Page 2 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation

Dec’s a little trigger-happy. “Seamus, I can?—”

“Hold off. Got that, Dec?”

My little brother grumbles. But he knows we’re here for peace, not a war, and people have enemies. There are opportunists who’d like a war, who’d want to break up the uneasy new alliance between the Russian and the Italian families.

I can handle them. This is what I do.

Still… I get up and kick the corpse out of my path as I say to the dead man, “Told you I was security, dumbass…”

I glance back at the mansion. The figure’s gone. The grounds are big by New York standards and small by everyone else’s. It makes an invasion something we’d definitely see coming. But it also makes individual threats harder to notice.

Especially if it’s an invasion masquerading as an individual… I let the thought marinate for a minute.

What the fuck?

I pause and kneel down on the ground. Wire cutters? I move the flashlight. Abandoned gun. Some strips of wire.

Now my heart stutters.

I know what that means. I carried wire cutters and other tools back in the day for the exact situation when a bomb might need dismantling. Or to adjust timing of the detonation.

Shite.

A fucking bomb? I hit mute on the call with my brothers. This time, I don’t search for movement. I stay low, moving from the trees to the bushes that line the sculpted yard.

What kind of bullshit mafia and bratvaeejitsdecided to have no security for this wedding, other than a third party in a show of trust?

I mean, who really trusts anyone these days, unless you’re family? It’s just some bullshit construct to woo people into a sense of false security.

I peer into the darkness. There. A footprint. A strip of red plastic from a wire. My flashlight picks up on something beneath a bush. If it’s remote controlled, I’m fucked. Everyone here is fucked, too.

I unmute myself.

“—and I’ll fuck the motherfuckers up the?—”

“Shut it, Dec,” I say quietly. “Cal?”

“Yeah?”

“Move everyone to the west side of the mansion.”

“Why?”

“It starts with aBand ends with one, too.” It might sound like I’m making light of the situation, but I’m deadly fucking serious.

He doesn’t ask what kind; he doesn’t tell me to leave it alone. He knows me.

“Be careful now,” Cal says.

I bend down on my knee to investigate when a twig snaps. I flip around, gun pointed into the night. Another bullet cracks, this one slicing the air near my temple.

Motherfucker. I hold up the flashlight. That’s when I see him. I line up the shot, aim, and pull the fucking trigger. I’m not at the skill level of Torin, my assassin brother, but I’m damn good. We all are.

The asswipe hits the ground with a thud.

“Torin, move Dec and the men in at your discretion,” I say. “West side first. Wait until this bomb is dead.”

Or me.But I don’t say that.