Page 73 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation

They were looking for the crest.

It makes sense to me now.

I have it hidden in a safe at home. But what the fuck’s so special about it? Whatever’s written on it in Russian? Some mystical thing deemed as whoever has it rules?

This is the modern world, not a place of myth and legend. No one would allow a ruler to take over just because they possess a crest. It’s asking for trouble.

It’s worth something, though.

And Ava… knows. Or, at least, it means something to her.

I walk into the kitchen, but it’s been turned inside out. A red heirloom Le Creuset is on the floor, which I only know because Mam has them, but in blue.

Frowning, I head to her bookshelf in the living room and pull out random books, searching for… I don’t know what.

I pause as my fingers graze the spine of an old cookbook. I pull it out, flipping through the pages. It’s annotated, and for some reason I slide it under my arm. I’m about to look again in the bedroom when a slender pamphlet catches my eye.

Now this… this is the Ava I’ve come to know and loathe. It’s handwritten, photocopied, and it’s about how to build bombs, the flash bomb style. It’s a piece of tattered paper with only the broadest strokes of how to, but on the bottom is a number and a name.

One I recognize.

Brad the Mad is the name he goes by. I don’t know him, because I don’t do business with people who like to sell parts to build bombs. All kinds of parts from feedback I’ve gotten, and he doesn’t—or didn’t—care about who he sold to. I say didn’t because last I heard he was doing time in Rikers for robbery.

But if he’s out…

I know his hangout. And he’ll have names.

I’m about to leave when my phone buzzes. It’s Ben, and would you believe it, the address the two assholes from the restaurant went to was 86, the place dear ol’ Brad likes to call home. That’s convenient.

I close the apartment door, taking the book and the pamphlet, my heels digging into the worn carpet, and I don’t look back.

Mikey and I watch from up the street as the night drags on. The two men I’m interested in either left out the back or are still inside getting their drink on. My money’s on the former. They were meeting for a reason.

Maybe it really has nothing to do with my family, or someone wanting to claim ours as theirs, or wanting to stir trouble in our camp. Maybe we’re not part of whatever the fuck this is at all.

But I can’t shake the feeling that keeps gnawing at my brain that it all had to do with us from the beginning.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it has something to do with the Volkov Bratva and the crest. Which, now that I’m married to Ava, means attention might be on us for that reason, too. Especially as we were at Romanov’s for that wedding.

He fits into this, somehow. Does he want the crest? I can see him wanting the bratva as part of his. He knew the stepmother and Ava’s father. For all his crying about being the target, he could be involved, too.

I sigh.

“Something wrong?”

I’ve run this through with Mikey. He’s family now, by his loyalty to Lucie, by how he’s handling the de Rosa business for us. He’s trusted. So I just say, “I can’t piece all this together.”

“Maybe it’s got a few angles,” he says after a moment. “And maybe it’s about the Volkov Bratva. There’s nothing on my radar from the Italian factions out there, apart from gossip on your marriage and what it could mean to their smuggling routes.”

“You didn’t say anything about that.”

“People talk, Seamus,” Mikey says. “And people like to ponder when someone new enters the mix. It was like that back when the Murphys suddenly appeared on the scene. People talked. Yeah, you’d been here a little while, but you made a splash with the de Rosa deal and they talked. No one did anything about it, though. They speculated about what might change, what it might mean, but… it takes a lot to move in and start wars.”

“And right now no one wants to do that.”

“Not any major players in organized crime.”