“And your point?”
“It’s got to be bad for business.”
Max’s dark eyebrows rose slowly.“I have ways of getting through the day without ruffling the FBI’s feathers.”
Simon wanted to ask for specifics, but decided to hold his tongue.He got the feeling his line of questions was starting to irritate the man.He did not want to risk setting him off before the main course.
From the moment Atticus walked into thisrestaurant, he felt as though he’d been tossed down the rabbit hole.Something about the entire thing felt surreal.Like he was witnessing it all from the safety and security of a dream.
Only, the guys standing sentry around the perimeter of the room really were wielding AKs and standing guard over their boss.
Funny that.Based on the way Brantley talked to Max—with absolutely zero respect—he wasn’t aware of the army of men, or he simply didn’t care.
Atticus knew he shouldn’t, but he found that insanely hot.
“You don’t sound worried,” Simon said, watching Max as he’d been doing since he sat down at the table.It was like the guy was trying to catalog everything about Max so he could jot it down later.
“The FBI and every other alphabet agency have been out to take my family down for years.They’ve failed so far.”
Another thing Atticus found hot and probably shouldn’t … the way Max was so calm and so cool.For a man who needed an army to protect him from God only knows who, he was taking the whole thing in stride.
It was likely the reason the guy still looked so young.
Atticus had done his homework, so he knew Maximillian Adorite was thirty-six years old, and the current head of the Adorite Crime Family, a.k.a.the Southern Boy Mafia, having taken over when his father was killed a while back.Leyton Matheson, the acting underboss, was Max’s childhood friend and was now married to Max’s sister, Ashlynn.Over the course of the past couple of years, the organization had been restructuring, securing its foothold on the state in order to keep the Moroso Crime Family at bay.
According to data that Luca and JJ uncovered last night, the Adorites had control of a significant portion of northern Texas, including all routes into and out of all four bordering states—New Mexico, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.They did not control the pipeline from Mexico; however, they had established valuable relationships with several of the cartels.
Based on the fact that the media referred to them as the Southern Boy Mafia, Atticus had expected some sort of redneck hillbilly running the show.That was so not the case.Max and his five-thousand-dollar Armani suit were about as far from hillbilly as one could get.The man seemed to command respect by simply breathing.Add to that his somewhat laid-back personality, and this could’ve been any old Saturday night dinner among friends.
Minus the armed guards, of course.
“We don’t need a dossier of your crimes,” Brantley stated.“We know it’s vast and long.What we need to know is whether you know anything about the guy leading the charge against you.”
“What about Censorious?”Archer asked when Max didn’t respond.
Atticus was watching Max, so he caught the slight tick in his jaw.Whether he would admit it or not, he definitely recognized the name.
“That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while,” Max said with a grin.“They still around?”
“Seem to be,” Simon said, his attention raptly focused on the mob boss.“They’ve been dormant for a while, but it appears they’re fortifying ranks once again.”
Atticus listened while they relayed all the information they’d uncovered in the past couple of days, clueing Max in on every single detail.
It wasn’t until just then that Atticus wondered whether the whole relay of information was intentional.Give the mob boss the info and let him solve the problem himself.
Kinda genius if that were the plan.
But if it wasn’t…
