Page 81 of Mob Star

“Down the hall to the next unit. Just before you get to it, there are three vending machines.”

Sean looks in the direction I point. You can’t see the machines from here. He’s holding his computer, so he grabs the bag.

“It’s just down the hall, Sean.”

His look tells me not to even bother.

“Thank you for coming. I didn’t handle things well when I called Finn. I should have tempered my wording a bit.”

“No. You did the right thing. It would have worried him more if those four pages didn’t upset you. He knows you’re taking your protection seriously, which means one less thing to worry about for him while he sorts out who threatened you.”

“Did he tell you I didn’t want to bother you with coming here to sit around and do nothing?”

“I wasn’t doing nothing. I was working. I had stuff to do on my computer, and I was guarding you. Ally, we used to call Finn ‘Doubting Thomas’ when we were kids. He believed nothing without proof. It makes him a stellar mathematician. He excels at investing and playing the Stock Market, and he can root out any accounting discrepancy dating back to the Renaissance. He trusts very few people to begin with. There are eight men he trusts your safety to with no reservation. Shane, me, Cormac, Seamus, Dillan, our dad, and our two uncles. Dillan feels the same way about Mair. My dad and uncles feel the same way about my mom and aunts. We may allow other men to guard you when we’re certain the situation is under our control. The moment it’s not, the family circles the wagons. You’re protected now just the same as my mom, aunts, and Mair. Nobody considers guarding the women who mean the most to our family as doing nothing.”

We stop in front of the vending machines, and Sean pulls coins and a couple dollar bills from his pocket. I do the same, and he shoots me the same look as earlier.

“What would you like besides the Coke Zero?”

“A Twix, please.”

“That’s it? I’m having a Twix, a Snickers, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.” He grins unrepentantly.

“And you work out twice a day.”

“I think you earned at least two treats today.” He hands me the Twix and waits. His grin is contagious.

“The pretzel M&Ms, please.”

He gets his own snacks after handing the candy and soda to me. We walk to the lounge in silence as we eat. Chocolate really is the soul’s best medicine. That and cheese.

I finish my snack and head back into the NICU at the opposite end of the hall from the vending machines. Things are quiet for the rest of the day and the next. I still can’t shake the dread over the four pages, and the pessimist in me wonders if the Code Pink was a way to get at me. My respiratory distress patient has a potential nerve disorder, but we need more tests to diagnose that definitively. I’m dead on my feet when I head into the break room for a nap. It feels like a million years ago— not two days ago —that I was soaking in the tub with Finn.

I still can’t shake the one question that’s been plaguing me. What the fuck is going on?

Chapter Nineteen

Finn

Is someone trying to get to me through Thea? Does Corey’s reach extend as far as the hospital?

The hospital still uses an encrypted paging service that doesn’t run on Wi-Fi or cellular networks. That doesn’t mean it isn’t hackable. Sean said nothing to Thea while he was waiting for her, but he was already working on tracing the incoming pages. His own encrypted program allowed him to infiltrate the system and discover Thea’s beeper log.

Someone accessed the hospital’s system remotely. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. A doctor can receive messages when they aren’t at the hospital, but they shouldn’t receive pages sent away from the medical facility. There are a handful of people I know who have the skill to hack into a system and do that. The first who comes to mind is Lorenzo. Considering we’ve been trying to fuck him over lately, he’s at the top of my list.

The next are Anton Kutsenko and Sergei Andreyev— the bratva. They have their Ivy League educations and believe that makes them both superior to all the other families’ computer experts. Bully for them they went to UPENN where Sergei got into hacking. My baby brother went to Cornell, which has the highest ranked Computer Science program of all the Ivies right now. He’s just not a showoff. Plus, he has that degree in national security and all.

And finally, at the bottom of the barrel is Joaquin. He’s by no means an idiot or uneducated. He went to MIT, so he has the training to create the programs his family needs to fly under the radar for everything. He has plenty of experience hacking, too. His shortcoming is his impatience. He doesn’t always dig far enough, and he can be sloppy. He’s a D’s get degrees kinda guy. We know he was at the top of his class, but he’s a minimalist when it comes to effort. He sailed through his classes because he’s naturally that smart. But when something calls for hard work, he bails or does a half ass job. I’m not convinced he’d attempt to disguise the call routing as much as what Sean explained to me. But I won’t discount him by any stretch. The least likely answer is often the right one.

Even if we figure out the who, that doesn’t explain the why. Why use Thea to get to me besides knowing it’ll piss me off more than anything else? Is that the sole reason? What does scaring her or pissing me off gain them? Do they think I’ll be rash and lash out without aforethought?

The questions are on a loop in my mind as I run payroll for all our businesses. If other people didn’t depend upon me to get paid accurately and on time, I would have ditched this in a heartbeat and gone to the hospital. I would have been Thea’s guard. But I don’t have the luxury of being irresponsible like that. Not like Tres J’s or Carmine— that shitbag. He might appear like he’s repentant and matured, but he’s still a big bag of arse. Spoiled and petulant since we were all kids. He may have gone to Stanford, but he graduated from USC— University of the Spoiled Child. He’s an only, and his parents think the sun shines out of his arse.

How he convinced his wife to marry him is beyond me. He humiliated her at Salvatore’s wedding reception about fourteen years ago. He fucked Maria’s best friend in the restroom right before his uncle announced his betrothal to Serafina. He was straightening his tie and smoothing back his hair when he walked in. The girl’s dress was barely back in place. Carmine and Serafina actually love each other, so it wasn’t an arranged marriage after all. Fuck if I know what she sees in him.

Get your mind back on what matters.

Thea.

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