This Life II

by Dee, Cara

  “Hmm. Hold on. Looking it up.” Eric tapped away on the laptop as there was a knock on the door.

  Pat poked his head in, and I nodded for him to enter.

  “Just wanted to check if this is correct.” He walked over and showed me a note. One of the many Kellan had passed out this morning.

  “Aye, it’s correct.”

  Pat looked at me with confusion creasing his forehead.

  I clapped him on his back. “I’m not taking any chances, big brother. No exceptions.”

  “Fair enough.” He inclined his head and eyed the board. Or wall. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s going,” was all I could say at this point. “We need to create a string of events that gives us enough time on the location before everything gets too hot.” I drew a line with my finger from Gio’s property in the harbor to the nearest dock. “We figure we want about thirty seconds per car if we have our ship here.” Because getting the cars out any other way had never been an option. Gio’s lot was too far away from the closest entrance, and then we’d be stuck anyway. We couldn’t move that many cars. “That’s eighteen minutes just to get the cars onto the ship.”

  “How long until authorities show up?” Pat asked.

  “We’re working on that now,” I answered. “We’ll need everyone involved for this. It’ll take six people just to drive the vehicles.” The cars inside the warehouse were lined up three per row, so in order to pull this off in thirty seconds, as soon as one row was out and moving toward the ship, three new drivers had to be ready with the second. Then they’d be running back within that time frame to do it all over again.

  “Jesus Christ,” Pat muttered. “Is there any good news?”

  I chuckled and scratched my chin. “Not much.”

  “Okay, I got something.” Eric left his seat and came over to show me something on the map. “So the assumption that the harbor’s own security system will be triggered is because we’re looking at gunfire in order to take down the extra guards Gio’s put in.” He circled the warehouse on the map. “Once the alarm sounds, the call goes straight to dispatch that sends two police cars, one fire truck, and one ambulance. That is—unless the dispatcher gets more information about the emergency. Whoever dials 1-1-2 might report gunfire, resulting in more police cars. We can’t predict that part.” He grabbed a pen off the desk and drew a circle around a fairly large area of the harbor. “Even though we’ll use suppressors on our weapons, I estimate everyone within this range will hear it—and realize it’s gunshots. So what I’m gonna do the next couple of days is research all the companies within this circle and figure out their work schedule. That way, I can draw a conclusion on how many will be there when we get started.”

  I nodded. “Good job. But the immediate surrounding area around Gio’s lot is dead at night, right?”

  “Aye,” Eric replied. “This one—” he tapped the pen on the property between Gio’s and the dock “—is owned by the government. Nothing military or anything—just average nine-to-five workers. Same with the others on the same row. Smaller businesses for the most part, but either way, no work around the clock.”

  It would suck balls if Gio’s neighbors had been Maersk or FedEx or something like that. At least now, we’d be able to sneak by.

  “All right, so let’s see where we can buy time,” I said. “Eric, can you look into their power sources? I wanna know how quickly the backup generator takes over if we were to create an outage.” Next, I faced my brother. “I need you to find more dockworkers we can put in our pockets.”

  “I’ll get started right away,” he responded and left the office.

  I had a date with a laptop to spend the next several hours studying surveillance footage. One way or another, I had to get into the safe in Gio’s warehouse office. It was the only place he could store the keys to all the cars.

  “We gotta get this done before the next auto show,” Eric said. “He’ll have buyers lining up in no time.”

  Agreed.

  Over the course of two weeks, our impatience was somewhat tempered by preparations, working out, target practice, and teaching Emilia and Luna how to get from Point A to B in as little time as possible. We had three sports cars on our property for them to practice with, and we’d turned the dirt road leading up to the hacienda into their racetrack.

  Sullivan and I were in charge of the ladies today, and we had no intention of making it easy for them. That said, when cranking up the challenges, I didn’t want any added stress on Emilia just to prove a point. So we sat down with them on the terrace instead.

