Page 76 of Fate and Family

Uri whispers, “This is gonna sound bad… but he was in Izzy's apartment, on security duty.”

Katya pinches the bridge of her nose, and I can’t tell if she’s making fun of me or not. “Oh for fuck’s sake. How the hell did any of you survive this long?” She shakes her head. “You’re all easily distracted and terrible planners, but somehow you’ve been part of not one but two successful criminal empires?”

Uri speaks up. “Technically speaking, the Four Families are four different criminal empires.”

My girl is unimpressed.

Chapter

Thirty-Three

Katya

Some serious shit’s gone down in the month since my office encounter with Dimitri. Izzy’s ex found her and tried to kidnap Drew, but grabbed Ian instead. The Four Families took care of the situation… so I had to falsify some documents to solve that little issue. Also, Alana’s building blew up. We’re all convinced everything is somehow connected to The Deviant and retaliation. The more I dig, the messier this all gets.

I turn off my computer screen when I smell Marshall’s cologne. He hovers over my shoulder and sniffs my hair. “Katie, the task force found a new lead. It’s in Canada.”

I sigh. “Is it the freight that came in at the Vancouver port yesterday?”

Marshall peers at his notes. “Yes.”

“It’s a dead end. There wasn’t Majesty on the boat, just a bunch of edible glitter, which has no right to exist.”

He drops a file on my desk. “Go to Canada and do your own recon.”

My head tilts and the frown spreads across my lips “No. It’s a dead end. It’s a better use of our time if we start looking into TheSpider, because he’s actually moving Majesty into the country and going as far as branding his dealers.”

Marshall’s eyebrow twitches. “He’s branding them?”

I show him the tattoo I found on three different dealers’ bodies. “They were sampling the merch. It took three attempts, but they figured out the lethal dosage. Spoiler: it’s not very much and easy to fuck up.” I push the pictures around. “Honestly, this is the shittiest business plan I’ve ever seen. It’s too easy to overdose, the shit burns crazy hot and is super flammable, and the profitability for this thing is terrible since there’s no systematic way of keeping track of inventory.”

Marshall sighs. “I still need you to go to Vancouver.”

“Absolutely not. If you make me go, I’m transferring to a different group in the task force.”

“Sounds like a perfect solution. You get to travel, and when you come home, I don’t have to work with you on my team. Win-win.” He shrugs. “Maybe you’ll do better under Declan. He had a bunch of his team members die too. You two can trauma bond.”

Fucking asshole.

After a six hour flight stuck next to a man who smelled like onions, my time in Vancouver is exactly what I expected. I meet up with law enforcement and search the docks, view surveillance footage, and read through local police records. Dead end after dead end.

Red tape means one step forward, ten steps back, and nothing is getting done. My boyfriend is doing more damage to The Deviant than American agencies with millions of dollars and thousands of man hours. And I’m giving up my time and energy for what? For a goal that’s moving further out of reach while a broken system tries to fix it with duct tape and spit.

Maybe moving through unconventional means is the only way to get anything done.

Back at the airport, I send Dimitri a picture of the Majesty logo The Spider uses. Only one more use of this burner. My heart sinks. Nothing in my life is straightforward, nothing is easy. Just once, I would like to do something and see the immediate effects of those actions.

I land and return to the office to find a new assignment waiting for me. At least Marshall made good on his word. There’s an email from my new lead, Declan, who’s worked for DEA for years. He was on the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF), but now he’s in charge of my little task force. He has years of experience, and, unlike Marshall, he’s not waving his dick around constantly.

When he extends an invitation for lunch, I can’t refuse. Do we meet in some posh restaurant to charge it to the Govie’s tab? Nope, we meet at a Potbelly.

“I’m getting a milkshake, you want one too?” he asks before we get in line. It’s winter and forty degrees, but the fact that he’s willing to brave the cold for a sugar rush endears him to me faster than if he handed me a basket of puppies. And he smells like… I don’t know, nostalgia. I can’t place it, but maybe the burnt ends of the over-toasted sandwiches are confusing my nose.

“Sure.” I instantly regret my answer as a gust of wind rattles the building. But at least it comes with a cookie.

Once we get our food, we sit at a tiny table by the bathroom—because this table isn’t next to the window.

“So you and Marshall… how did that work out?”

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