A noise behind me catches my attention. Marco looks a little disheveled and has a satisfied smirk on his face when he walksdown the stairs. There might even be a bounce in his step. I’m pretty sure he and Mia had a quickie, but that’s not my business.
He leads me to a door between his office and the garage, where he punches a code into a keypad. I follow him into some tech guy’s wet dream of a room. One wall is covered in monitors, showing camera feeds, maps covered in little dots, and a lot of other shit I don’t understand. The desk along the wall under them is clearly a workspace, but it’s nicely organized and clean.
So are the shelves that line the other wall from the floor to the ceiling. But they’re full of… stuff. My eyes skip around, trying to make sense of it. There’s like twenty Funko Pops, but they’re not all from the same set. A couple of superheroes from rival comics, a few Star Wars characters, some from video games… there’s Pokemon cards in frames, display models of the Planet Express ship, and a version of The Enterprise, but fuck if I know what one, fossils, rocks… and a shit ton of Tamagotchis.
I don’t know what the hell to do with that. I look over at Marco, but he’s watching the monitors, so I join him.
He gives off a casual and unbothered energy as he stands there with his hands in his pockets. A deep contrast to the intensity in his eyes when he shifts his focus to me. “We don’t trust easily around here, Luca. This family we’ve built, it means everything to us. We’re loyal to it above all else. And we’re far too aware that family doesn’t mean shit to some people. Don’t make me regret bringing you in.”
A little offended, I turn away from him, crossing my arms over my chest as I take in the camera views. “I don’t fucking plan on it, Marco,” I grunt.
He lets out a low chuckle. “Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of a dick?” I glance back at him with my eyebrow cocked, which makes his chuckle turn into a laugh. “Oh, fuck off, you grump ass. No wonder they call you Grim.”
“Are we in here for a reason? The Furbies are staring at me.”
“The Furbies are harmless. There’s a few Beanie Babies I’m not sure about.” He doesn’t give me time to process this joking version of him before he gestures to the monitors with one hand. “There are dozens of cameras outside, every fucking inch of the property is covered. No cameras inside, but I’ve warned everyone that could change at any time. I’ve tried to respect the idea of privacy as much as possible, but safety will take priority if necessary.”
When I nod in understanding, Marco continues, pointing to different screens as he goes. “Phones, tablets, watches, laptops. Any jewelry we can track, we do. We know what guns come into this house and where they are. Each bedroom has an armory and a safe room in the closet. Every vehicle has at least one tracking device. Even that fucking motorcycle the girls think they have hidden in the garage.”
Shaking my head, I grumble, “Of course, they have a fucking motorcycle.”
“They still think we don’t know about that damn thing, right?” he asks.
Confused, I look around and realize Marco’s talking to a guy about my age who just walked in. He’s like nine inches shorter than me, has glasses and blonde hair, and he’s carrying a bowl of ramen noodles. His grin is wide and easy, like it comes naturally to him. He nods his head. “Yeah.”
“Good. Luca, this is Parker. He hardly goes home, rarely sleeps, and runs most of the tech side of our security operation himself.”
“I sleep.” Parker shrugs and closes the door with his foot before setting his bowl down on the desk.
“Right. Luca, when you’re not with the girls, I want you in here learning how to check the trackers and cameras, down in the basement gun range for target practice, or in the gym. The mencould use some regular sparring. And Parker here could use some getting-the-fuck-out-of-this-room,” Marco says, raising an eyebrow.
Parker chuckles. “Whatever. ”
“Did you find anything on that fuckstick who made my daughter bleed?”
Parker’s smile fades. “Nothing helpful. No connections to anyone who matters. All signs point to it being a random attack. But I don’t know,” he says with a deep sigh. “I don’t like it, Marco. Something about it isn’t sitting right with me.”
Marco nods. “Keep looking. But first, show Luca what you can do.”
The grin returns to Parker’s face. He sits at the desk and cracks his knuckles before reaching for the keyboard. For the next ten minutes, I watch in awe as he brings up all kinds of shit Iknowhe’s not supposed to be able to get into while eating his noodles like it’s no big deal. We see camera footage from inside casinos and banks, access computers at the local college campus, and bring up the inventory of a local grocery store.
I gesture toward the wall of tech. “How the fuck did someone steal the Maserati if you have all this shit?” Putting a dude who collects fucking Tamagotchis and barely looks to be out of his teens in charge of security seems insane, but damn, he clearly knows his stuff.
“I’m still not sure, man.” Parker brings up some grainy video footage. There’s nothing but a couple of blobs running around a bigger blob until all the blobs are gone. “I was off that day. No one usually sits and watches live unless we think we’ll need to, so no one was.”
“Now Parker won’t take a damn day off or go the fuck home half the time,” Marco says, glancing at the pillow and folded blanket on the couch.
Parker shrugs. “It bugs me. Anyway, I’ve got everything you asked for ready to go, Boss.” He grabs a phone off the desk, then glances my way and shifts in his seat. “Uh, if you’ve got anything you want to move over, now is the time.”
“What?” I ask, not following his line of thinking. Have I always been this much of an idiot, or is it all the newness of shit here?
“The phone you have now is going to be broken into pieces and dumped. I’ve already added everyone you need here to this new one, but if you have contacts or photos you want to keep, we need to do that now,” Parker explains.
“Oh. No, not really.”
“Nothing? No friends you want to talk to? No pics of your girlfriend? Or boyfriend? Whatever.” That shoulder goes up again, and his cheeks are red. “I’m pretty sure it took the last guy we brought on half an hour to transfer all the ass pics he had.” He looks at me expectedly, like I’m suddenly going to decide to save a bunch of nudes.
“No.”
