Cade Burns
Another day, another conflict.
Serg drove this time, and I had no chance to drop off Elizabeth and Aria anywhere safer as we rode toward a local bar and brewery that had a tendency to draw conflict. “I don’t understand why everyone thinks that picking fights with us will end the alliance we have with the Rusos,” I snarled, making sure my gun was loaded and ready to fire. When we’d gotten the call, there hadn’t been any direct fights yet. It was mostly verbal altercations, but the bartender said that it was escalating quickly.
“I thought we were supposed to be seeing improvements,” Elizabeth said, glancing at Aria. It had surprised me to find them talking as if they were friends, especially when Elizabeth had been adamantly against an alliance with the Ruso family. I supposed something had changed after she’d met Aria.
Hell, something had changed with all of us since meeting her.
“I think Matteo is full of shit with this alliance,” I admitted.
Aria’s eyes flashed before she looked to the ground. It still shocked me to hear that he hated her now. After all the years of him protecting her with his life, it felt wrong to hear that they no longer got along.
“We’re going to find out when we see whose people are causing this shit,” Serg said from the front seat.
“I’m going in,” Elizabeth demanded.
I shot around, eyeing her up and down. “If I see you step foot in that bar, I will kick your ass from here to fucking Florida, Elizabeth,” I scolded. She opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off. “I’ll tie you in this car if that’s what I have to do.”
She must have seen how serious I appeared as Serg whipped into the bar and immediately stepped out, as she huffed and leaned back in her seat. I held her challenging gaze for just a moment longer, making sure that she knew precisely how serious I was.
I shot my gaze to Aria, and she nodded. I wondered if the last time had been enough of a wake-up call for her. Elizabeth, fortunately, had never experienced a situation quite like that. “We’ll stay here,” Aria swore.
I knew I didn’t have enough time to linger, so I stepped out of the car, not sparing them another glance. I had to focus on the matter at hand. Serg waited by the door, and I paused beside him, hearing the muffled sounds of shouting inside. “Let’s go,” I told him, loading my gun.
We opened the door and stepped inside beside the bar, and I clenched my jaw at the sight that met my eyes. Bodies already littered the ground, and guns had already been drawn. I didn’t have enough time to look at the mafia brands and decide whose men they were before Serg fired three rounds and shoved me behind the bar for cover.
The bartender who had called lay on the ground, a bullet between his eyes.
It had certainly escalated.
“Did you see who is behind this shit?” Serg asked.
I shook my head, moving a few feet to the left before standing and firing two shots at two of the closest Irish men. I caught a glimpse of a tattoo as a man fell, but not one that marked his loyalties.
“We don’t have enough ammo to get out of this shit,” Serg said, shaking his head. “We can call for backup.”
“It’s too late for that,” I said, listening to the booming sound of gunshots all around the room. It was too difficult to tell our guys from theirs, so firing shots wasn’t the best option until we could get a better look at the enemies. I could only think about Elizabeth and Aria in the car, waiting for us outside. If this ended poorly, I didn’t think they’d fare much better than us.
It couldn’t end poorly, then.
Another employee I hadn’t seen until now poked her head around a small slate in the bar and crawled in our direction. The woman looked terrified as she leaned her back against the bar and cried. “The Italians didn’t like that we had so many Irish employees,” she said, shaking her head. “They started a fight, and we were all outnumbered. There was no de-escalating the situation.”
She glanced briefly toward her boss who lay dead in front of her.
“Who sent them?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think anyone sent them. I think they’re riled up from some talk of conflict, and they came here planning to pick a fight because they can. Because they feel like they’re entitled to New York.” That was the biggest, most difficult part of my job. When the Italian mafia overran us and brought our numbers down to a dangerous level, it ran my father and grandfather into the ground. And now, it was my problem, and the only way to regain our numbers was with this alliance.
An alliance that hadn’t been worth shit.
“Whose men?”
“Ruso, I think,” she said. “One of them has the brand.”
I’d seen it on Aria’s arm enough times to know the intimate details of that brand. Matteo had assured me that none of his men would cause any more problems, so if this was them, we would be having a serious conversation. I wondered if the conversation would end in bloodshed, and I decided that I didn’t particularly care.
“Okay, we’re going to have to fight our way out of this one because if we lose our vantage, they’ll kill us before we get a word in edgewise, alliance or no,” I said, looking at Serg.
But before I could do anything-before I could concoct the best way to get around the bar and into the brawl, the door opened again, and a cool breeze flitted in from outside. I knew tactically that we hadn’t called in any reinforcements, and if another person were here, they wouldn’t be friendly.
My heart sank when the voice that fell across the room was eerily familiar. “What the hell is this all about?”
I peeked over the bar just long enough to see that all eyes in the room fell on my sister-my beautiful, reckless sister captivated everyone’s attention just long enough that Serg stood and began firing. I hurdled the bar, kicking the weapons from the hands of two of the assailants and punching another in the jaw. Serg joined me within seconds.
It had been the distraction we’d needed, but I couldn’t shake the undiluted fury as I considered the reckless decision she’d made that could have easily gotten her killed. We took out the rest of the men, disarming them first and then killing them as the rest of our guys groaned from the injuries they sustained.
The second the last man fell, I whipped my head around to where she leaned against the doorframe, almost as if she didn’t give a shit about what she’d just done. She could have been killed, and she didn’t care.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I shouted.
She only shrugged. I hadn’t expected it, but Serg came to my side and pointed one of his fingers at her, grinding his teeth. “You could have gotten yourself killed,” he shouted. “We’ve lost enough people, and you doing something reckless like this will ensure that we lose another.”
“I have nothing to lose,” she shouted back, throwing her hands up. “You two are the only people I have left to lose, and if I end up losing you, I’ll have nothing left.”
“You have your life,” Serg shouted.
She didn’t say anything in response to that, but I saw the darkness overtake her eyes. She didn’t give a shit about herself anymore, I knew. She’d lost the other half of herself too recently to be fully healed, and I realized at once that we’d been treating her as if she were a healed person.
Elizabeth put on one hell of a show, but that was all it was.
If she was willing to do something like this, it was only proof that she hadn’t come close to healing.
“If you weren’t pretty,” I told her, pointing to all of the bodies that lay around us, “you would have been killed here today. And getting yourself killed will do nothing to help anyone.”
I went through motions that felt almost too familiar now. I looked through the bodies, separating my guys from the others. I confirmed what the woman behind the bar had said, finding a few Ruso brands on the dead men, and then I called a cleanup crew, giving specific instructions.
I was getting sick of making house calls and telling families that their loved ones weren’t coming home, but I’d have another few to make today.
We made it back to the car within a half hour, and Aria, to my surprise, still sat there and waited. “What happened?” she asked immediately, checking over each of us for injuries.
“We have a problem,” I told her. I relayed everything that had happened there, and I told her about her brother’s men being the perpetrators. Aria’s expression fell, but she didn’t look surprised.
She fought to find her words for a moment before finally speaking. “He’s not supposed to have his men attack you.”
Serg snorted from beside me. “No shit,” he said.
The silence drew on for long moments as she twirled a strand of her dark hair around her finger, pulling it taut, releasing it, and grabbing another. I could see the wheels in her mind turning as her expression showed little of what she was thinking.
“Let me talk to him alone,” she finally said, looking up at me through lowered lashes. “I can try to take care of it.”