TWENTY-FOUR
GIANCARLO
My phone buzzing wokeme up. I jumped and realized I’d fallen asleep at my desk.
I had no memory of when Sebastien and Anthony left my penthouse to go back to the fundraiser in my ballroom below. I tolerated their backseat hacking for only so long. For their sake, I hoped they’d gone somewhere and fucked. The tension rolling off those two racked my nerves. I knew what Sebastien could do with a shotgun and Anthony’s skills with a knife often had me looking over my shoulder.
Watching me fail to track Julian Russo wasn’t my finest moment, and I didn’t want them to see me go ballistic and destroy a laptop or two. I should have been able to crash through the FBI firewalls I kept running into. The patriot in me, however, silently smiled at every roadblock.
I kept my family safe.
The FBI kept my country safe.
Still didn’t stop me from being pissed the fuck off because that dude Julian went off the grid the same day as Rebecca. And on the same day someone took a shot at her. The same day a fresh hitman had been given the contract to finish the job.
No doubt Julian was keeping her safe.
Or was he? Sebastien and Anthony didn’t seem to think he was a mole for another crime family. The Russos had long ago given up their power. I chose to keep an open mind about that one.
I looked down at myself and realized I was still in my suit. My mouth felt bone dry. Looking around, I wiped crud from my eyes and found seven missed calls on my phone.
Dad.
Shit...
Someone pounding on my penthouse’s front door stilled me. No one had access to this floor. My apartment took up the full twenty-thousand square feet. A place too ridiculously big for one person. It only felt like home when I had Rebecca here.
I scrolled through my command center videos for the camera outside that door and exhaled. But also cursed.
Dad.
Alone.
As the technical owner of the hotel, Dad had sway over the operations manager to give him access to my private elevator. The knocking meant Dad didn’t have a key to my actual apartment. I paid fucking rent, you know.
Sniffing myself, I cringed, making my way to the front door. “Hang on, Dad!” I called out and opened the lever. “What in the world...” I stopped, seeing the angry look on his face.
For the first time in my life, I felt afraid of him. Considering most people in this city and Boston were, that put me in good company.
“Pack your bags, Gian.” Dad swept in, wearing his signature dark jeans and black leather jacket.
“Pack my bags? Where am I going?”
He glared at me. “Excuse me?”
I stepped back. My father headed our family while I kept our world safe from right here in my penthouse. I didn’t ‘travel’. Still, his look cut through me. I saw a man who not only lost his oldest son, but a businessman who lost the chance to make a lot of money on a drug deal. A deal I basically helped destroy.
As far as everyone knew, Rebecca was a single woman and Sebastien, Anthony, and even I had failed to claim her. My mother knew we had been sleeping together, but no one knew the truth about our relationship now. Except us. Okay, and all of our guards, drivers... I cringed inwardly, realizing how careless we’d been.
“Dad, I have a whole command center and a team downtown in the datacenter to manage. For you. For the Byrne Group. Where do you need me to go?”
He stared at me, looking me up and down. “Just. Pack.” Dad wasn’t too old to kick my ass even though he used well-built men to pummel people who pissed him off.
I’d take a beating at this point. Folding my arms, I said, “No.”
His cheek twitched and his hands balled into fists. Dad didn’t hear that word very often. He exhaled and brushed one of those calloused hands with knuckle tattoos through his dark blond hair. “Got any whiskey?”
“It’s eleven a.m.”
“That means I need a double.”
Since he hadn’t beaten the crap out me and it looked like I’d earned an ounce of respect for standing up to him, I got the man his drink. “Do you want it in the living room from my crystal decanter? Or do you want it straight from the bottle I keep in my office?”
Mom preferred elegance and style. She’d sipped her champagne, or vodka, or even the whiskey my father taught her to drink.
Dad grinned at the expensive room Mom’s decorator designed for me. “What do you think, Gian?”
“This way,” I said and turned my back on him. Something I’m sure only a handful of people on this earth would do to Patrick Byrne when he was mad at you.
Dad powerfully stepped into my command center. With his eyes crawling over my eight-foot workstation and all the monitors, he muttered, “Jesus.”
“You sound surprised.” I reached for the bottle I kept in a cabinet in the back of the room. I’d had a bar sink and mini fridge installed. Some nights, I’d slept on the sofa. Some days, I never left this room, except to go to my sex club.
All of that was before Rebecca.
I sensed Dad wanted to say Salvatore would be proud, or jealous, but we kept Sal out of our conversations. The painful subject made us lose our train of rational thought. “Here.”
He took his glass and glanced at me. “You’re not drinking with me?”
“I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet. I was...working late.”
“On what?” He threw back the entire drink in one gulp.
Pouring him more, I stopped midway, wary of mentioning my search for Rebecca and now Julian Russo. “Someone tried to kill Rebecca Domenico yesterday. I’m scanning her entire company’s network looking for clues.”
He didn’t react to me mentioning the attempted hit on Rebecca. But my father was a master at schooling his features. He would smile then stab you in the throat a second later. If he wanted her dead, I had wicked faith my father could do the job.
And wouldn’t have hired that idiot at the cemetery.
“Anything?” He put his glass on the counter and leaned against it with one foot crossed over an ankle.
“No.” It killed me to say that, even if it were true. “Domenico Holdings was never a hot mess of shitty firewalls.” I watched him stare at me judging my words. “Dad, what do you need me to do? And where?”
After another glance at all my monitors, the lights blinking, the wall in front of my command center painted with dry erase paint and covered in copious notes, he paused. Possibly reconsidering his request.
Did he really have no idea what it took to keep our world safe?
“My cousin Siobhan passed away.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.” The news hit me with a startling lack of emotion despite the sadness on my father’s face telling me the woman he loved like a sister was dead. She’d had breast cancer a few times. Each time it came back harder. But Aunt Siobhan was a Byrne. Tough as nails. “When?”
“Last night.”
That explained why he’d not reacted to Rebecca nearly dying. His head had been somewhere else. I still wasn’t sure he heard me right.
He played it really cool, always with his unshakeable demeanor. My mother was my father’s only weakness. The hit on Rebecca may have gone unnoticed. Eventually he’d dissect the matter in his thug brain that someone may have decided to take us all out. One by one. A rival family from another city thinking with Rebecca’s father dead, New York City was up for grabs.
I tried not to laugh. “What do you need me to do?”
“I can’t go to the funeral. And I don’t want your mother traveling alone.” His eyes hit me squarely in the chest.
“Hang on. You want me to go to the funeral?” Heat pooled under my skin, fire shooting through every limb. “In Ireland?”
“My plane is waiting for you. Pack a sweater. You know it’s always cold and damp there. See you in a week.” My father shuffled out of my command center.
“A week?”
“You have to stay for the reading of her will. Siobhan didn’t have children. Never married. Was an only child. She should have a sizable estate. Her father and your grandpa were business partners back in Dublin.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “When my uncle died, I’d started giving her a cut of the Byrne Group profits.”
Interesting, considering we owned every major hotel in Manhattan.
“If she has no children, or siblings, who will care if I’m there? Can’t I just go to the reading of the will?”
“It’s about tradition and respect, Gian. And...” He crept toward me, his head dipped, but those ice blue eyes stayed right on me. “And when I tell you to do something, you do it.”
“Yes, Dad.” I exhaled, watching him leave. “Oh wait, I’ll call the elevator for you.”
He held up a keycard. “This is my hotel, Gian. I have access to every floor and every room.”
I shuddered, remembering all the times I’d had Rebecca here. Did he know?
Or did he just want me out of the country when whoever the hell planted all those firewalls I couldn’t get through found her and finished the job?
*