Page 107 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation

“I…”

“Are you fucking all right?” he demands.

“Yes. But what…?”

“He didn’t have ID. But I know who he was.”

“Who?” I push out.

“He was Irish, with the Freedom Army based on the tattoo I spotted. My da ran with them once, back in the day.” His jaw tenses, fingers wrapping tight around the steering wheel. “And I think we might have a big fucking problem.”

TWENTY-FIVE

seamus

I’m notthat into you.

Jesus.

Wrong fucking thought.

I pace the living room.

The Freedom Army itself isn’t a problem. They’re active in Northern Ireland. On the surface, the new branch tends to be political over anarchistic and brutal fighters.

But older members who escaped prison or got out of the Army have found themselves in places like New York, Chicago, Boston, and Toronto. I’m sure there are other places, but those are the most common ones where they fled.

And the dead guy who just tried and failed to play chicken with me was once a member. They love violence, the good fight, and I can see some of them drifting into a group that might be interested in the smuggling routes of Ava’s bratva.

My gaze flickers to her as Torin works on his laptop and Cal smokes.

Dec’s on a different mission, talking to the cat and dog about avenging their furry friends.

“Thanks to Ava, guys, we know where the murderers are, and blood will be fucking spilled. Animals avenged and freed. Lucie’s gonna take them in.”

“What?” Cal asks sharply.

Dec rolls his eyes. “At the café. Chill.”

There’s dirt on him. Smudged on all my brothers, and I know they, along with Harry and Lucie, buried the poor little animals that died.

“We should get something nice, a pretty flowering bush or tree,” Ava says softly as Lucie lowers herself down on the sofa before placing a platter of sandwiches on the coffee table. Harry sits down on the other side of Lucie with a glass of whiskey that she presses into my wife’s hand.

“I’ll help you find the perfect tree,” Harry says to Declan, flicking her ponytail as she shakes her head at the horrible things people do.

We do horrible things.

Not Harry, not Lucie.

But… the rest of us, and I suspect, my sweet thing, too. She’s led something of a life.

The hate is easy to cling to, but while it’s hard to trust her, it’s also getting harder to dislike her.

Ava’s got grit. And I have to admire someone with her degree of self-preservation. She’s been essentially on her own since a teen.

And why the fuck am I even thinking this?

“Most Irish won’t go against us,” Cal suddenly says. “And anyone Shiv had in her clan has no reason to go up against us. Fuck, no one that I know of has a reason. If someone wants to make a move, they don’t send some psycho in a car after us.”