Chapter Six
Cormac
Idon’t require much sleep to function.
I can hunt a target all night or torture someone for information until the wee morning hours, yet somehow, I always wake refreshed.
That is not the case today.
I kept watch over Charlotte and Lucky until nearly five a.m. Once I made it home, I showered and fell into bed. Sleeping until eleven is unusual for me, and it leaves me feeling like I’ve wasted half the day.
I’m finishing my first cup of coffee when my brother, Patrick, corners me in the kitchen.
The look on his face, combined with the tension in his posture, says I won’t like whatever conversation we’re about to have. I already have some idea of what this is about, but we’ve been dealing with it for months, so I’m not sure why he’s riled up.
Fifty or so years ago, the head of the Russian mob in New York, Mikhail Ivanov, made a play to take back his city.
The head of the Boston crime family, Tomlin Manzo, was also in attendance at the wedding-turned-massacre whereIvanov enacted his revenge. With both cities having their reigning family slaughtered in one night, things got messy.
Ivanov took back New York, but no singular Boston family was powerful enough to wipe out the others.
This led to years of all-out wars as the seven remaining families fought it out for territory, power, and prestige.
Boston was in turmoil before the Pierce family stepped out of the equation completely. That one choice allowed a tentative truce to form between the remaining six family heads as each family took over their own niche.
Wilder Pierce has since inherited the role of running his family, and he’s responsible for settling disputes, brokering transactions, and mediating between the six reigning families.
It was an unconventional solution when his fathers suggested it, and it’s equally as questionable now, but it is nice to have a neutral third party available to fix any issues before they can bubble over into full-blown catastrophes.
Basically, the Pierces are the fixers and the reason the Boston police department believes they finally have a handle on organized crime. It couldn’t be further from the truth, but it allows us a certain level of freedom as we hide behind the belief the mafia in Boston is no more.
Still, it’s not a perfect system.
Twenty years ago, the Chapman family was struggling.
My fathers were on good terms with them, and they made a deal to help an ally hang on long enough that things could turn around for them. That one choice has plagued my family for years. In theory, it could have worked out well, but no one should fuck around with their children’s futures in the way our families did.
As a result of the deal they struck, my oldest brother, Malachy, is promised to Vanessa Chapman.
Patrick, Malachy, and I always assumed that we’d end up in a pack together to make things easier. Unfortunately, there’s less than no attraction on either party’s side.
Vanessa wants nothing to do with marrying Malachy.
Malachy has honored our fathers’ wishes by taking his engagement seriously, but he can’t hold on forever. He’s an unbonded alpha, and the mental decay of going feral has progressed to the point we’re afraid to do official lab work. Once an alpha is declared rabid, only one thing brings them back, and no one wants that diagnosis hanging over their head or on their record.
His mental state makes waiting dangerous, and Vanessa has done everything in her power to put off the union as long as possible. We’ve gone back and forth with her brothers and Wilder for five years, trying to find some resolution.
If she wants out of the agreement that badly, then her brothers need to find a way to come up with the penalty they owe our family. They got a 2.5 million-dollar loan, interest free, for twenty years. That doesn’t even account for the property they gained in the trade. It’s now worth four times what it was then.
It’s not like my family is hurting financially. My fathers may have royally sucked at healthy romantic relationships, but one thing they excelled at is finances.
The main issue is that the other families also understand the contract has come due. If we were to let the Chapmans out of the agreement without enforcing the penalty, it would undermine our authority.
Any of the other families that owe mine markers could try to back out of honoring their agreements.
It would lead to chaos.
Even if we wanted to break the contract and take the loss, the repercussions are what’s stopping us.
