Page 40 of Dirty Hearts

“Great. Meeting adjourned. I’ll be in touch.” I needed to wrap this up. I wanted to touch base with Dante and Gio, then take off and see Ava.

“Thanks for your time.” David put his hand out to shake mine. I took it and gave a polite smile.

He let himself out.

When the door closed, Gio stood up and moved over to the window.

We were all in the small meeting room. My office was still a mess from yesterday with the books from the shelf all over the floor and broken glass near the window where I’d smashed the paperweight.

I’d come in to the cleaner asking if there’d been a fight.

If that happened to someone else, I would have laughed, but it reminded me of my debacle with Ava.

“Don’t sell it,” Gio said, turning back to face me and Dante.

“Five million is a lot to say no to, Gio.” Dante frowned. “Why in the ever-living fuck would we say no to that kind of money?”

“Something’s off with that guy, that’s why.” Gio nodded.

I smirked, glad that it wasn’t just me who’d picked up on that and that I wasn’t completely off my game.

“What made you think that? He’s fucking David Shipel. What could be off about him?”

“Five million for a shipping company that doesn’t have a huge annual turnover, some beat-up ships, and only offers service to a handful of routes.”

“You think it’s too much?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s not that. Something else. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll have him followed and see if there’s something else Mr. David isn’t telling us.”

Dante gave me an uneasy look. “Boss, we have bigger fish to fry.”

“Jesus Christ, what now?” I had too much on my plate.

I looked at the two of them, and they both looked like they’d found something they didn’t want to tell me.

“We thought we do a little digging around of our own last night. Just seeing what we could gather on the Manellos.”

“What did you find?”

“Not the fucking Manellos. We found worse. So much worse.” Gio bit the inside of his lip.

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. There were only a few things that were worse than the Manellos, but I didn’t want to think of any of those things.

“The Antonellas,” Dante said with a very, very grim expression. “Barabbas Antonella. We saw him at the old theatre.”

“Fucking hell,” I breathed and brought my hand up to my chin.

What the fuck did it all mean? Luc had seen one of the Manello lackeys, and now Dante and Gio saw Barabbas.

Both crime families had been absent for too many years for this to just be some coincidence. It fucking well wasn’t.

“Should I even bother to say that something’s going on?” I hissed.

This was it. I was sure. This was the signal of things changing. We’d had it easy for the last three years and some.

People knew who we were, knew we ran the streets of Chicago. Didn’t mean they liked any of it.