Page 39 of Mob Star

“No.”

“Is it something that’ll likely come out through the course of dating her?”

“Probably.”

“Then don’t tell me until it becomes necessary. I’d rather get to know Thea on my own like a normal guy.”

“Fine. Do you want a detail assigned to her?”

“Yes.”

I stare at Dillan. It’s a natural question, and he knows I was going to request it today. But something gives me the feeling that him asking so quickly is a hint that she might need the bodyguards. My hand curls tightly around my spoon, but I don’t press my suspicions. He’ll tell me if whatever he knows becomes a genuine threat.

“Consider it done.”

“I have news about Hollands and Spiegel.”

Director Hollands of the FBI and Agent Spiegel of the ATF are more than just brothers-in-law. So very much more, and Hollands’ sister— Spiegel’s wife —hasn’t a clue that while the cat— her —is away, the mice —them —play with each other.

We’re keeping their secret in exchange for them helping us with a little project. We had our sights set on causing trouble for Lorenzo, Maria’s next oldest brother, in Chicago. It worked, but it didn’t last nearly long enough. He resolved it without too much fuss. Annoying.

Now we’re setting in motion our plan for Marco, Maria’s second oldest brother. The FBI and ATF would love nothing more than to get their rocks off by busting our families. They know they don’t have nearly enough evidence to go after the leaders, so Dillan, Salvatore, Maksim, and Enrique are safe.

They know going after the heirs or seconds-in-command isn’t wise either. That leaves me out. Luca— Maria’s oldest brother and Salvatore’s oldest nephew —therefore his heir —is also out. Aleksei, the second oldest Kutsenko brother, is Maksim’s second and heir until he decides what to do when his toddler son gets old enough to join. Pablo is Enrique’s oldest nephew and heir. He’s safe too.

Marco is the perfect mark. He’s the third highest ranking member of the family, if you exclude his father. His dad’s the family’s consigliere. He’s also Salvatore’s younger brother. He’s the chief advisor and not in the line of succession. He’d be a good person to snag but getting him won’t weaken the Mancinellis as much as it will taking out a young man who could wind up running the Cosa Nostra one day. Luca only has an infant daughter.

We’re putting a lot of resources behind this, but Marco’s fucking shite up by dating Lorenzo’s new sister-in-law. Two sisters with two brothers. Sounds pretty familiar. They’re fucking inseparable. We don’t want the bust to go down when she’s anywhere near him. The goal isn’t to scoop her up too. But now that the ATF and FBI have the scent, they’re baying at the moon. We still have a leash on them, but they’re tugging.

NYC isn’t as big a city as people think. Not when it comes to who you know. We have a new stockbroker who handles most of our trading, but not all of it. The shite I want really kept secret— the billions of dollars of rainy-day money —doesn’t get touched by anyone but me. It’s routed through so many offshore shell accounts I’d forget where it was if I didn’t have an eidetic memory. This new stockbroker is none other than Lorenzo’s new brother-in-law. Yup. The two sisters have a brother who works for us. He also does some odd jobs for the Kutsenkos he thinks no one knows about. Of course, we do.

He's still on probation, so I’ve given him enough money to earn us some good returns and to think he can hurt us if he runs with it. He thinks he knows more about our portfolios than he does. He has just enough rope to hang himself.

My cousins hated playing Monopoly with me. When I was almost ten, and Maria was almost seven, we were both sidelined from soccer. I had a broken wrist, and she had a sprained ankle. We had to go to games with our siblings and cousins, but it was boring. She brought Monopoly one Saturday afternoon. Our parents watched each other like hawks, but they didn’t stop us from playing together. I explained the rules to her, and she got it right away.

Within half an hour, we completely forgot there was anyone around or that we were at a soccer match. We were so engrossed in being real estate moguls. It ended in a draw when it was time to go. We both thought we were so smart when we pulled out our cash. We were definitely fucking smart. But we were the same kind of smart.

We each had cash we let each other see. We had cash we hid behind our backs that we could draw from, thinking the other hadn’t kept count. Then there was money we were sitting on that we never touched. When we added it all up, we had exactly the same amount of cash and our properties with houses and hotels were worth the same.

We were both back in the game two weeks later, and I was home with a cold in between. We never played anything together again, but we used to laugh about it in school because I’m three years ahead of her. We were both our class treasurer throughout middle and high school.

Steven, the stockbroker, only gets the money we want him to see. He thinks he knows what’s in the stash I’ll pull from. He has no idea about the money I’m sitting on. We’ll see if he passes the test.

“Earth to Finn.”

“Huh?”

“Hello. You’re not even fecking listening, are you? Thinking about a particular green-eyed angel?”

“Actually, no. I was thinking about how Steven could become a problem if his sister gets caught up in the shite with Marco. I want Sean to warn him off. Tell him his family needs to get away from the Mancinellis. They get one friendly heads up, and that’s it. But give them the chance to keep her out of the FBI’s and the ATF’s crosshairs.”

“I talked to Sean this morning. He thinks Tres J’s wants to target Marco, too. I don’t know if they got a whiff of us or if lightning struck twice, and they had an original thought among them. We can let them take the fall for this and let them face Marco. But if they get in the way, they’ll feck up months of planning.”

“Shouldn’t they still be at their aunt’s hospital bed? I heard it’s dire.” Dillan and the rest of us can be sympathetic to a point, especially when it’s about one of the moms.

“From what I heard, it is. I don’t know if the cancer’s terminal, but that’s the feeling I got.”

“Did our moms send anything round to them?”

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