  “I honestly don’t think we need another day of training,” Luna said as she poured four glasses of lemonade. She’d made it herself, and it went great with Emilia’s homemade pineapple bars. “Patrick and Conn timed us yesterday, and we got from the house to the end of the road in like twenty seconds. That’s ten seconds to spare!”

  I shoved half a cookie into my mouth and gestured for Sullivan to begin.

  “Great, so we know you can drive,” he stated, unimpressed. “Consider this scenario with all your super-cool skills, then. You’re surrounded by shipping containers, the light is poor, and suddenly something obstructs your path. Say a tire or a crate ends up in the middle of where you’re supposed to pass. You two drive up at the same time, clock’s tickin’, what do you do?”

  I observed the girls as they exchanged a glance.

  Luna shrugged. “We move it quickly and then drive off again.”

  “You both step out of the cars to move it?” I asked.

  They had never backtracked faster.

  “Well, no, just one of us,” Emilia said flippantly. “Obviously.”

  “But the second will help if it’s necessary,” Luna added. “After all, it could be something heavy.”

  My mouth twitched, and I hid my amusement by taking a swig from the lemonade.

  “All right,” Sullivan said slowly. “One of you moves the object. Who? How do you decide? Keep in mind, every second counts.”

  That made their minds spin. I could tell in how they looked at each other, gazes flickering, like they were trying to solve a math problem. And the issue was, I could also tell this was gonna get Emilia worked up. She liked stress and actually worked very well under pressure, but these weren’t normal circumstances.

  Fuck my life. I had to pull her from the gig. Maybe I acted irrationally about her having a small glass of wine here and there, but I liked to believe I wasn’t an overbearing nutcase otherwise. For chrissakes, I’d let her do the shit in Paris.

  This one was different. The tempo would be insane in the harbor, and the slightest mistake could have huge ramifications. Add the fact that she was now four months pregnant.

  “Oi, Finn.”

  I looked to the terrace doors and spotted Colm there.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. Then I headed inside and nodded in what’s up.

  “Ford and I were checking on the new locations,” he told me, keeping his voice down. “We need to get a better view to be sure, but it looks like Gio’s increased his security around the warehouse in Berlin.”

  Motherfucker. I clenched my jaw and let the rage flow through me before I took a calming breath and gestured toward the stairs. This didn’t answer everything. It wasn’t the most solid confirmation, although evidence sure pointed us in a very specific direction right now. And Eric would have to take a break from helping Autumn with correspondence school and whatever homework she had. I needed him to gain access to the cameras in Berlin.

  “If this is true…” I said, jogging up the stairs.

  “I know,” Colm replied grimly. “Have fun with that.”

  If I gathered all the guys in the office, Emilia and Luna would wanna be there too. So I settled for Colm, Eric, and Patrick for now. I’d fill in Sullivan, Conn, and Kellan later.

  Eric was in disbelief. My brother was on the warpath.

  I’d calmed down somewhat.

  “Colm’s right,” Eric sa
id. “Way more security now.”

  I rounded the desk and watched the footage on his laptop, and he pointed out four guards instead of the usual one. “What’s he doing?” I asked to myself. If I were Gio and I’d just learned a group of Irishmen were about to target my property in Berlin, I would’ve set up a trap. “It bugs me that he increases security so noticeably.”

  “He could be stretched too thin,” Pat reasoned. “We’re giving him hell in the US, and Amsterdam is a war zone.”

  Valid point.

  Shortly after New Year’s, we’d called it a day when it came to using Alessandro Bianchi. He’d been away from his crew for too long, and it was only a matter of time before Gio doubted the kid’s reports. So Joel had offed the fucker, and it’d taken at least two weeks before our crews back home had noticed an influx of Italians in our territories.

  At this rate, I was surprised Gio hadn’t contacted Liam and agreed to a sit-down. He’d found Liam’s initial request amusing, but that was before we’d started taking back our city. In total, we’d gotten rid of over thirty Italian low-men. Not even Gio Avellino could get by without that hurtin’.

