It was a plausible save. Mateo was a London boy, but his mum lived in Reading now, and it was a running joke that I tried to encourage him to visit her more. A joke without humour because their relationship was strange. She cried every time she saw him, as if he’d broken her heart a thousand times, and he’d never told me why.
Decoy left.
Cam waited for the door to shut, then cleared his throat. “Whether you swing through Reading or not, be careful on the road. This is legitimate business, but there’s been rumblings in the haulage rackets.”
Mateo sat back again. “How do you know?”
“Viktor.” Cam’s gaze briefly flitted to Alexei again. “He made contact late last night and said there’s a civil war brewing in the Sambini family, so territory we think is safe might belong to someone else by now.”
“Since when are we in bed with Sambini’s Russian henchman?”
“Since he stopped us getting massacred in the mud,” Cam retorted dryly. “He also cleaned up our mess so we could be elsewhere. I don’t know what his motives were or are, but for now, we have no reason to distrust him.”
Rubi rapped his tattooed knuckles on the table. “I like any dude who shows up uninvited to do the housework. Saved me a night of puking into my boots.”
Mateo rolled his eyes. “You’d trust any cunt that stops you getting your hands dirty.”
Rubi opened his mouth, but Cam cut him off. “Wind it in. Ain’t got time for bickering.” He tipped his head at Mateo. “You got anything sensible to say?”
Mateo fixed a brief glare on Rubi. Then shrugged. “We need more specific speculation, boss. Like, who’d take territory from Sambini? They own all the claimed roads we use and they’re scared of him.”
He jabbed a finger at Alexei.
Alexei spared him a hideous smile. “That is a cute observation, but incorrect. It is only the roads in the South West that they are beholden to minding their own business about. The rest of your country is fair game. And to answer the question, if there is a split within the family, it is likely that Lorenzo Sambini will strike out on his own and need to raise capital quickly.”
“So he’ll sell the roads to someone else? To who?”
“Whoever has the deepest pockets.”
“Not us then?”
Alexei spread his hands and looked to Cam.
Cam sighed. “We’re working on expanding the haulage business to any charter who wants a piece of it, but even if we did have the money to buy territory from whoever the fuck is selling it, it goes against what we’re trying to do here. I want our lorries shipping timber without having to worry they’re going to get jacked. Which means we have to stay out of this. Work around it.”
With Ivy gone, the smoking ban was over. Mateo lit up, narrowing his fiery eyes. “Working around it means driving hundreds of miles out of our way to avoid upsetting anyone.”
“I know.”
“That costs more in fuel and manpower.”
“I know that too.”
“And you don’t care?”
It was a fair question, but Mateo’s natural aggression made it sound like an accusation, and Cam wasn’t himself. Hadn’t been since long before he nearly lost Saint.
His dark eyes flashed and he set his palms on the table, leaning forward. “If I didn’t care, I’d send you out there to fight them, wouldn’t I?”
“You think I’d lose?”
“Eventually. It’s not about fists. If it was, we wouldn’t have brothers with burns and knife wounds.”
Or bullet scars, but Cam always seemed to forget that he’d been hurt as badly as me and Saint.
Mateo simmered down. He wasn’t used to Cam biting back, but he was astute enough to know it wasn’t about him. “We don’t have any idea who might want these roads?”
Cam shook his head. “Not yet. And I know Viktor might turn out to be... what is it, Em?”
