraction. It worked, too, with both Jace and Angelo turning to look at him with puzzlement.
“Um, so, I had a thought…” Rhett started, toying with his lip ring. “Or I had a thought the other day, during my session with Doc, and then I was going to ask you guys what you thought, but then I second-guessed my thought, so went on a whole research mission to figure out if my thought would actually work out or not, and then I realized that it did seem to work, you know? But then I got all confused because it seemed like a really easy answer and nothing in life is ever easy, right? So I figured I must have overlooked something impo—”
“Bro,” Jace interrupted, shaking his head. “Take a breath. That was a lot of words without ever actually saying anything.”
Rhett swallowed visibly. “Sorry. Um. You left Giovanni alive at the docks for a reason, right?”
“Correct,” Angelo agreed. “Because it’s not as easy as just killing my father. He has people in place to take over should anything happen to him. We need to deal with the whole hierarchy, not just the man at the top.”
“Right,” Rhett agreed. “So… we need to do that.”
“Get to the point, Silver,” Grayson snapped, stroking a hand over his short beard in a gesture of impatience.
Rhett extended his middle finger Grayson’s way, then refocused on Angelo. “You need to take outallyour fathers’ henchmen, right? All his enforcers or… whatever the fuck they’re called in the mafia. Lieutenants? Managers? Whatever, you know what I mean. You need themalltaken care of before we can get rid of Giovanni. Right?”
“Right…” Angelo replied, his brows still dipped with confusion as he was not following Rhett’s frazzled thought process. “But they’re not easy men to get at, and if we shoot one, then the rest go into hiding.”
Rhett rolled his eyes. “Okay, mafia prince. I wasn’t suggesting we go out on a purge and shoot them all before the sun comes up. I dunno if it’d be enough, but what if they were just locked up? They couldn’t take over the Ricci empire if they’re behind bars… could they?”
Hope flared in my chest, even though I had no idea how the fuck we’d achieve that. Surely, it’d be better than trying tomurderthem all, right? I didn’t want to ask that much of my boys. They already had so much blood on their hands.
“It could work,” Angelo mused, “if they were all locked up at the same time. And even then, it’d leave us a very specific window within which to rid ourselves of my father and stake a claim on his company through inheritance rights before his hierarchy gets released…”
“How?” I asked, unable to sit quietly any longer. “How would you get them all arrested?”
Rhett gave me a tentative smile. “Well, I figure these mafia guys, they’re always on alert for criminal activity, right? Like if they’re watching for someone taking shots, they’re looking at the underworld and gang activity. So I thought, what if we hit them above ground. Tax evasion.”
Again, silence reigned. Then Angelo started laughing.
“Tax evasion?” he repeated, chuckling. “I mean… it’s brilliant. White-collar crimes would be the last thing they’d ever think to get arrested for, buthow? My father has the right pockets greased to make sure the tax office looks the other way.”
“On a local level, sure. But I know someone with connections to a much, much higher position in the IRS. Someone who could, with the right pointers, stage some sort of sting operation, which would see them all grabbed and all locked up, all within, like, a day of one another.” Rhett shrugged nonchalantly. “Then it’d just be Giovanni we need to kill.”
My jaw dropped, and I had a sick feeling I knew how he could get those connections to do what he wanted. I shook my head. “Rhett… no.”
He avoided my eyes as he looked at Angelo instead. “My grandfather, Jeremiah Townsend, has some of the high-level directors in the IRS firmly under his thumb. They’re part of the Townsend Community, along with other very high-level law enforcement. Right now, Jeremiah is critically ill and needs a liver transplant. I’m a match.”
This was my worst fear come to life: that Rhett would be put in a position to save that bastard, all for someone else.
