This Life II

by Dee, Cara

“Excuse me one moment.” Elena left the kitchen and headed for the stairs.

  I touched Autumn’s shoulder, noticing she’d gotten some color, and bent down to speak in her ear. “I’ll be back in a bit. You can finish making your sandwich, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  I slipped out of the kitchen and trailed up the stairs, pausing on the second floor where Gio’s study was. If anyone came near, I’d just continue to the third floor and my room.

  I remained still and scanned the pictures on the walls while concentrating on the muffled voices.

  I didn’t know who those two boys were yet, and Elena had evaded my question the time I’d asked. “Family” wasn’t good enough. One of the boys was closer to a man, and the photos could be old. Either way, I’d seen the eldest one before. He was pictured in Gio’s study in Cerveteri, too, like I was.

  “No!” I heard Elena gasp.

  I closed my eyes briefly and focused.

  Autumn was mentioned, and I went rigid automatically. Gio spoke too fast, but I managed to pick up a little. He wanted to use Autumn to get the O’Sheas to stop what they were doing.

  I swallowed the river of hot anger that flowed through me. They’d use that girl over my dead body.

  I had to step up my game. Elena argued that if Autumn were used, I would be lost. And she was right. I’d never forgive them.

  It didn’t go unnoticed that her seemingly general view on using children was missing. The reason she argued was solely me—and that I would push Elena, and the entire Avellino family, away if Autumn were in any way harmed.

  From now on, I had to cement that fear with Elena. I had to pretend better. I had to make her believe I would give her an honest chance, but that Autumn was as important to me as a daughter. Which was true.

  I cocked my head when I heard Gio mentioning Lubeck. Fuck, shit, fuck. My heart hammered. What else, what else, what else—Christ, speak so I could understand! Lubeck was the town in northern Germany where their summer residence was.

  Had Finnegan done something to that estate? I knew it’d been the plan before Autumn and I were taken.

  Then Gio said something else. The country wasn’t safe anymore. Vacation—go away for a few weeks.

  Oh God, we were leaving.

  I hurried down the stairs again and did my best to get my breathing under control by the time I was back in the kitchen.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the housekeeper. She faced me with a curious expression. I pointed to the computer in the corner next to the fridge and freezer. “I need to order food.”

  She didn’t speak a word of English but had gotten used to my “cravings” and knew I liked to bake. For the record, I had no interest in creating desserts for this family. I just had a lot of weird ingredients to get rid of sometimes.

  The other day, I’d ordered a crapload of apples, hoping the quantity would stand out, because they’d had the word “Autunno” in the name—Italian for Autumn. Hopefully a message Eric would take to mean that I had her with me.

  There were six apple pies in the freezer because of that.

  The housekeeper used the intercom to call for Luca, because God forbid I grocery shopped without that dog in the room. Then the lady gestured to the computer and logged in to the account for me.

  I went nuts with the Emilia grapes and the Autumn apples. It was the easy part. The site was obviously in Italian, and it didn’t have any options for English. What was Germany known for? Chocolate, right?

  It took me some time, and I was unsure if some of the items were actually German. Kinder eggs were Italian, weren’t they? But Kinder was a German word… Fuck it. I added six of the chocolate eggs to the cart. In the end, I estimated there were around twenty items from Germany, most importantly German sausage, a spice mix for a soup called Hochzeitssuppe, and a dozen packets of a German chocolate I knew Finnegan liked; it was called Ritter Sport. It was available all over Europe.

  The boys had to notice the theme.

  Before I submitted the order, I added a couple bottles of super glue too. It would have to do if there was no time to buy a glue gun. I could blame a pair of shoes being broken or something. Regardless, I needed the glue.

  I felt Luca’s eyes on me as I pressed order.

  The housekeeper was doing her daily inventory of kitchen knives and other utensils.

  I wanted to roll my eyes—or shoot her in the head.

  32

  Finnegan O’Shea

  Colm and I made our way through the packed nightclub, some godawful French house music blaring out of the speakers. The strobe lights flew over the crowd in seizure-inducing flashes.

