Page 14 of Bartered Innocence

She reaches over and brushes the hair away from my face. “Have an open mind, Isabelle. He may surprise you.”

Her words settle in my heart, and I roll to lie closer, really needing a hug from her. “Maybe.”

Chapter5

Rian

“She seemed terrified,”Aodhan comments.

I smirk, glancing up at him as I type out the last few texts to my men. Rolling my shoulders, I watch the passing city as we drive to the quieter suburbs. I prefer my penthouse and the security it provides. It also limits unexpected visitors, but my father refuses to leave the home he built with my mother, and I refuse to uproot a dying man.

“She’s not terrified. She’s furious. I doubt she’ll run, but Cormac put the tracker on her car, right?”

Aodhan nods. “He debated putting one on Luca’s for retaliation, but in the end left it.” Luca tried to plant trackers on our cars while first negotiating the marriage. While I can appreciate the effort, I’m still annoyed at the nuisance of having to scan all of our vehicles.

“Hmm. He would have found it right away like we did,” I say, though I probably would have had the same thought as Cormac.

“But it would have been fun to tease him.”

I exchange an amused glance with Aodhan, and then the humor is lost when we find Cormac waiting at the front of the house as we park. Work never stops, and some days I hate it more than anything. Today I would have enjoyed staying in that house, teasing Isabelle further.

“Gio was spotted in Jersey this morning,” Cormac says as I climb out of the car.

“Luca’s Capo?”

Cormac rolls his eyes. “Capo to be, at most.”

My shoulders tense. “When was this? While we were meeting with Luca?”

He nods and shows me the photo on his phone.

“What’s he doing there?”

While we all have business in the neutral territory of Manhattan, the Famiglia holds the rest of New York up to Boston and some parts of Canada. They have no reason to venture into Jersey since it’s our territory. We run from Jersey City to Philadelphia and down to Richmond. The East Coast is ours. This is why our war never seems to die down, we’re too close to each other. Of course, there are other syndicates farther west. The Outfit rarely venture out of Chicago, only coming as far as Cincinnati at times. The desert is the Camorra’s, from Santa Fe to where they choose to reside in Vegas. I’ve heard whispers of them venturing into Texas, but I can’t be bothered to check. They seem to leave us and the Famiglia alone as we do them. The West runs drugs while we prefer to run guns. I dabble a bit more with alcohol imports to wash our money at the bars, and I know Luca prefers his clubs and whatever underground nonsense he has going on.

“We lost track of him, but then he resurfaced in New York a few hours later.”

My eyebrows pinch. “So a short trip…perhaps to visit someone then. A conversation that couldn’t be tracked.”

Cormac shrugs. “Or a drop-off? Could just be checking in on a stash.”

I shake my head. “They wouldn’t risk anything stationary we could find. But a person? I can see it.”

Grabbing the pack in my pocket, I smack the end of it on my palm and hand one to Aodhan, who takes it begrudgingly. “You know the more time I spend with your father, the less I want to smoke these.”

I laugh, lighting the end of the cigarette. “Yeah, I get that. A nasty habit, hard to quit.”

Sighing, I glance between him and Cormac. “What did Declan say?”

“Said Gio avoided cameras like he was a ghost.”

My eyebrows flicker. “He’s worried about someone in our surveillance?”

Cormac shrugs. “He didn’t say.”

“Have Declan check back to see if they’ve slipped into our territory before without notice.”

“How far back?” Cormac asks, already dialing on his phone.

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