“I’m saying that there might be no need to panic yet.”
“Too late. Look, I had to clean up your wife’s first kill and I did it without a grumble?—”
“Bollocks! You gave me nothing but shit. We flew out to Aspen and I shoved you in coach to punish you.”
“—but I arranged it. Made it spic and span. She’s myFi, Luciu,” I rasped, using the name that he only called her when they were alone. “I can’t… Kitty has to be okay. Icannotlose her too.”
His tone settled as he vowed, “You won’t lose her,frate.”
“First, Accursio, then Evangeline—this shit comes in threes.” The thought of how my childhood best friend had been slaughtered by the Fieris on the grounds of the house I fucking lived in now ruptured something in me?—
Throw in Evangeline’s loss…
Was it any wonder I was so fucking broken?
I couldn’t deal with this. Not anymore.
I was so sick of losing people. So fucking sick of it.
He clapped me on the shoulder. “First wasPatri, Stan.”
I choked out a laugh because maybe he was right.
But that had come with terror of its own.
I’d found his body. Tortured,maimed, and dumped outside the gates of our home.
Luc hadn’t been there. He hadn’t witnessed what I had. He’dseen the version ofPatrithat the funeral home had wanted him to see.
I dug my thumbs into my eyes, wishing I could dig the memories out that easily.
“If it comes in threes, Stan,” he was saying to me, half-promising, half-pleading, “it’s come and gone. Shewillbe fine. I’ll make sure of it. You hear me? And I’ll liaise with the Irish. Maybe I should get Jen in on this. You know the power she has being friendly with Aoife, Savannah, and Star.
“Plus, for some crazy reason, she likes you. Don’t try to tell me she didn’t coordinate with Conor to trace this Kitty of yours…”
He carried on mumbling under his breath when it registered he’d lost me to the memories of death and picked up his phone and began making calls.
Seeing my father’s blank stare through spiritless eyes, a memory as raw and fresh as if it were yesterday and not a lifetime ago, I turned my head to look out of the window.
It was dark. I was supposed to be boning Kitty after gorging on our pasta feast. She should be living up to her name and purring as she slept in my arms, full of a different kind of cream...
But that wasn’t how my night had gone.
Instead, the commissioner had asked how high when Rory had requested he jump and we were meeting tonight. So that was where we headed—to the same construction site where I’d butchered a gaggle of Albanians to death.
Luciu enjoyed reminding Kingston that he might have been at the top of the tree in his little world, but he was on the bottom rung ofourladder.
But I didn’t give a damn about any of that. Business could go to hell.
Where the fuck was she?
Every instinct I possessed raged.
I’d barely had her for three days and I’d lost her already.
The streetlights flared into one long glare that made my eyeshurt. The headache from earlier had returned, intensifying under the strain of Kitty’s disappearance, and I wanted nothing more than the joint nap she’d promised me.
But I knew, I fucking knew, that something wasn’t right.
