a sister's job.
Especially when it could be used as beautiful blackmail material.
"He has not once, in all the years since he was born, cut his hair any other way," I teased.
"Shut up, short shit," he spat back, but his lips tipped up into the barest hint of a smile.
Family was strange sometimes.
But it was everything all the same.
4
Enzo
Bryan turned his head with a sharp spin, looking damn close to the exorcist with the sudden movement. My hand twitched, going for the gun at my waist as my paranoia rose along with his.
Surprise was not the friend of a combat veteran.
The sound of rapid gunfire hovered at the edge of my consciousness as a bloody haze settled over my vision. I shook it off with a shrug of my shoulders, inching my Glock back toward its holster slowly.
A group of six strolled through the back doors of the club as if they didn't have a care in the world. I understood very well that they had every right, but a knock wouldn't have gone unappreciated.
The shits.
I slid the gun back into the holster, shaking my head at Lino’s grin. He should know better than anyone that sneaking up on me wasn't intelligent. "I could have shot you in the face," I sneered at him, making Bryan chuckle as he started over with his count of the cash.
"But it's such a pretty one," Lino grinned back, scrubbing a hand over his cheeks and faking a grimace.
"I've seen prettier," Matteo grumbled, casting an annoyed look behind him when Simon and the others shuffled him and Lino into the door fully so they could close it behind them. Counting cash was always a motivation to close the door. But the knowing look on Simon's face as his eyes landed on mine communicated that I wasn’t the only one plagued by the need for stricter security.
Matteo wasn't the type to hide behind the safety of the walls of his Estate. He'd never let another man intimidate him in his own city, and that made Simon's life more difficult. Protecting a man tucked safely in a fortress was easy.
Protecting a man out in the open where any decent sniper could blow his head off? That was another story.
The only saving grace was that taking out Matteo would change nothing for Murphy. In his absence, the rest of the Bellandi family would rally behind Lino and their desire for revenge. You cut off one head of the hydra, and you ended up with two more in its place. The same logic applied to Tiernan Murphy himself. I wanted nothing more than to go to the building across from Murphy's, set up my rifle, and blow his head off for his crime of trafficking women within our city.
But I knew the score. I understood how it worked. Just like when Ivory had killed Adrian Ricci and his men, his absence only created a power vacuum for another predator to claim.
It didn't stop me from doubling security on both Matteo and Lino to two bodyguards each, and I only stopped there because the bastards wouldn't let me put more men on them.
The only ones of us who didn't have any personal security were Ryker and me. Mostly because I dared anyone to fuck with Ryker. The man was certifiably insane and enjoyed bloodshed far too much to let a bodyguard take the joy of it away from him. And also because he'd threatened to cut off my trigger finger if I gave him personal security.
I very much liked that finger right where it was on my right hand. After the Army trained me to shoot with that instead of my left, something which did not come naturally to me, I couldn't imagine not having both hands and being able to shoot with both of them.
The thought of having one shooting hand seemed so crippling after that.
We waited in silence while Bryan finished his count, nodding his head to Lino as he packed the cash into the false-bottomed case of wine to load into his trunk and drive to drop off at various businesses for laundering. Some of it stayed in the club, getting laundered throughout the night whenever Ash had time to make it happen and didn't have nosy Vanessa or one of the other bartenders watching him.
Once he'd grabbed the case and moved to the door Simon opened for him, the group followed me to the front. We maneuvered through the Valentine's Day crowd, using them for camouflage,