  Hundreds and hundreds of intoxicated dancers and not a single witness. They were here to forget reality and to get laid.

  Colm nodded to the stairs in the back, and I inclined my head.

  Two guards, no problem.

  We walked up to them, and Colm yelled over the music that we had a meeting with Alexandre.

  They thought they were slick by walking behind us on our way up the stairs…

  We reached the landing where two other guards waited.

  In a practiced move, Colm spun around; I lifted my gun from the base of my spine and took out the two fuckers at the door. Colm put two bullets in the heads of those behind me.

  “Boo.” I stepped over their bodies, then kicked in the door that led to another one of Gio’s slices of coke heaven.

  Three men shouted in French and reached for their guns.

  Colm and I were faster.

  Once inside, we had thirty seconds. I had an ongoing call with Eric on my smartwatch, and I raised my wrist to my lips. “Cut surveillance.”

  “Copy.”

  Colm went for the stacks of duffels and hardcases. From experience, we knew that was where the drugs were kept. I hurried behind the desk, where the safe was open underneath the tabletop. I tucked as many bundles and stacks of cash into my suit and the pockets of my pants as I could.

  The money and the drugs were nothing but a bonus.

  Our main goal was to off as many Avellinos as possible, end of.

  I stopped when I spotted the three lines of coke on the desk.

  “Do I look fat in these pants?” Colm asked with a straight face.

  I eyed him and managed a faint smirk. “You look like a million bucks.”

  He snorted in amusement, adjusting the bricks of coke he’d stashed on his person. He saw the lines on the desk too, and he didn’t hesitate. Thank fuck. I guess I was still a pussy when it came to this. But once he’d snorted a line, I did the same.

  I coughed and sniffled, and my eyes watered a bit.

  Time to split.

  We’d left discretion behind.

  As long as our faces weren’t caught on any cameras belonging to the authorities, we’d unshackled ourselves from earlier restrictions. As for the Avellinos seeing our faces everywhere—fucking let them. In fact, we wanted them to. We wanted them to see who it was who ass-fucked them raw.

  Kill, take, bail. In that order.

  Colm and I tore through the streets of Paris on our motorcycles.

  Right about now, Kellan, Liam, and Patrick were planting explosives in one of Gio’s villas in Italy.

  Sullivan and Luna were doing recon work for two of Gio’s clubs in Germany.

  Pop was arranging transport for the cocaine and heroin we’d gotten our hands on these past two months.

  We kept busy. There was no alternative.

  A few days later, Colm, Eric, and I checked in to a shitty motel in Belgium.

  The shower was broken, so I leaned over the sink to wash the temporary dye out of my hair.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her.

  The murderous hatred burned in my gut. I wanted to torture and kill every motherfucker who’d sworn allegiance to Gio Avellino.

  I grabbed one of the towels and dragged it over my head, and I caught my reflection in the mirror. It made me stop. Christ. I hadn’t faced myself in any
way for so long, and now I didn’t recognize the man staring back at me. I was fucking empty. A shell of a man with shadows under his eyes, ’cause sleep didn’t exist anymore. I worked and pushed myself, I’d done coke at least a dozen times, and I went on like that until I crashed.

  I didn’t remember the last time I’d prayed.

  Forgive me.

  Emilia’s two rings glinted around my neck. She’d left them for me. I knew it in my heart. She felt it was safest to shoulder the role she’d started playing in Paris. But I believed in her. God, I believed in her.

  It wasn’t much longer now. We had a crew flying over from Philly to help us take on all of Gio’s private properties next weekend. The villa in Cerveteri was ready to blow. The one in the north was rigged too. Then the third and the fourth.

  The fifth was the gold mine. I didn’t know if Emilia and Autumn had been kept there this entire time, but they were there now at any rate. The problem was the remoteness of the property. There was nowhere to hide, no way to sneak up with the element of surprise. And it was just another reason for us to flush out as many Avellinos across Europe as we could.

  It was an extermination, plain and simple.

