Page 99 of The Mafia Enforcer's Temptation

“Your little wife. What’s the fucking deal? We agreed no problems from the Romanov factor. But he was right about the other evening, feelings about him aside.”

I put down the wrench and stand up. “What are your feelings?”

“I fucking don’t trust anyone outside the family. That little get-together was what he said. But I can say it clearer if you like. They were circling like fucking vultures.”

“There’s no real difference if we, with Ava, take over her bratva. It’s basically only a small shipping company and smuggling routes. Right now, it’s running with a couple of changes in leadership. She’ll be another, but the fundamentals stay the same.”

“Yes and no. What if the circling’s been going on longer? What if the uncle, or the uncle’s second, was making a deal with someone, or promised one, and your bride, along with us, have come along and upset things? I guess I’m saying we’re in this, so we should push to see the players.”

He’s right. Someone wants that bratva. Or rather the smuggling routes.

Which makes us want them more.

But it isn’t just that. Everything, right from us stepping into that security job, seems to hold parts of a bigger picture.

Perhaps we were targets the moment word got out the Murphys were the security detail of the Assisi and Romanov wedding. And the whole marriage to Ava sweetened the pot with regard to people trying to take what’s ours.

No one in my family is naïve enough to think we’re not ever going to be a juicy target to a greedy fool.

Maybe the planets aligned and the perfect shitstorm of events have happened. Ava coming to me to propose—literally—opened us up to someone who wants her smuggling routesand then saw the opportunities that taking our territories would offer.

Someone like Romanov?

Or maybe… “Ava knew Paddy and learned to makeshitebombs from him.”

Cal leans on the bike. “Do you think she’s manipulated us from the start, carrying on the vendetta of a dead man?”

He doesn’t sound convinced.

I’m not convinced.

And yet… Ava hates me.

Every attack on her, or situations where I’ve gotten close to getting information, like finding out who the man with the scar is, has ended with her in one piece and a number of bodies scattered around her.

Like the guy she worked with. Her friend in the gutter in the rain.

What if she’s out to kill me and take what she can from my family with her end goal being me dead and… what? Paddy avenged?

“I honestly don’t know. The Semtex trail fizzled, which isn’t a shock, but her involvement from the start would mean a mighty big plan.”

“Paddy’s been dead a while now,” he says. “And none of this fits. Which makes me think we need to be more proactive.”

I look at him. “Poke around and see what happens?”

“Exactly.”

The door leading to the brownstone where Ava is cooking opens and the cat and dog barrel in, followed by Dec. “What the fuck is for dinner, because it smells amazing?”

All through dinner I can’t help but circle back to what, exactly, Ava’s involvement is in this whole shit show.

But while I might be missing something, and I know she’s not telling me everything about her altercation outside of Romanov’s townhouse, a grand plan with Paddy being carried out now is ridiculous.

Ridiculous doesn’t mean wrong.

It just means it’s unlikely.

My main issues are that she’s untrustworthy and she despises me as much as she’s attracted to me. From firsthand experience of both, it makes for a very volatile situation.