“You have my word, lass,” he says meekly.
I just pray I can hold him to it.
Chapter 7
Raoul Caraldi
“Motherfucking McErlane!” I curse as I look at the documents and photographs laid out on the desk in front of me. Mario shifts uncomfortably. He’s just delivered the news that my own fucking father-in-law tried to have me taken out yesterday.
Did Emma know something about this?
Dammit, I can’t think that way.
“It’s pretty damning, Boss. I’m sorry.” He splays his hands. He’s right. The video footage shows a team moving brazenly through the rubble of the warehouse, setting a device within the packaging around the bodies of our men. They hadn’t even bothered to hide their identities – as if this was a message that needed to get through to me somehow. McErlane himself had stood at the entrance, flipping the bird at the camera as they departed the scene. Of course, if he’d blown me up as planned, I wouldn’t be seeing any of this now, and the message would have been one left for my family. I wonder if he counted Emma among them.
Strangely, there’s no sign of McErlane’s men being there when the initial attack had gone down, though. In fact, they’d arrived over an hour after it all happened. The team who’d killed my guys had been shrouded in black, moving like wraiths.
Why would they change clothes and come back undisguised to set a bomb?
None of this makes sense.
Then again, in this world, you’re dealing with raving lunatics half the time. There’s no point in making sense of it. There’s only vengeance and war.
“There’s more, Boss.” Mario has my attention again. I quirk an eyebrow, urging him to continue. “The cops came in. Had to do the usual digging around.”
It’s no surprise to me. We might own half the police department, but the bastards still have to make a show of doing their jobs.
“So?” I ask, wondering what his point is.
“They found drugs, Boss. About a million dollars’ worth of cocaine was stashed in the packaging.”
“What?” I bark. I’ve specifically kept that warehouse squeaky clean. Aside from the fact that the artwork is dodgy, there’s no dirt they can pin on me unless they figure out the certificates of authenticity are first-rate fakes, too. “How the fuck did that happen? Was there a mix-up with the team?”
“Absolutely not, Boss. I’ve gone all the way up the chain of command. Every ounce of product we own is accounted for. This shit was deliberately put there.”
“Fuck.”
Someone’s trying to set me up. McErlane, too?
Doesn’t seem his style. Especially if he’d then gone to the effort of trying to blow me the fuck up. The man doesn’t seem the type for overkill.
Although, having met his daughter, maybe he would. God knows I’ve seen her go off the deep end on more than one occasion. I’m pretty sure if she’d succeeded in stabbing that Ruski trafficker who caught us, she’d have slashed his throat, cut out his heart, and lopped off his balls for good measure.
Why the fuck do I find that so sexy?
I shrug it off. There are bigger things to worry about right now.
“So what’s the deal with the cops? Can you get them off our backs?” I’m sure this is a no-brainer, but I ask the question anyway.
“Seems we’ve run into a bit of a snag there, Boss.” Mario looks rueful. “Our regular guys are all on board, but there’s some new fucker in on the investigation squealing about ‘cleaning up this town.’”
I roll my eyes. Not another one.
We have these newcomers throwing their weight around from time to time. Nearly every one of them fades away after some lowlife figures out what their particular paygrade is. I’ve kept mine happy by having the deepest pockets in town.
“Pay him off,” I tell Mario, who shakes his head.
“Looks like someone else got there before us.”