  I didn’t register countries anymore. We moved freely between the nations, going from one Avellino location to the next, leaving a path of destruction in our wake.

  When all this started—or rather, when we’d gotten access to Gio’s holdings and all the information we’d stolen from Cerveteri—we’d crossed off the locations that were either too big or too small. The small ones…? Yeah, they were mostly gone now. Clubs, hustler hangouts, minor ports, warehouses…

  I stared down at my hands and noticed my left was shaking a bit.

  I’d made the mistake of letting Luna travel with us the first couple of weeks. She meant well, but I was done with her worries. She claimed I was having a nervous breakdown. Or I’d had one. Whatever she’d said—she’d said a lot.

  She’d said I was losing it, and I couldn’t exactly argue there. I spaced out sometimes. My focus was razor-sharp during a job, and then I was fucking useless in between. I’d become unobservant too. We’d stayed at a nicer hotel yesterday, and I couldn’t even remember the color of the walls. I didn’t remember if I’d eaten today.

  “We should drive a bit farther,” I said.

  Colm shook his head and took the exit. There was a roadside McDonald’s and a gas station. We didn’t need gas yet. “You gotta eat, mate.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Eric was asleep in the back seat, for once, so I used his laptop to check for updates. It was the middle of the afternoon, and I suspected the men who’d worked all night would be up and running toward their next location now.

  “Drive-thru?” Colm guessed.

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t leaving the car when we had six Glocks, two rifles, and approximately fifty thousand euro in the trunk.

  When our crew was split up like it was now, we employed an encrypted communication software that we used as an old-fashioned group chat. That way, everyone was up-to-date with everyone. Except, the field was blank now.

  I typed in a new message.

  Berlin ETA circa three hours for us. Report in. –F

  While I waited, I decided to check the grocery account the Avellinos used.

  Who’da fucking thought hacking in to a goddamn account at a grocery store would provide us with so much information? It’d helped us immensely in Cerveteri, and it was saving my sanity at the moment. Emilia placed frequent orders, and the first time we’d noticed it was a way to send leads, I wasn’t ashamed to say I’d excused myself to bawl like a baby.

  Some orders had been different. Those damn grapes, man… It was Eric who’d analyzed them. I’d noticed an irregularity mainly because of the new delivery address, and he had downloaded all the itemized orders into a software program to sort through them. That was when we knew. And shortly after, when “someone,” aka my brilliant wife, had ordered ten boxes of tomatoes, mozzarella, truffles, even yeast, all of which were from Naples or had the city name in the title, we’d figured out she was trying to convey messages.

  There was a new order, and it was currently out for delivery. I clicked on it and scanned the specifics.

  One box of Emilia grapes.

  My heart squeezed in my chest, and I took an unsteady breath. I barely registered Colm ordering burgers for us in shitty German.

  I smiled when I saw she’d ordered more of those apples with the Italian word for Autumn. Eric would like that. He was as much of a wreck as I was. Actually, in some ways, he was worse off. He kept saying none of this would’ve happened if he’d granted his parents custody of Autumn.

  I frowned. This was new… A bunch of regular shit. Meats, dairy products, flour, eggs, and then a truckload of chocolate. Were the Kinder eggs for Autumn, maybe? Or a way of saying she was okay?

  Ritter Sport. I liked those.

  Bratwurst… Hochzeitwhatnow?

  “Oh,” I mouthed.

  Holy shite. This was all German. When Emilia had ordered foods from Naples, it’d been a way to tell us they were located in Naples. If she was trying to do the same thing again, this could only mean one thing. Gio was about to go on the run, and if he was bringing everyone, I couldn’t foresee them going anywhere except Lubeck.

  Eric and I had gone through countless grocery orders by now. We’d probably missed a clue here and there, but I was confident that Emilia had never attempted to tell me of only Gio’s whereabouts. Partly because I sincerely doubted he would divulge that. And I was sure he’d moved around plenty in the last eight weeks. So for Emilia to send these leads now… Regardless, it was something we had to act on.

