“I like it,” Lucifer says from behind the desk he’s sitting at.
It’s the same desk that’s been in this house long before I came to family. He fits well behind it. Though it reminds me of the last time I saw him sitting there. It was the first time he sat there as the head of the family, with the bodies of his father’s former men splayed out around the house. A true coup.
But that coup had come at a cost.
Too many connected men died in this house that day. One of them being the mayor of Garden City.
It was the mayor’s death that ended up sending me to prison.
I should have rotted away in prison and died a long miserable death. But Lucifer kept his promise. He got me out. He said he would, but ten long years was a long time to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
It turned me into the man I am now, for good or ill.
Johnathan enters the office. He walks over to a chair near mine and flops his ass down. Doesn’t seem like he’s changed much. He’s still dressed like when I met him, jeans and biker boots with a gun at his hip.
Andrew and the rest of our inner circle make it into the office, and Lucifer looks at us all with a deep grin.
“I like having you all back together again,” Lucifer says.
“Been a long time,” Johnathan says as he reaches over to slap me on the shoulder.
Fucker. He knows I don’t want to be touched, but with that damn look in his eyes he doesn’t give a shit. Typical fucking Johnathan.
Andrew pulls a phone from his pocket and tosses it to Simon. “All the stiffs in the church. Got face pics, and tried to get as many tattoos as I could. Mix of Russians and Irish. Should be pretty evident which side they were on.”
“Good,” Simon says as he begins scrolling through the phone.
“So, what’s the next step?” Jude asks from behind me.
“We need more intel on why they’re partnering up with the Irish. Callahan wasn’t even much of a player over in Bethlehem before now. Is he simply trying to take a larger slice of the pie?” Simon asks, looking up from the phone he’s now got attached by some cord to a laptop.
“Bigger piece of the pie is my guess,” Andrew says.
“Same here, especially since I talked to the Heralds of Hell. Their Sergeant at Arms, Cane, is pretty pissed at the Irish as well. They were getting a good supply of guns from them that’s dried up recently,” Johnathan says.
Looking over to him, I ask, “They still the top dog MC over there?”
“Were,” he responds to me. “They got knocked down a few pegs when the leader died and his son got too big for his britches. That, and the fucking Cartel they have popping up all over the place there.”
“They’re going to be a problem before too long if we don’t keep an eye on them,” Jude says. “The Cartel is up in Ohio, and it’s not exactly going well for the big cities.”
“They are unfortunately for another day,” Simon says as he flips the laptop around on his lap to show us a picture.
“Who’d like a deathmark on their head?” he asks with a laugh.
Looking at the picture on the screen, I see a pretty blonde woman with brown eyes staring vacantly back at us.
“I shot her at the wedding,” Jude says.
“Well, one of us just pissed off a really bad woman. This is Tanya Petrov. Her twin sister is Anya Petrov. And we’ve just taken out one of the two deadliest women the FSB has ever produced,” Simon says with a grimace.
“Meaning what, Simon?” Lucifer asks.
“Anya Petrov is going to come gunning for us, and with her abilities, it won’t be pretty.” Simon clicks on another set of pictures that shows two Russian men.
“Misha Sokolov. Alexei’s right-hand man when it comes to the slaver’s trade since we killed off Sasha. Which is good for us and bad for them. I don’t recognize the rest off the top of my head, but I’ll be going through the prints and mugshots,” Simon says before snapping his laptop shut.
“Next item of business, you married Meghan Callahan, Gabriel. Why is it that every time one of my men finds a woman from the wrong side of things, they marry her?” Lucifer asks with a chuckle.
“They want to be just like dear old dad,” James says from the floor where he’s slid himself up against the wall.
Shrugging, Lucifer looks over to Simon. “This will actually be working in our favor. We could have tortured her for what little information she probably had and then left her for dead somewhere… But this way we have more leverage. Especially in the future if we remove the Russians from the equation.”