Page 31 of One for the Money

Brushing that aside, I returned my focus to the matter Ballio had discovered. Whenever there was a new customer looking to work with me, I had my people do a cursory look into them. Due to the request and the risk of the job, Bear instructed Ballio to look deeper. Wouldn’t you know there was a connection to this person and one of the shell companies tied to Bootleggers. Follow that trail further and, ta-da, it landed me right in Serena’s lap. The bitch was trying to get me to break a law so major that they’d have no choice but to lock me up.

Flipping through the other information Ballio gathered from sources on the dark web, someone had put a bounty on my head. Personally, I was offended that I was only worth one and a half million—it seemed a little low for the effort people would have to go through. However, it brought up the question as to why Serena was putting so much work into getting me out of the picture.

Was it really because she wanted to get to the twins first? She had to know I wasn’t planning on letting them live, so maybe Serena does need them alive, which makes me the biggest threat to them. None of this made sense. There were too many missing pieces to the puzzle, and the only way to get answers was to find the fucking twins. They’d split up, making it harder for anyone to locate them, and that had to mean something.

Wracking my brain, I tried to put myself in the twins’ shoes. What happened five years ago that would push them to the point of being willing to break away from the plan set in place all these years? Snatching my phone, which Bear had been thoughtful enough to bring down with him, I scrolled through my contacts until I landed on the one I needed. The call rang and rang until it hit voicemail, so I hung up and called again.

“This better be fucking important, Von. It’s three in the fucking morning, and I just got to sleep,” Hound growled into the phone.

“Aww, poor grumpy Hound Dog,” I cooed. “I figured you’d want to know my people figured out who’s stirring shit up and spreading false information.”

“Hound, if you’re not going to hang up, then leave. Some of us would like to sleep,” Jace muttered in the background.

“Hey, don’t be crabby. He said it was Von, I’m sure it’s important. Right, Von?” Astin said, asking the second part louder so I could hear.

There were sounds of rustling and disgruntled noises from a few different men, telling me my girl had lots of fun last night. I had a high sex drive, and Bear had been right to say I wouldn’t be satisfied with just him. Yet thinking about juggling seven men all the time seemed like too much work, even if having seven dicks at my beck and call was a dream come true.

“Okay, run that by me again, V?” Hound asked, sounding more alert.

“You told Astin I should keep my eyes and ears open about some shit going down that could lead to a bigger issue. Well, I had someone approach me about getting SAM missiles, and the only place to get them was in Trian. More specifically, the nuclear missile silo that no one is willing to admit exists,” I explained. “Normally, I wouldn’t look into the reasoning behind why the person is asking for shit. Anyway, Bear pointed out that now I’ve picked a side, I had to care when it was something that could be used against my girl, Queenie.”

“V, I know you’re trying to tell me something important, but I’m running on fumes here. Just spit it the fuck out,” Hound urged.

“God, you’re no fun when you’re crabby, Hound Dog,” I grumbled. “Fine, the basics are that Serena is using her status as Gian’s widow to pull strings in his companies. The person who asked for the missiles was tied to a shell company owned by the Accardi Family. I think she was banking on me taking the job so I would get caught and thrown in prison. You know, the underground one that no one ever gets out of.”

“Fuck,” Hound swore loudly.

“Yeah, that’s how my day is going,” I agreed. “But that isn’t why I called.”

“There’s more?” Hound asked.

“Hey, none of that, it’s not appreciated,” I shot back. “Look, I know you built a database of information about the five families with the help of all the allies. I got a solid lead on the twins… well, one of them, but I need more information. Five years ago, something happened in the Accardi Family that caused the twins to split up. From what I understand, they were instructed to always be together, but now they’re not. I don’t have the contacts to look into this shit, but you do.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, but then I heard the sound of keys typing. “Five years ago, you said?” Hound questioned.

“Yes, and my gut is telling me it has something to do with Serena. The whole point of having the sneaky sparesie twins was they would take over the Family if everyone else died. So how does Serena have as much power as she does? Also, I think she’s trying to take me out before I can get to the twins, but that doesn’t feel right to me,” I shared. “Something weird is going on, and I now have a fucking bounty on my head.”

“Wait, what?” Hound demanded.

“Yeah, one and a half million dollars for whoever can prove I’ve been taken out,” I grumbled.

“Found it, and it looks like it’s only been up for a few days. I’m gonna deal with that and see if I can track down anyone who’s taken the job so I can give you a heads-up. It’s nearly impossible to scrub something from the deep web, but I’ll do my best and set up an alert if those keywords are brought up,” Hound assured me. “You have people in-house who work on the dark web, right? Maybe if I tie them in, we can cover more turf.”

“While that’s real sweet, HD, I’m not worried about the bounty. Finding the twins and filling in some of the blanks will give me the information I need to chop the head off the snake. If there’s no one calling the shots, then there’s no bounty, and no bounty means no one will do the job,” I countered.

“Look, if something were to happen to you and I could have helped prevent it, Astin would chop off my dick. This is more about self-preservation than me worrying about your crazy ass,” Hound stated.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the salty tone in his voice. “Don’t worry too much. I hear she rather likes your dick, so you’d have to do something pretty major to lose it.”

“Yeah, and this is where the conversation is going to end,” Hound warned. “I’ll let you know what I find after I get some damn sleep.”

“Nighty-night, Hound Dog, don’t let your bedmates bite,” I sang out before he hung up on me. “Crabby, crabby, crabby.”

Sitting back in my cactus chair, I kicked up my feet and shut my eyes, trying to figure out how all these pieces fit together. This was so not my department. Queenie was the master at taking the smallest bit of information and seeing how it connected in the spider web of the criminal world. Now that I was going to have Hound’s help, it would be easier, but I still had to wait for whatever he managed to dig up. So, I decided to take that problem and focus on what I was good at—hunting.

When Bear and Erik returned to my office, I was standing in the middle of a sea of maps. I’d started with the address we’d been given, then laid out the surrounding area going up into Hasnad. It was so close to the border that it was stupid not to consider it a viable option. Trent never told us what kind of ID or papers he made for the twin. It could have been proof of citizenship to Hasnad or Trian since they bordered Nepreea. The only other direction he could have gone was out into the ocean, and I didn’t think that was the move either twin would make.

“Ah…” Erik said upon seeing the chaos. “Going somewhere?”