  “Change of plans, guys,” I said abruptly.

  Fourteen hours later, we’d finished another job—in Berlin—and we checked in to a hotel where we got a suite. We had just enough time to shower and change before my brother showed up with Liam and Kellan.

  “You look like shit, little brother.” Pat pulled me in for a firm hug, and I patted his back.

  “You too.” I wasn’t lying.

  He’d lost his junkie girl in Spain, which was when and how we’d discovered how the Avellinos had known about our place outside of Barcelona. He’d gone up into the mountains and found the girl with a bullet in her head. In a place only he knew existed. So in a fit of rage, he’d thrown his phone on the ground and stomped it to pieces.

  It hadn’t taken him more than a few seconds to find the GPS tracker, and only one person could’ve planted it on him—in Dublin. While the cunt had still been alive.

  She’d neglected to tell us that bit.

  “Hey. Let’s talk.” Patrick nodded toward one of the two bedrooms.

  I left my towel around my neck and followed him.

  He closed the door behind us.

  The alarm clock on the nightstand flashed 05:23. A new day was starting…

  “When was the last time you slept?” Patrick asked me.

  I shrugged and wiped my nose. “Couple days ago, I reckon.”

  He jerked his chin at me, arms folded over his chest. “How often are you hitting the yak?”

  I furrowed my brow.

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re so fucking green, you don’t even know other names for coke.”

  Oh.

  I got defensive. “I’m not getting hooked or anything. It’s just so I don’t have to sleep much. I can’t—” I cut myself off and swallowed hard, quick to avert my gaze. I grew frustrated and impatient, and I…I just wanted my fucking wife. I needed her. I needed to know she and our baby were okay. They had to be here with me. Hell, my heart physically hurt for Autumn almost as much. I didn’t know how much I’d grown to love that little chick.

  It was easy to treat Autumn like a child much younger than she was; she was small for her age and struggled with her fear of losing those she loved. She was so affectionate and caring, and she could light up a room with a single grin.

  We’d missed her birt
hday.

  I’d missed Emilia’s birthday too.

  “Fuck.” I cleared my throat and sniffled.

  Pat stepped closer and grasped me by my shoulders. “Listen. I want you to tell me what you wanna do, and then Liam and I will talk to the crew and handle the organizing—with your input. Okay? You need to power down a bit.”

  Even though every fiber of my being screamed in protest, I knew he was right. The guys had to see a strong leader, and I wasn’t one at the moment. The best thing for me to do then was to hand over the reins, if only temporarily.

  “I grabbed a copy of all the newspapers in the lobby,” I said.

  “I saw them.” He straightened. “We’ve made the news…”

  A bit. Over the past few weeks, we’d made headlines in France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and Monaco. The authorities had fuck all to go on, except everyone knew that the “alleged” mafia boss Giovanni Avellino and his organization were the target.

  The day following a job, headlines would read “Explosion in Nightclub.” The day after that, the police would go public with the ties said club might have to the Avellinos. “Ongoing Investigation—Europol Takes Over.”

  We were famous, yet no one knew our names.

  To be honest, if anyone suspected us, it was the local FBI branch in Philly.

  “What I want you to do is—” I paused. Then I patted the pockets of my sweats for my smokes, but I must’ve left the pack in the living room. “You know what, I’ll talk to them first. I’ll be straight with them. I’ll tell them I’mma take the back seat on this one.”

  “Okay.” He nodded slowly. “Yeah, that sounds good. And then?”

  “Right.” I scrubbed my hands over my face and tried to get my shit together. “We can’t be sure Gio’s heading to Lubeck with everyone—it’s a guess based on what little data we have from Emilia’s messages. So what I wanna do is ensure that Lubeck is their best option.”

  “I’m with you. You wanna flush ’em out.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “We’ve literally spent the past two months killing off Gio’s backup. Philly’s clear. Chicago’s dead. He’s called his remaining crews home, which tells us he’s running low on manpower. Now we take care of his hideouts too. We blow up his villas in Italy—all of them except for the one outside Naples.”