Underboss (With Me in Seattle Mafia 1)

“What are you going to do now?” he asks.

“She asked me not to do anything for a little while, so I’ll just be here in case she needs me.”

That’s not the whole truth, but he doesn’t need to know the rest.

“Keep me posted, please,” he says, his voice softening. “If this continues, we’ll take care of it.”

“Yeah. We will. Okay, I’ll let you know if anything else happens.”

He clicks off without saying goodbye, and I hurry into the office to see the three Martinelli brothers all huddled around computers.

They are a sight to behold. Carmine and Shane are both tall, dark, and handsome, with chocolate eyes. Rafe is on the lighter side with blue eyes, but there’s no mistaking them for siblings. And just walking into this room would send a normal woman’s blood pressure into the stroke-zone.

“I might have something,” I say as I walk into the room. All three heads come up to look at me.

“Hello,” Carmine says as he stands and pulls me to him for a kiss. Right there, in front of the others. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

“Don’t get mushy in front of your brothers.”

“I’ll get mushy wherever I damn well please.”

I laugh as Shane clears his throat.

“Stop pawing at her and let the woman talk.”

“Yeah.” I slap at Carmine’s shoulder as I pull away. “Stop pawing at me.”

“You didn’t seem to mind last night.”

“Really?” Rafe demands.

“Fine.” Carmine lets me go, and I push my hair away from my face.

“Okay, so last night, something seemed very off with Annika.”

“Clearly, she and the new husband are having issues,” Shane says with a nod. “You could cut the tension with a fucking knife.”

“Definitely,” I agree. “And he just wasn’t acting like himself. That jerk isn’t the guy we all knew before the wedding.”

My eyes are on Rafe as I speak. His face is rigid, and he clenches his jaw as I keep talking.

“So, today, I decided to go see her, take her lunch, and do some digging. After all, Annika and Ivie are my two closest friends in the world, and if Annika is hurting, I want to know why. And I want to make someone pay.

“When I got there, I discovered that she had a black eye.”

“What the fuck?” Rafe asks as he comes out of his seat. “The bastard hit her?”

“Yeah.” My voice quiets. “He did. And he’s done more than that.”

I relay what happened during my lunch with my friends. When I finish, all three men are pacing the office, each with mutiny written all over his handsome face.

“I’ll fucking kill him with my bare hands,” Rafe growls, but I shake my head.

“She wants time. And here’s the part that doesn’t add up, though I didn’t say anything to her at the time. She thinks he’s up to something.”

“Up to what?” Carmine asks.

“She didn’t say, but my alarm bells went off like crazy. I asked Alex if the family did a standard background check before the wedding, and he said that he did it. But my brother is lazy, and I know he didn’t dive very deep. He couldn’t have.”

“I can go so deep, Richard will feel me in his kidneys,” Shane says, reaching for the computer. His fingers fly over the keyboard. “Yeah, this first pass is pretty standard. Credit score is seven-fifty. No jail. Really nothing to report at all.”

“That’s too tidy,” Rafe says, his face still set in hard lines. “That reeks of cover-up.”

“Agreed. It would be easier if I had fingerprints.”

“Be right back.” I turn to leave, but Carmine stops me.

“You’re not going by yourself.”

“Well, then get a move on, and let’s go. I’ll call Annika from the car. She can meet us there. Let’s nail this whole mess on this slimeball.”

Carmine and I hurry to his rental. I barely have time to fasten my seatbelt before he’s peeling out of the parking lot and merging onto the freeway.

“How could my family let this happen?” I wonder out loud. “How the fuck did Rich make his slimy way into my family and start killing people? And why would he do it at his own wedding?”

“Smoke and mirrors,” Carmine says. “If it happened at the wedding, he’d be the last person anyone would look at. Son of a bitch.”

“Why does a random doctor from Denver want to kill your father?” I wonder out loud. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Shane’s still digging. I don’t buy this whole boring suburban doctor bit. He’s hiding something, and we’ll find out what it is. In the meantime, we need to get those prints, and we need to make sure Annika is safe. I don’t like her being there with him.”

“I don’t, either.” I shake my head and watch the city zoom by. “It was all I could do not to kidnap her and make her come with me. I don’t want that asshole anywhere near her, ever again.”