Page 105 of Love Thy Brother
Lol. At the fixing it part.
Nothing was motherfuckingfixed.
Saint came back. Minus his boots. Dude’d had a thing about shoes indoors ever since Alexei had come along. He drifted between me and Cam and leaned against the sofa arm, eyes only for Cam.
He said nothing, but the implication was clear.No bugs. I fucking love you.
Cam smiled back, and for a moment, it was just the two of them in the room. I didn’t mind. Sometimes it was hard to be around folk who loved each other as much as they did, but River was here. He wasin my house, crashing around my kitchen while his sister laughed like a dirty hyena. Cam and Saint could swoon at each other as much as they liked, I was good.
“All right.” Cam knocked his fist on his chair. “We couldn’t reach Martel, so me and Nash went to find him. Can’t say he was pleased to see us, and he didn’t know as much as we hoped, but he made some calls. Hooked us up with someone who did.”
“Who?”
“Nino Moretti.”
I shook my head. The name meant nothing to me. “Who the fuck is that?”
“Asa’s boy. I think. Couldn’t quite work it out. Whatever. Point is, we found out the county lines shit has nothing to do with any cartel or crew we need to be scared of. It’s surplus shit from the streets, funnelled out by enterprising grunts.”
“Wannabe bosses?”
“Not even that. Just young bloods with too much product and no territory to sling it. No one’s gonna give a fuck if we chase them off.”
“But?”
Cam’s fingers twitched for his cigarettes. He laced them together and regarded me with a gaze I recognised as well as my own. “Butthis is a culture, man. We can fuck this crew as hard as we like, but as long as we’re passive on our own turf, there’s always gonna be more.”
“We can’t keep dealers out of Porth Luck unless we shift product ourselves.”
“I know.”
“And we don’t want to do that.”
“We don’t.”
“So what do we do?”
Cam blew out an angry breath. “The last thing on earth I want to fucking do. We need to make a deal so it’s someone else’s problem. Walk away and let whatever happens happen.”
“Who? Sambini?”
“Probably.” Cam scowled, hating it as much as I did. “And we can’t profit from it—not if we want to stay clean, but we’ll still have to monitor every fucking shipment to be sure it ain’t little girls on those damn boats. It’s lose-lose for us, whatever way I look at it.”
“What if they don’t want the deal? What then?”
“I don’t know. I’m meeting Gianni next week. We’ll know more then. In the meantime, the crew peddling rat poison and trying to kill you have to go. You want in on that, or you gonna let Saint have his fun?”
The ever-present dilemma. I wasn’t a violent man. Being good at something didn’t make it a fucking hobby. Then again, these cunts had dumped River in the Atlantic and nearly killed him. Whoever they’d been aiming for, that shit couldn’t fly.
“I’m in.”
“Me too.”
I swung my head sideways, the sharp movement twanging my neck.
River stood in the doorway, the candy stick from his Double Dip jammed in his mouth, sugar glittering on his lips, eyes so dark and angry they were almost black.
Cam took a breath.
