Page 76 of To Kill a Badger (The Honey Badgers Chronicles #6)

In answer, the woman held up bakery boxes. Bria figured someone had ordered breakfast, and this was the delivery. She motioned the woman in and led her through the house toward the kitchen.

“Let me tell you something,” Bria screamed over her boyfriend, “if I find out you’ve been fucking Franny Rossi, I’m going to kick her ass and then I’m going to kick your ass and then I’m going to kick everybody’s ass!”

She disconnected the call and motioned the delivery woman toward the table her older siblings sat at.

They were drinking coffee and trying to wake up to start their days.

They’d all been tense since all the shit started with their Italian half-siblings.

No one really talked to Bria about it, but she heard everything.

She knew exactly what was happening, but she simply didn’t have time to worry about any of it. She had a boyfriend to destroy.

A boyfriend calling her back. She turned off her phone. She’d turn it back on in exactly eighteen minutes so she could see the barrage of voicemails and texts he’d sent her in that time. And God help him if he didn’t send those voicemails and texts.

“What’s this?” Gio asked, as the woman put the bakery boxes on the table.

“The food you ordered,” Bria said, pulling out her second phone from her back pocket to turn it off, too.

Gio looked at their other siblings, and everyone simply shrugged.

“No one ordered food, Bria,” he said. “You didn’t order it?” he asked her.

“No. Maybe Antonella ordered food.”

“That would require her to use a phone. She’s not in the mood to use a phone, remember?”

The siblings stared at one another for a moment before slowly looking over at the woman standing by the table.

She wasn’t tall, but she wasn’t tiny either.

African-American with curly black hair in a high ponytail, one white streak shooting through the strands, some of those beautiful curls also in braids.

She was muscular with extremely large shoulders—for a female—and a few scars on her neck and bare arms.

“Hi,” she said when they all simply gawked at her, trying to figure out who this stranger in their house might be. “Name’s Charlie MacKilligan.”

Now Bria’s siblings all slowly turned to look at her.

“It’s not my fault,” she immediately told them. “It’s not!” She shook a finger at them. “It’s my boyfriend’s fault.” When they didn’t immediately agree with her: “It is!”

* * *

Gio sat on the couch, not-so-patiently waiting for Antonella to be done speaking to the honey badger hybrid that had shown up at their front door.

Of all the things that had been going on, he hadn’t been expecting that. Charlie MacKilligan just showing up at their door? Uninvited and without violence. She’d brought Danish! He really hadn’t expected the Danish.

He glanced over at his siblings. They’d been enjoying all that food since the hybrid had gone into the backyard with Antonella. None of them seemed too worried about eating food brought randomly by a species of shifter that enjoyed poisons, but whatever.

Pina held a half-eaten blueberry muffin in front of his face. “Are you sure you don’t want any? It’s really good.”

He pushed her hand away. “You aren’t worried at all?”

“Worried about what?”

“A stranger alone with our sister?”

“If things get out of hand, we’ll just bury the hybrid in Mr. Hens-worth’s backyard. He’ll never notice.”

Unlike his twin, Gio wasn’t as confident about his eldest sister’s safety when it came to this particular female.

It was true, honey badgers were dangerous.

Hybrids were unpredictable. MacKilligans were well-known for being psychotic.

But Charlie MacKilligan was all three. They had no idea what she would and could do, even to his super-predator sister.

All Gio knew was that the She-badger had come out of nowhere, asked to speak to Antonella, and handed them baked goods before entering their backyard.

He hoped she didn’t expect any help from the Medicis to “simmer things down,” as his mother liked to say.

They were not exactly loved among their Italian brethren, and they were definitely not respected.

Besides, they were a pride, not a coalition.

Christ, Gio couldn’t even imagine how useless his three brothers would be if they’d been forced by their sisters to set off to start their own coalition or join another pride.

They could barely manage getting up in the morning, much less fighting to start a new life.

The sliding glass door opened, and the hybrid walked in. She gave a small smile before silently walking past them all and out of the house.

Pina gestured to Bria—because her mouth was full of muffin—but their baby sister just frowned and shrugged.

“What?”

“Go with her!” Pina snapped, spitting bits of blueberry across the room. “Make sure she actually leaves!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Bria complained before running.

The rest of them stood and went out into the backyard.

Pina clapped her hands at the cubs and sent them inside the house with Renny, who had the most tolerance for his nieces and nephews.

Once they were gone, Pina approached Antonella.

She was where she always was when outside in the backyard—on that grassy mound under the tent-like covering that kept the sun off her.

“She’s gone,” Bria said, coming outside.

“Did you see anyone with her or anyone following her?” Gio asked.

Their baby sister shrugged. “No.”

“Were you looking for any of that?” Pina asked.

“You didn’t tell me to look for that!” Her phone rang, and she answered it with a screamed, “Stop calling me!” But then she stalked off while still screeching at the boyfriend she kept promising she was breaking up with any day now.

Gio and Pina faced Antonella again.

“You’re not going to tell us anything . . . are you?” Pina guessed.

When Antonella did nothing but look off across their small yard like she was staring out at the vast plains of the Serengeti, they simply returned to what was left of the baked goods the hybrid had brought.

As they finished the last of the amazing brownies with walnuts, Pina asked, “What are we going to do?”

“Be ready for war,” Gio told his twin. “We have no other choice.”