Page 31 of Blood & Heartache

“Flora?” she questioned. “But I thought she wasn’t even in the country, and why the hell would she be the one to ask them to work on my car?”

“That’s about the point I left last night and went to the shop to look at the original paperwork on your car,” Luca shared, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Flora asked them to pick up the car, put in the GPS trackers, and make some modifications to the engine. It’s like whoever she’s working with told her what to ask for, and no matter what, they’d need to special order the parts to upgrade it into a performance engine. If they’d done the work, you could have driven that baby on a racetrack.”

“Do we still think it’s Harvey? Right now, all of this makes it sound like Flora was planning some attack against me even before what went down at the funeral,” Astin reasoned as she started to rub her head again. I couldn’t blame her. All this was making my head hurt too.

“That’s the bite of it all,” Ryker grumbled. “The more we learn, the more nothing makes sense. What would her reasoning be for doing this? She was still under our protection and able to do anything and go anywhere she pleased. Plus, if Flora really wanted to hurt you or cause trouble, she had ten years to do that with you in Apria. Which, to me, means she has someone behind the scenes pulling her strings.”

“Could be why she was so upset about me kicking her out and cutting off all contact. If whoever she’d landed herself in trouble with needed her to be able to come and go as she pleased in our empire, I fucked that up for her,” she muttered. “That still leaves us the massive fucking question of who the hell that would be.”

“Leave that to us. This is what we do and what we’re good at,” Ryker pointed out. “Now that we have a little more to go on and proof that it’s not totally an inside job, it allows us to pull in some help from our teams.”

“It will also help that you’re doing the address tomorrow as well as the oath ritual for the members of the Family,” Liu added.

My brows shot up. “When did that get decided?”

“Today, like an hour or so ago,” Astin shared. “I decided if I’m going to do this, then it’s gonna happen fast. Less time for people to cause trouble and helps to weed out those who aren’t going to accept me as their boss.”

“You’re cleaning house,” Atticus announced, making me almost jump in surprise.

The fucker had been so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was here. It could also be the fact he was standing behind the couch where I couldn’t see him. Still, the man could be one stealthy motherfucker when he wanted to be. If he’d be willing to learn how to fight better, I could see him being the dark horse of our group. No one would ever see that shit coming, and it would be fucking amazing.

“In a manner of speaking,” Astin agreed. “I don’t want to be forced into that, but I will if it means protecting the Caprioni Family as a whole. Internal unrest is one of the deadliest things an organization can suffer from. Better to cut out the rot before it infects everything else.”

I couldn’t agree more. How many times in history have we seen what happens when you take pity on the family of the traitor? They always come back to bite you in the ass and spit in your face. Better to prune what needs to go and save yourself the bigger trouble down the road.

“Is there any information I might be able to acquire for you to help guide your choice? Or is this one of those instances where you rely on the feeling in your abdomen upon careful observation as you speak with them to make the choice?” Atticus asked.

God, when he put it like that, it made the whole gut-instinct argument sound stupid. Astin just smiled at him like he was the most adorable person on the planet. How did he always do that? He could say something to her that was rude and blunt, but she’d just smile as she explained her logic or corrected him in his thinking. Then there were the rest of us who tried to do the same thing looking after her, and we’d get yelled at and put in timeout. I seriously needed him to teach me what his trick was.

“Both will come into play with this, I think. If you’ve already gone through the data on Flora, I’d like you to send it to me. Then I’d like you to go through all the members we have who are in debt, have someone in the hospital or a nursing home they need to pay for, and those who have recently become part of the Family in the past two years,” Astin instructed. “When I wake up, I’ll start going through them.”

“Why those specific traits?” Atticus questioned.

“They’re the easiest to exploit,” I answered, having done that very thing to people on occasion. “It gives you the perfect leverage to control people and get them to do what you want.”

Atticus took a moment to process that and nodded. “Those would be areas that many people feel a great sense of fear in. Might I also suggest gathering information on people who might have family out of the country they’re supporting? I believe that would also fall into the category of being able to exploit.”

“I agree, and if you think of anything else or find a trend in something I might have missed, gather that as well,” Astin directed, then let out a yawn. “Now, I can feel the medicine starting to kick in, and I’d prefer to make it up to my room before something else can go wrong.”

“Do you want one of us to go with you?” Ryker asked.

“Nah, I’ll make Ralph hang out in the living room, and if anything happens, he can call one of you,” she said, pulling over her wheelchair. “The bum leg is enough of a hindrance to me and getting work done. I can’t take one of you guys away from work to watch over me and slow down the progress we desperately need to make.”

It was hard to argue with that logic, which is why none of us did. I got up and headed over to the door, pulling it open to motion for Boykov to come back in. “She’s ready to head up.”

“Ready to have a riveting afternoon hanging out in my suite, Ralph?” Astin called as she settled herself into the wheelchair. “I promised the smother hens if anything happens, you’ll let them know.”

“That I can do, Lady Astin,” Boykov said as he followed her out of the office. He paused, then looked back at us and lifted his left hand to show us his palm. “Just so we all understand each other, her well-being and safety are my first and only priority until the day I die. Just wanted to make sure you understood she’s my boss now, Ryker.”

“Understood,” Ryker said, crossing his arms. “She chose wisely.”

“You know it couldn’t have been you, right?” Boykov asked, giving Ryker a knowing look. “Lovers can’t be objective when it comes to protecting their partners.” Not waiting to see if Ryker had any thoughts on that, Boykov shut the door as he left.

“Hey, did anyone notice Gunner isn’t here?” Braxton asked, making us all take note of that fact.

Where the hell could the golden boy be? He’d have gotten the alert just as we did, so why is he the only one not in this room?

“I’ll go find him,” Luca muttered, storming out of the office.