Page 124 of The Boss

I straighten a bit and pick up a bigger piece of rubble. I grit out, “I am not mopey.”

“You are and it’s really damn weird. You can’t be all sad when we go for our revenge strike tonight. So maybe go run or fight someone or shoot something.”

“I’m...” I move a massive chunk of concrete into a wheelbarrow. It crashes down with a thud, “Fine!”

All the men around us look away.

Okay, so I’m mopey.

And I want to tell Mac everything.

You don’t get it, she’s in a place that doesn’t exist, using technology that is technically supposed to still be in an R&D bunker in Area 51, surrounded by geniuses almost as smart and sneaky as her, finally a leader, finally doing what she’s made for, which is changing the whole damn world! She left! She left and she’s never fucking coming back to me!

“I’ll go punch someone,” I say instead. I leave the house to go around to the far side and reenter the gym. It was hardly hit at all. As I stalk there, Tink comes up beside me. But she’s not looking at me, she’s looking past me. Looking for Luna. Missing her person. Don’t I fucking know the feeling.

I’m afraid I’ll feel it the rest of my life.

CHAPTER 53

Luna

“You were able to find four of Quinn’s properties easily, we need to clean that up immediately.”

“I agree,” I say into my coffee, no longer surprised that she knows everything about everything. “And if the Volotov’s expect a retaliatory move, they’re probably already planning their countermove. Plus they have the Remnant, the old Irish informing them, so we should add more people at all of Quinn’s safe houses, drop zones, everywhere. Do…do we have that kind of man power?”

Allie stares at the interactive map on the screen in front of us. “Only if it’s absolutely necessary. It takes those field agents away from other assignments, which are also vital.”

“There aren’t any reserves?” I ask, thinking about this organization like a military.

“Unfortunately, no. The syndicates have grown rapidly but they’re sloppy. We’ve chosen quality over quantity but we’re starting to feel the effects now. We haven’t had the manpower or margin to train at the numbers we’d like.”

I slump back in my seat. “That’s…disappointing,” I admit because it is. Papa always had low-level nobodies in training. We didn’t have a single week without new recruits coming in. Theywere either in thefamigliaand aging up or they came off the streets wanting to leave a life of street gangs and petty crimes to join the big leagues, the mafia.

She goes on to explain the numbers we do have and where we can move them. She asks for my input, listens to my suggestions, and has made a few adjustments in the plan. Thanks to me. It feels…amazing.

And lonely. It’s been a couple days and aside from pockets of meetings, I’ve been alone. I’ve been working, getting up to speed on every file, project, and orientation task Allie sends my way. But I’m at a desk with my laptop, just like everyone else is at their desk, working furiously on their respective assignments.

We break for the afternoon and I find myself wanting to find a reason to keep meeting. But I have none. So I go to my quarters and grab a snack out of the fridge. As I eat I do what I’ve done a million times already. I pull up videos of Van.

Quinn.

Sully.

That’s what Allie called him when he was young. He looked like a Sully back then.

The training footage is a lot like he described. It seems like a military summer camp almost, since they spent condensed time together. Long weekends, summers, holidays. Any time they could get away from their cover stories.

The Cave, their underground facility, looks a lot like a camp too. Bunk rooms, a small cafeteria instead of a family dining room, a gym and a laboratory and of course the armory and gun range. Garage of military vehicles.

“Okay, not like a summer camp,” I say to Marlon. He stares at my protein bar. I give him a tiny piece, then swipe through the video thumbnails on my iPad until I find the set of videos I want.

Van and his few brothers and sister seem like a small fraternity of warriors and spies. There’s some class footage, test records and weapons training, but I like to watch the sparring the best.

Van was incredible, even as a teen.

But with O, he became unstoppable.

I see now why these people love Command so much. They got parents, yes, but O is…well he’s Quinn. The Quinn that I knew who loved on his dogs and scrubbed floors with his men and fought like a machine. How the asswipe that is Mark White came from the same situation is beyond me. Though he’s also…not the worst fighter I’ve ever seen, I can give O credit for that.