  I wondered if the only thing that stopped him from doing anything larger was the fact that he had someone on the inside now. Or had. There would be no more canaries singing, that was for fucking certain.

  Either way, he must have some plan. The unspoken rule about waging low-profile wars to escape the attention of the authorities came with limits, and I was waiting for Gio to reach his.

  In the meantime, I needed my own plan. Gio wasn’t risking anything, I assumed, since the extra security remained in Barcelona. Maybe he didn’t trust his cunty intel. God, I was gonna kill that fucking—

  “We should consider leaving, boss,” Eric stated. “Back in the day, we were always in Dublin this time of year. It wouldn’t hurt if we got some public exposure there to take a bit of the heat off everything down here.”

  I scratched my jaw, thinking about it. The map of Europe on the wall caught my eye, and I weighed our options. Eric was right. And the dates coinciding with St. Patrick’s Day could definitely work in our favor. It would send a message that we weren’t cowering away from celebrating our holidays; we weren’t hiding in some remote corner of the world too afraid to live.

  “We don’t want the exposure to be too public,” I said. “The Avellinos will see through it. But we could get Emilia and the twins to post something on the Instagram account they made for our wedding day, and once the posts have been seen by the right people, we’ll delete them.”

  To Gio, it would be clear. Emilia was just an oblivious girl, after all. The posts being deleted afterward would only tell him someone had laid into her about being discreet.

  Truth be told, I wasn’t sure online pictures would be necessary. The news of our arrival in Ireland would reach Gio’s men another way, though the social media posts would be a good way to confirm things.

  “So, we’re going to Dublin?” Pat asked.

  I inclined my head. “But I want us to hit Barcelona ASAP. In fact, we’ll save the social media posting for the same day we strike. When we’re on our way to the harbor, we’ll have the kids or Emilia post something about a dinner we’re all going to in Ireland. We can keep it vague—whatever. And once we’re done here…”

  Eric nodded. “We’re out. I’ll find us a location in northern Germany for the last gig.”

  Hearing those words brought me some much-needed relief. I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  Gio’s days were not only numbered, but he was down to a few weeks.

  Our last target, his summer residence, wouldn’t require any finesse or sneaking around. For that, we’d go with complete destruction to draw him out.

  Emilia loved to drive. As usual, we traveled alone in our car like we preferred. Everyone had left the hacienda at different times yesterday so it wouldn’t look like someone was traveling with an entourage, and the wife and I had been the first to head out.

  We spent the night in some small town north of Paris, and then Emilia got behind the wheel again on our way to Calais.

  We stopped on the way for burgers and fries, ’cause that shit was vital.

  “Calais is a nice name,” Emilia mentioned.

  “No, it’s not.”

  We’d set a goal together. Before we returned to Barcelona, we were gonna have two girls names and two boys names for our child. So far, we had one of each. Grace and Ryan.

  I stretched my leg a bit. Sometimes it still gave me grief if I didn’t move around for a longer period of time. My thigh would cramp up and shoot sparks of annoying numbness down my leg.

  “Reagan,” I said.

  “Oh God,” Emilia muttered. “We’re not naming our kid after the—”

  “Best president in history,” I finished.

  “Yeah, you got that very wrong.”

  “Come on. Ryan Reagan O’Shea. That’s the name of a future boss, if I ever heard one. Reagan Grace O’Shea works too.”

  Emilia sighed and passed a couple cars. “We’re gonna end up bargaining or betting for the names, aren’t we?”

  I chuckled and grabbed my soda from the cupholder. “To be honest, would that be a terrible idea? Say we have five or six kids. Chances are we’re not both gonna like all the names—”

  “Five or six?” she spluttered. “I love you, Finnegan, but I am not pushing five or six children out of my vagina.”

