Page 4 of Lucky Boys
The words hit me like a ton of bricks. D always knew what to do. Even when he didn’t, he acted like he did. He’d kept me from making bad decisions more times than I could count, and he’d saved my ass just as much. For him not to know . . .
We needed help.
The cops were out. Marshall fucking Fieldburg had been murdered execution style in his high-rise office. The mediawould be swarming. We needed to keep a low profile, and I didn’t think involving authorities would allow us to do that. So that left two other options.
My first instinct was my parents, but I shut that down. They’d retired from this world and deserved that. Plus, Pop’s health was still too shaky to involve him in something like this. Not to mention, this was probably way above their skill level. They dealt mostly with theft, not a shitshow like this.
That left one person. One person I would be happy to erase completely from my memory and never think about again.
I turned away from Diego and, without thinking, pulled out my favorite blade. It had been a gift for my twenty-first birthday. Custom made, engraved, and the most special gift anyone had ever gotten me. I never went anywhere without it, even if it brought out bitter-sweet memories every time I looked at it. In one night, the man who’d given it to me had irrevocably turned my life on its head and then walked out of it without a single glance back. It had been three years and I still couldn’t get fucking Luca Castellano out of my head.
Diego’s eyes flicked to the knife. I wished he didn’t get the significance of it, but he was the one who’d found me hours after Luca had left and fucking destroyed my heart. Diego didn’t know the whole story—I was taking that to the grave, thank you very much—but he understood enough to know that I’d rather walk barefoot over one million Legos than ask Luca for help. He also knew he was probably our best option.
“Do you really want to talk to him?”
I scoffed. “Want to? Fuck no. If I never saw or heard Luca’s name ever again, it would still be too soon. But I think we need him. We’re in way over our heads, and I don’t want to burden Mom and Pops with this.”
Diego swallowed, his eyes wet with unshed tears, but nodded in agreement. “Yeah, no. We’re not gonna involve them unlesswe have to. Dad couldn’t handle the stress.” Neither could Mom, honestly. Taking care of Pops after the stroke was taking a huge toll on her.
“Luca would know what to do.” It was a statement, not a question, but I answered it anyway.
“He would. They deal with high-profile people and cases all the time. This is what they do.” Luca and his crew, Il Fortunato, were the best in the game. They were mercenaries, not that you ever wanted Luca to hear you call them that, and while their jobs and methods weren’t always legal, if you wanted shit done quietly and correctly, you called Luca.
“Will you be okay if he agrees to help us? I don’t know what happened between you two, but every time anyone mentions him or Il Fortunato, you shut down.” I frowned at him.
“I don’t shut down.” He fixed me with a look.
Ugh. Why did this fucker see everything? “Okay, maybe I do, but it doesn’t matter. This is just business. He has resources we don’t and the experience we need. I can suck it up and be in the same room as him. It’s fine.”
Diego didn’t believe me, which was fair. Luca had had a chokehold on me since I’d been old enough to want sex, but I refused to be dickmatized by him again. At least Diego chose not to call me out on my bullshit. “Okay, let’s talk to Luca.”
CHAPTER 2
LUCA
I scrubbedmy hands across my face when the words on the screen started to blur together. No one told you how much fucking paperwork was involved in running your own business, even one like mine.
All these years and I still hated this side of things, but it wasn’t like there was anyone else I could get to do it. Maverick had listed no paperwork as one of his conditions before taking the position, and Skye would probably set the entire office on fire before attempting to sort through all this bullshit.
If my best friend, Wesley, ever took me up on my offer and chose to work for me, then maybe I’d have someone to split this with. But since he was being a stubborn asshole, it fell to me.
I stood up from my desk to stretch, wincing when my back cracked unreasonably loudly. It was moments like this I remembered I’d hit the dreaded 4-0 over two years ago and was creeping closer and closer to 45 every fucking day.
“Okay, I need to get the fuck out of here.” Maybe Skye would be up for a sparring session. He had trained one of Wes’s newly found kids, Beckett, this morning, but he was usually more than ready to go again. Especially if he had a chance to kick my ass.
I didn’t even make it around my desk before there was a sharp knock and the door opened, revealing Maverick. He must’ve just come from his own workout session since he was wearing basketball shorts that barely covered his massive tree-trunk thighs. His gray, cutoff T-shirt was wet with sweat and showed off every one of his muscles. I licked my lips and met Mav’s gray-blue eyes.
He smirked at me. But unfortunately, any thoughts of a teenage make-out session or finding Skye and having some more R rated fun was immediately squashed when Mav started to speak.
“Someone just crossed into our property. Kid, early twenties. Riding a Kawasaki Ninja. He stopped just before the security system triggered, like he knew where it started, and seems to be waiting for us right outside the gate.”
I frowned. That was . . . unusual. While the location of the house itself, really more of a mansion, was common knowledge—it had been in the Castellano family for generations—it wasn’t at all connected with Il Fortunato and my business. I’d made damn sure of that. We even had an office in the city to conduct formal business out of. No one came here. And anyone who was associated with the Castellanos wouldn’t know exactly where to stop before the silent alarm was triggered that brought my private security raining down on them.
I walked back to my desk to pull up the security feed, Maverick following me.
“Do you know who it is?”
Maverick shrugged. “Haven’t looked at the feed yet. Just going by what Leo said.” Leo was the head of the private security company that I employed to protect this place.
