FORTY
TEXT CHAT
Luciu: Do I want to know why I received a notification of the jet’s return to its hangar?
Stan: Not unless you want me to start accounting for my every move, every minute of every day…
Luciu: You’re a prick.
Stan: Ain’t you lucky you’re my brother?
Stan: Is Aurora back in Vegas?
Luciu: As of this morning. Why?
Stan: Did you read yesterday’s I Told You So blog?
Luciu: I don’t need to. Jen’s hooked—she reads it to me.
Stan: Not today, but we need to talk.
Luciu: About the blog?Interesting.
Luciu: I think I can make time for you
Stan: Such a jackass
Luciu: You know it
FORTY-ONE
STAN
As was par for the fucking course with my life, every up came with a down.
I saw Luciu’s mother-in-law—Diana—the fucking second we entered Irish Mob turf.
This albatross had dangled around our necks since the first and last time Luc and I had had the misfortune of meeting her, and now he’d clearly invoked her like a demon spirit sent to cause us trouble.
Before my brother had married Jen, Diana had decided to sell her daughter to a local gang to cover her and her pimp’s debts.
The same bastard Jen had killed when he’d tried to rape her.
Luciu had made Valentini history that day after he’d sliced his very first ‘V’ into Diana’s cheek with a warning that if she ever darkened this side of the Hudson with her presence, she’d die.
The urge to enact his promise made it a struggle to escort Kitty and her sisters back home.
I’d empathized with Luc’s actionsbeforeI’d met Kitty. Now? I understood the demarcated lines of insanity that my brother bounced between on a second-by-second basis.
The urge to protect clashing with the urge to shelter someone’s happiness…
Fuck—how did he cope?! And he had kids—literal pieces of his soul walking around the city just waiting?—
“Stan? You okay? You look murderery.”
“Just saw someone I wish I hadn’t, Neev.”
Kitty slipped her hand over mine. “Do you need to go?”
