as he moved his gaze across the screen.
“Problem?”
There was always a fucking problem.
Always some damn drama.
This was why I’d moved my office out of my parents’ building. They weren’t far from me, but still far enough that my business and their safety were at a comfortable distance.
“The bakery owner…”
“Still missing?”
Dino nodded, shrugging like he had no real explanations for me.
The woman was a headache I didn’t need. She’d spent the first two months she showed up in town working my nerves, refusing to pay the protection fees, ignoring requests from me and my boys for a sit down to let her know how things were done in Cuoricino. Short of busting in there myself with my whole crew, which wouldn’t make any of us look good, I’d been close to running out of ideas.
Then, four months back, the woman disappeared. The bakery was still up and running. It was doing well from the looks of it, but the chick running the place, like her boss, wouldn’t play ball.
“I have two guys on the place every day getting fat and slurping down so much espresso they’ve gotten the shakes. But it’s no good. No news, nothing.” Dino scratched his nose, something I noticed he did when he was gearing up to tell me shit I didn’t want to hear.
“Say what you want,” I told him, crossing my arms, knowing this shit would probably get on my nerves just like the redhead. Everything about her did.
“I think maybe we should just…drop it.”
“No.” I wouldn’t let him finish, waving a hand when he opened his mouth again. “It’s been four months, and no one’s seen her. But Dario did some digging.” At Dino’s look, I shook my head, a little disappointed that the man still didn’t think my brother had straightened himself out. “What? You think he hasn’t shaken off Riker’s?”
“Not my job to tell you what I think, boss.”
“That look on your face says enough.” Dino didn’t answer, shifted his expression, but sat when I nodded to the chair in front of my desk, turning down the espresso when I waved to the machine.
“Five years on the inside does something to you,” I explained, my fingers digging into my forehead. “But it’s not all bad with Dario.”
“How do you mean?” Dino leaned forward, elbows to his knees.
“He’s got an instinct now he didn’t have before. A sense when shit is sideways and the redhead? Shit with her is fucking horizontal.”
He nodded, sitting back, his face bunching up as he watched me. “He hear something?”
“He put two and two together.” I slipped a glance to the door, nodding, and Dino reached behind him, pushing it closed before he turned his attention back at me.
“And?”
“Liam Shane.”
The man dropped his guard and the second that asshole’s name left my mouth, I spotted the fury he stirred up in Dino. My man was loyal. He would be. Shane had nearly taken out my cousin Johnny. He’d made himself the biggest enemy our family had. That meant he was Dino’s enemy too.
“She’s connected?” Dino asked, his mouth tight.
“She might be. Shane’s got a missing wife no one can find. This redhead is the same age. Same height and weight. She’s got the same scar on her neck where Shane cut her when she fought her way out of their bed. But Dario can’t be sure. He didn’t get that close of a look.”
“He saw the scar?”
Dino watched the smile stretch over my mouth but didn’t react. Of course Dario watched. The redhead was hot. “That bastard did five years on the inside and she’s everything on his list.”
“He likes redheads?”
“Fuck, man. He likes female. Enough said. She had him interested and now he wants to know if that’s her.”
“If it is…”
I nodded, stretching back to rub a hand over my mouth. “If it is, she might have just as much reason to find out where Shane is as Dario. They’d have a common enemy.”
Liam Shane had been the one to supply the drugs to our youngest brother, Dante. The same drugs he sold out of Dario’s bar. Dante took Shane’s money, and our family landed an enemy. But it was Dario who took that bid for our kid brother. It was Dario who landed in Riker’s.
After Shane kidnapped Johnny’s woman, just to prove he could, he cut his own neck with our family. The redhead might know where Shane did his hiding. If she did, that information would be valuable.
We needed her found.
“Kat Harrell is back on