  I laughed and nearly spilled soda all over my hoodie. Goddammit. She was cute. “I guess we can discuss Reagan’s five siblings later.”

  Emilia gigglesnorted and threw a handful of fries at me.

  “Oi! Don’t waste my food, woman!”

  “Don’t waste my vagina!” she hollered back.

  I guffawed.

  When we reached England, Emilia’s love for driving died hella quick.

  “This is getting way too fucking crowded for my liking.” Someone behind us honked because she was hesitating at an exit, and she honked back. “Shut the fuck up, you British twat! It’s not my fault you drive on the wrong side of the road!”

  I pressed my lips together to contain the laughs.

  The freeway after Dover was fine, but now we were getting closer to civilization, and traffic going toward London was nuts.

  “There’s a gas station up there,” I said, pointing to our left. “Just relax and look both ways before you turn.”

  “Both ways, both ways,” she mimicked. “Ugh, why would someone put an off-ramp right after a roundabout?”

  She made me chuckle as her eyes went all over the place, checking for traffic.

  “You can turn now, princess. It’s clear. Good, and—no, no. Not that exit. We gotta go around, ’cause that’s for oncoming—”

  “Okay, I get it!” she snapped.

  I coughed and looked out the window.

  We went around the roundabout…

  A few times.

  “Not a word,” she warned.

  Nope. Not a word.

  Eventually, we ended up at the gas station.

  “Just switch with me,” she growled before leaving the car.

  After slamming the door shut, she barged toward the store.

  I stepped out too.

  “Baby!” I called. She stopped right before entering the store, looking at me over her shoulder. God, she was hot when she was pissed. “Get me some smokes, will ya? And chips. Salt and vinegar.”

  “Fine.”

  I loved traveling with the missus.

  25

  Emilia O’Shea

  My mood was improved greatly the closer we got to another new experience for me: visiting Ireland. Finnegan’s home away from home, the place he claimed he wanted us to retire one day.

  The ferry between Liverpool and Dublin worked like an energy boost, and I’d shaken off the remnants of travel exhaustion and all general discomfort by the time Finnegan drove off the boat.

  “Are we there yet, are we there yet
?” I asked cheekily.

  He grinned. “Almost.” He fiddled with the GPS and tapped in Grafton Street. “No, no, what’re you doing?”

  I frowned. “Changing the music?”

  He shook his head and batted away my hand from the stereo. “The driver decides the music, princess. This ain’t new.”

  Uh… “What the hell? In France, you said I was the driver and you were the DJ.”

  “So?” He furrowed his brow, and we got stuck in traffic on our way from the ferries. “You can’t expect counties to have the same laws. What goes in France doesn’t necessarily go here. Christ.”

  I stared at him incredulously.

  He smiled and fiddled with the stereo, and soon we had something punk-rocky and Irish blaring out the speakers. Finnegan cursed a “Fuck yeah” and treated the steering wheel like his personal snare drum. “That’s what we’re gonna do this week, baby—paint the town green.”

  I huffed and sat back, folding my arms over my chest. “You know you’re somewhat of a menace, right?”

  “For sure.” He nodded. “So, do you wanna know a bit about what we’re gonna do?”

  “Whatever.”

  “There’s my little ray of sunshine.” He smirked and launched into official guide mode. “I’m looking forward to showing you around Dublin. We’ll be living smack-dab in the middle of it. You can see here—” He pinched two fingers at the map on the GPS and zoomed in. “The family owns a building right here, and Grafton Street’s here. And see this park? That’s St. Stephen’s Green. We’re gonna sit there on a blanket if the weather allows it.”

  When he said stuff like that, it was difficult to even pretend to be upset with him. My husband had the most clichéd and romantic visions of things he wanted us to do. Apparently, a picnic on a blanket in an Irish park was one of them.

  “Can you crank up the accent while we’re here?” I wondered. “Liam pronounces it Dubbelin, and it was kinda sexy.”