Page 38 of Mob Star

I head into the kitchen and make a bowl of cereal. Dillan and I have been eating the same brand of granola since we were in high school. I look in the fridge.

What the feck is this shite?

Oat milk? Gross.

I pick up the carton and shake it. There’s not much left. I look farther into the fridge and find the gallon of whole milk. That’s better. Once I have a spoon, I head out to the sunroom that’s attached to the kitchen at the opposite end of the dining room.

Mair tries to get off Dillan’s lap, but he pins her in place. I want to roll my eyes. I know exactly why he doesn’t want his pretty bride to stand up right now. It’s not entirely sweet. It makes me think of Thea, and that just makes me hurry to sit down before I’m in the same boat as my cousin.

“How’d things go last night?” Dillan’s question is genuine. It means he hasn’t gotten the morning report yet.

“There were two incidents at Tropicals last night, but everything was quiet.”

“I wouldn’t let Ally hear you call her an incident.”

Well, feck me. I guess he did get the report. I’ll have to thank Sean for crowing at dawn like a fucking rooster. He’s in charge of all our security systems at every business we own. He’s got our places bugged better than every foreign embassy in America. He’s also our intelligence collector. I can hack and program, but he’s the super sleuth. He might not work for the government, but he puts his degree in national security to use. In many ways, our family governs a small empire. So, running it isn’t entirely different from running an oligarchy.

It is an oligarchy.

We need to be on top to stay on top. That means knowing more about everyone else than they know about us. We might not know the last time the Pope shat, but we know just about everything else. We let the other syndicates think we’re barely above dirt farmers and kneecap busting dock workers. They know there’s just as many of us with Ivy League educations as in the other families, but they forget that when they see the personas we want them to see. They think we paid our way in while the rest of them earned their places in those hallowed halls. Let them. It’s convenient.

“She isn’t an incident. The douche who bothered her is. I dealt with that and the guy trying to trade out cards. He was sly and good, but he didn’t realize we have cameras at each table. It was easy to see.”

We have them to keep the dealers honest and to keep an eye on the patrons. I’m glad Sean insisted upon them. I didn’t want to approve the expense. I thought it was exorbitant, but he’s proved me wrong many times over. Every once in a while, my baby brother gets it right.

I change the topic because I don’t want it going back to Thea. I’m not ready to talk about her, and Mair is way too perceptive. She’s a journalist and can sniff a lie from a mile away.

“Is everything squared away with the rugs?”

I can mention it in front of Mair because they’re items we’re bringing into the country legally. What she doesn’t know is what we have stitched into them. They’ll be unwoven to get to the nanochips disguised in the patterns.

“Shane said he tracked them to Indonesia. They got on the wrong freighter.”

I cock an eyebrow.

“It was a legit fuck-up.”

It would have cost us millions and put a strain on our relationship with one of the Triads in Hong Kong. We hadn’t yet taken possession of the cargo. It was on one of their ships when it went missing. We sure as fuck aren’t paying until we have the goods. Our refusal is justified, but they won’t like it. But I’m not paying a penny until the goods are ours, and I have the customs declarations to prove it.

“I need to get to work, Dill.” Mair stands up, and Dillan swings his legs under the table.

She bends to give him a kiss, and I think his eyes might roll back in his head as he peeks down his wife’s blouse. Fucking worse than a sixteen-year-old. But it’s cute. Losing his sister really fucked with him. They were as close as my twin brothers in many ways. She was a year and a half younger, but they were totally in sync. I pulled his head out of his arse more times than we’ve admitted to anyone while he was grieving. He and I have always been closest to each other, but it wasn’t until we lost Colleen that Dillan and I became practically inseparable.

Mair gives him a lot of the balance he lost when Colleen was murdered. I have a feeling he tells his wife more than he probably should, but he did the same thing with Colleen. He trusted his sister’s advice, and he trusts his wife’s. He’s not wrong, even if that trust was highly questionable at first.

“I love you. Have a good day.”

I can’t hear Dillan call Mair cailín, but I can read his lips. They exchange a quick kiss, then we’re alone. I keep eating my cereal, waiting for what I know is coming.

“You won’t like what Sean found.”

“There wouldn’t be anything to dislike if you hadn’t insisted on the background check.”

“Yeah, well after what happened with Mair, call me justifiably paranoid.”

Shane’s background check was thorough, but not as deep as it could have been when Mair applied to be a waitress at 4Play. We didn’t know her real background until shite hit the fan. By then, she and Dillan were halfway in love. Fortunately, finding out what we did made it easier for us to accept her. If we’d learned her full history first, they might not be together. Blessings in disguise, I suppose.

“Is it something dire?”

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