“I want another captain with us and a few more men too,” Emory said. “I’d rather have more and need less. We can spare the numbers.”
“How ‘bout Pete? He can bring a few of his soldiers.”
“Perfect.”
They took the stairs to the first floor.
“And Amelia?”
“With me.”
Jack grinned. “She still hate your ass?”
“Probably a safe bet.”
Who could blame her? And those walls she put up, Emory would’ve put them up too. Hell, he had put them up, but bitterness breached, an assault in broad daylight, and he traced its lineage back to blame. Amelia blamed him for her misfortunes, and Emory inherited guilt that grew wild like weeds he couldn’t pluck out.
Outside, he and Jack waded into a wall of dead heat with no breeze to call reprieve. The tiled terrace out front offered pockets of shade but couldn’t make up for a sun that raged toward its peak. In the distance, craggy earth met bright blue sky, and popcorn clouds ambled along.
They were early. The men wouldn’t show for another fifteen minutes. In these moments, Emory indulged the break; no duty or planning or expectation to bury his fear for the sake of others.
In these moments, he and Jack unearthed old memories. Jack had a way of glossing over tragedy with detours back to happier times—riding bikes, skipping rocks, staring up at the stars those summer nights as kids, wondering how it’d all pan out.Not like this. Never like this.
And in these moments, Emory had nothing left to do but laugh.“Suck it up, buttercup,”his old man would say.It was the hand he was dealt.
Jack leaned against a stucco archway and lit a cigarette. “This plan will work?”
Emory knew better than to peg a sure thing. Plans were simple, people were unpredictable, and business was always personal to a degree. He wanted the organization sleek, trim, and tight. That meant consolidating assets and lobbing off the dead weight; in that particular case, a bloated gambling establishment whose revenue wasn’t worth the trouble it caused.
“Hopefully,” Emory said. “Plans have a way of going sideways. The point is to be prepared. Are we prepared?”
Jack cocked his head back and exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “I’d say so.”
They kept conversation light and inconsequential until Liam joined them. He bummed a cigarette from Jack and settled beneath the archway.
“You boys be safe today,” Liam said. “Do what you need to and come home.”
Home.
The mansion wasn’t Emory’s home, as much as Liam wished it was. The house was too big, too lavish. Part hacienda, part Spanish mission, it’d been homage to Francisca Moriarty and might’ve been a sanctuary under better circumstances.
For Emory, it was strictly temporary, and he hadn’t the heart to foot stomp that, so he paid Liam a dull smile, and Jack did the same, though it wasn’t his home either.
One by one, the Moriarty men gathered in the circle drive out front. Emory greeted them with an iron handshake and ensured they understood their orders. At any glint of confusion, he went over the plan again. Jack bullshitted and cracked quick-witted quips that maintained morale and settled nerves.
“Figure your captains out. Play to their strengths,”Liam once told Emory. He heralded the advice and read the fine print in others. It meant knowing himself too, though; what he was and what he wasn’t.
He wasn’t Jack with all that bantering swagger, but when Jack couldn’t muster the muscle to discipline, Emory stepped in with a stern hand. The balance worked.
In the sweltering heat, his men waited and Emory checked the time. It was close enough to noon to put up a fuss. He dug out his phone, but before he could fire off a text, the front door opened and Mirabelle dazzled with a smile that doubled as a talisman against his agitation.
“You’re late,” Emory said.
She rolled her eyes. “Your watch is fast.”
Behind her, Amelia slipped through the door. She looked the way Emory remembered from Dauer’s party—bone-crushingly beautiful with full lips, upturned nose, and auburn hair cascading over bare shoulders.
It wasn’t just the length of her bare legs in a sundress or the slope of her hourglass shape he found so utterly alluring. Amelia disarmed with Bambi eyes and smiles so sweet.
