His mouth pulls into a thoughtful line. “My father thought he was royalty. We were an old-time crime family with a long and storied pedigree, except you can only live on a name for so many years before it starts to catch you. Truth is, we were falling apart.”
“I’m sorry, that sounds like it was hard.”
“For my father, definitely. He remembered the old days. But for me and my siblings? That was all we ever knew. That big, ancient house, crumbling because my parents couldn’t afford to keep it up, except for the rooms we showed the guests of course. I loved it as a kid, all those nooks and crannies, it felt like we grew up in a ghost story.”
“You don’t talk about your brother much.”
“Dominic’s a good man. He’s a couple years younger than me. He stayed behind to take care of the family.”
“And your sister married a Dragon.” I lick my thumb and flip a page, squinting as clouds uncover the sun. A name catches myattention, scrawled toward the middle of the page, and it makes me sit up.
“What’s wrong?”
I shush him with a hand and read, chewing my lower lip. My heart patters quickly in my chest as I work out the translation in my head. “It’s another entry about a criminal he knew.”
“Someone you recognize?”
“Better than that. It’s about Zohran.”
He cranes his neck to see the page, but only exhales in defeat. “Damn Russian. Looks like fake words.”
“Listen to this. My dad says Zohran’s ruthless… difficult by temperament… one of the most aggressive and power hungry of the Dragons, and I guess that’s saying something… but this is interesting. He specifically says Zohran loves playing games. Mentions it twice actually.”
“Games? What’s he mean by that?”
“I think it’s like… mind games. Not chess or whatever, but like… manipulating people. Dad mentions how Zohran controls half his organization through blackmail.”
“Sounds familiar,” Gabe mutters, leaning back to study me.
“Dad seems to think Zohran’s obsessed with games though. There are rumors that the Greek’s got a really bad gambling problem, which I guess isn’t all that bad if you’re rich as sin and it doesn’t matter how much you spend.”
I read through the entry again, flipping through the pages to see if there’s anything else useful I can find, but nothing else popsout. Gabe watches me, clearly considering something. He leans in and kisses me, pulling me tight against him.
“What was that for?”
“I don’t need a reason to kiss you.”
“But you have one.”
His thumb brushes my lower lip. “I think… maybe we can work with this.”
“The games thing?”
“Everyone’s got a weakness. Your father seems to think it was serious enough to mention it a few times, and from what I knew of your old man, he wasn’t the type to make things up. Straightforward to a fault, that bastard.”
“How are we supposed to use this against him though?”
“I don’t know yet, but this is good. This is a starting place. All good plans need one little spark.”
“I guess meeting my mom was worthwhile after all.”
“Baby, getting closure was the point of seeing her… the journals are a bonus.”
“You know, for a ruthless gangster, you’re annoyingly insightful sometimes.”
“I’m a student of human nature.”
“Yeah? And what’s my nature telling you right now?”
