“Go for a fucking walk with me,” Callahan says, coming up beside us. “I need air.”
We leave the warm room and cross the street. The other building looms over us, and we stop at the park bench under a tree and a broken streetlight.
My stomach twists when I look around.
If Molly and I had turned up here at night instead of day that first time, whoever’s hunting her could’ve picked us off easily. That’s whatIwould’ve done.
A lighter clicks. I realize we’re not alone.
Roark is propped against the tree, silver rings flashing as he takes a drag from one of his Carrolls. He tosses the lighter and crumpled packet to Callahan like they’re sharing an old habit.
I breathe in the smoke. It smells like home, like before prison carved lines into all of us. Somehow it calms the storm in my chest.
“You didn’t need to drag me out of there,” I say. “I can handle it.”
Cal’s mouth twitches. He takes a cigarette and tosses the pack back to Roark. “I know you can. But it’s good to let her stand there alone for a bit.”
“More realistic,” Roark says through the smoke. “You should know, the hit’s on hiatus. That’s the current word. But trickle-down takes time. And there are rogues we need to be aware of.”
“I’m not worried about rogues,” I say. “I’m worried about people with real agendas I can’t see. If Inailed the stalker…” I pull the folded note from my pocket and hand it over. “What the fuck is this? It was left on my car.”
“Trouble,” Cal says. “The deep kind. And you’re up to your neck in it.”
Like he’s never swum in the same shit. I roll my eyes. “We’ll move into the other house. Away from the kids?—”
“Don’t be a fuckingeejit,”Callahan snaps. “You’re safer with us. Inourhome.”
I bite back the words I’ll regret. He’s doing what he always does. Protecting the family. I’m part of that, whether I like it or not.
Roark exhales a long line of smoke. “What bothers me isn’t the note,” he says. “It’s that someone thought they could walk up to your car and leave it. Knowing who you are.”
“Maybe I just killed a perv, not the stalker,” I say, bitterness sour on my tongue. “What kind of lowlife or serious player does that?”
“Not one I want to have on my books,” Roark mutters. “Listen—short version? The PI who was iced was poking his nose where it didn’t belong. Tracing that dead cop and whatever was going on around him. He went underground and turned up in New York. Take it with as many grains of salt as you like.”
None. I believe him. I just don’t like what it implies.
Cal checks his phone. A text from Lucie comes in and my big, terrifying brother melts as he types back.
Roark stubs out his cigarette and lights another. “The PI was looking for someone,” he continues. “A guy named Mario.”
My spine locks. “Mario who?”
“Just like the dead cop,” Roark says, ignoring me for a beat, “our PI did some work in Chicago. With the Chicago arm of the Marcello family. He either got paid off or went underground. The cop, I figure,was trying to get to the Don.”
Roark takes another drag of his cigarette. “I might know who Mario is.”
“And who’s that?” I ask, not moving.
“Milo Marcello’s little brother. Marco. His real name is Mario. And he’s disappeared.”
Cold slides down my spine.
He could be dead. He could be the one I shot in the park. The one O’Shay mentioned. The one sniffing around Molly.
What the fuck is a Marcello doing playing with bottom-feeders and dirty, off-the-books drugs?
“But you know where he is,” I say.
