Page 59 of Honorable Sins

Something inside my chest twists when she uses that name outside of our lovemaking. Another person might call it a heart, but she's my heart. "I love you, too, mo chiste is a stór."

Brogan is dressed in one of his immaculate suits when he arrives. Ten minutes later, his suitcoat is off and his sleeves are rolled up. His tie is around Lars' throat and he's cutting off the other man's air.

All without saying a single word.

When he loosens the tie so Lars can suck in a breath, Brogan says, "I'm Brogan Shaughnessy. Apparently, you're in my city with the intent of killing me."

"Not kill you," Lars chokes out. "Watch you."

"Your boss said the plan was to kill me after my underboss got sent up by the Feds. That right?"

"Ja." Lars stares blearily at Brogan.

His slip into Swedish for the affirmative says all I need to know about how far past his mental barriers the drugging compounds have taken us.

The whole thing settles into place with a clean click.

FBI arrests me. Kenneth steps into the vacuum, not guaranteed underboss, but close enough if he can panic the right men and play on his family ties to Brogan. After a sufficient interval, Brogan dies and Kenneth blames it on the Swedish mafia wanting to steal our Whisper gun technology.

Kenneth starts a war with Stockholm and inherits what he could never earn.

The incident with Sadie and the boys was meant to damage Fitz, frighten Kara, expose weakness in my family, and force my hand in the wrong direction. Instead, it pulled Kenneth into the light before he was ready. It cost him his lieutenancy. It gave Wraith a family to protect and a reason to tear Kenneth’s operation apart from the inside.

Kenneth’s plan wasn’t stupid in design.

But after at least six years of meticulous planning and preparations behind the scenes, Kenneth rushed into action and it cost him. The question is: why?

"Did you tell your cousin about your plans to retire?" I ask Brogan as he constricts the tie around Lars' throat again.

Brogan's grimace is all the answer I need.

"You didn't learn a feckin' thing six years ago, did you?" I ask with bite.

What a lot of people within our mob don't realize is that Brogan has been pretty much a nominal boss since his loose lips nearly cost us all too damn much. He runs Shaughnessy Corp but I've been running the majority of the mob business since then.

Shaking his head, Brogan turns his attention back to Lars and extracts every atom of potentially useful information to our mob he has in his compromised brain.

We learn Kenneth provided information on Brogan's habits, addresses for the warehouse. Lars found the deeds to the apartment houses and traced the shell companies back to Shaughnessy Corp.

Not that difficult since the Shaughnessy's have never tried to hide that they owned the buildings. The shell companies are tax shelters in this case, not obfuscation. Though, we're naturally cautious about making our holdings public record.

Lars knows nothing about The Bunker, but he watched the apartment buildings to gather intel on the mob and our numbers.

He wouldn't have found out much since less than a quarter of our active soldiers make their homes in one of the buildings. But any information is more than we want another syndicate knowing.

He didn't just watch them, or note Brogan's movements either. He watched me. He watched Kara. He knows Fitz attends St. Patrick's.

I prepare a hypodermic with a lethal dose of Special K. No reason to waste another dose of the Triad or Greek's compound on execution.

"You done?" I ask Brogan.

"Yes."

I administer the Special K. Combined with the benzo compound already in his blood, it should stop his respiratory system in about fifteen minutes.

He'll be docile until then. I use the time to get Lars to unlock his cell phone and tell me where his computer is hidden. He's barely breathing by the time he tells me the security protocols for accessing it too.

Blood splatter staining his once pristine white shirt, Brogan washes his hands and forearms in the stainless steel sink against the far wall.