“Stop trying to stir up shit,” Gina said as she walked up to the line, her hot pink ball at chin level, and chewed her bottom lip raw, staring at the pins at the end of the alley like this time she was going to get a strike. “Silence, please. I’m gonna do it this time.”
The woman had a lot of positives—the sweet curve of her ass, the sound of her laugh, the way her smile made her eyes twinkle—but amazing bowling skills weren’t among them. Gina was straight up awful. Her brothers were even worse. That meant that Ford was trying not to eat his tongue in an effort to play as badly as possible in order to not sop up the spilled beer on the floor with them.
Gina threw her bowling ball down the waxed alley. Oh, some people rolled their balls—not Gina. The hot pink ball landed with a thunk a few feet in front of her and did its drunken wobble down the alley toward the pins that were not shaking in fear. The ball smacked into five of them, knocking them over. It was pretty close to her high roll of the game. She did a little shimmy dance move, threw her arms in the air, and turned to face her brothers and Ford at the table with a smile that lit up her whole face.
Maybe there was some asshole out there who could look at her and not return her grin. Ford was a dickhead, but he couldn’t stop the ends of his lips from curling upward. Her no-good brothers did the same.
“I told you this was going to be my game,” she said, seemingly forgetting that she had a second turn in this frame and making her way back to their table. “And you guys thought I was crazy for insisting Ford join us for our monthly game. He’s my lucky charm.”
The look Paul cut at Ford behind his sister’s back would be enough to kill a weaker man. For all Ford knew, that was the loan shark’s favored glare when it came to collecting past-due debts.
“That may be so,” Rocco said from his spot in the booth overlooking the lanes. “But you have another turn.”
She swiped her mug off the table and took a quick drink. “Having the game of my life really worked up a thirst.”
Then she took off back to the bowling ball return.
“This Friday’s a go,” Paul said in a low voice to his brother.
“You sure?” Rocco asked.
Paul nodded.
“What’s on Friday?” Ford asked, his attention caught by the date they were talking about.
“None of your fucking business,” Paul retorted.
Ford shrugged and took a drink. He could have pushed more. The Luca brothers were in it up to their necks, and all he needed was for them to get comfortable enough with him over beer and bowling to make a couple of slips.
Sure, as he told his boss, the likelihood of that actually happening was about as good as a vegan voluntarily eating at a Brazilian steakhouse, but if there was even a chance he was taking it. After all, he was in it to win the war against the Espositos, taking the entire organization down, not just win the battle of the Luca brothers. But judging by the men’s body language and fuck-you stare in his direction, he wasn’t going to get anywhere with a direct attack. He’d just take this intel back to the task force and let Kapowski run it by his informant for more detail. He could take another run at the brothers if needed after that. Until then, he’d do what he could to protect Gina from any fallout that may rain down on her because of her brothers.
At least that’s what he was telling himself as he ignored his targets and zeroed his attention onto the way Gina filled out her jeans, to the point that he didn’t see Paul move at all, let alone with enough time to dodge the man’s palm before he smacked it against the back of Ford’s head. The other man hadn’t used a lot of force, just enough to send his message.
“Gina might like you, Hartigan,” Rocco said, his attention focused on his sister and his body language deceptively relaxed. “But don’t think I won’t smack that look off your face, cop or not.”
“What look?” Ford asked, as if he had any hope of selling that level of bullshit.
Paul glared at him. “The one that says you are having particular thoughts about her.”
All true, but it wasn’t like he was creeping on her. Gina liked him. He liked her. It wasn’t like anything could happen between them. Not really. There might be fun, but that was it. He was an investigator. She was a Luca. It didn’t get any simpler than that, which was part of the appeal. Letting go and living in the moment with her wasn’t a problem because there’d never be any more to it than that. Still, the way her brothers treated her as if she wasn’t able to take care of herself rankled.
“She is her own woman,” he said before adding more quietly, “and she doesn’t seem to mind my thoughts.”
Rocco snorted his obvious disagreement. “She also thinks she’s having a great game and that the three of us aren’t throwing it.”
The shock at that announcement must have shown on his face, because both brothers started laughing and Rocco poured beer into a mug and pushed it across the table to Ford. And here he thought he’d been the only one purposefully playing like shit. Now this put the Luca brothers in a different light—one that seemed all too familiar. The Hartigans were competitive, loud, and stubborn, but they always looked out for each other, even if that meant pretending that Felicia’s banana bread was edible.
“She’s our sister,” Paul said. “But she sucks at bowling.”
“So, you roll gutters once a month?” Was it wrong that he wanted them to say no, to stay in the total-asshole-criminal lane and not the older-brothers-determined-to-put-a-smile-on-their-sister’s-face lane?
“It actually helps on league night,” Paul said with a shrug. “It takes more control than you’d think to miss.”
Giving into that brother solidarity bond, Ford raised his glass in a toast. “Now, I can believe that about playing on league night.”
Rocco and Paul clinked their glasses against his. How often had he seen similar behavior between one Hartigan sibling or another? A million would be on the low count. They loved Gina, and there was no doubting how she felt about her brothers. So for an instant he put away his badge.
“Since you guys gave me a warning,” Ford said. “Now it’s my turn to give you one.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Rocco asked.
“She’d be brokenhearted if you two got caught up in something that’s way above your pay grade.” Ford shot a hard look at the brothers, hoping like hell they’d understand his veiled words. “Life in your line of business always ends up in one of two ways: jail or an unmarked grave. I’d hate for her to spend decades wondering if your bodies would ever be recovered. Why don’t you guys spend this Friday looking for a new line of business and make your sister happy.”
Rocco and Paul didn’t flinch. They just continued to look at him with that dead, mile-long stare that those connected with the Espositos had mastered. It gave nothing away. Then, as if they were mirror images, they each grabbed their beer mugs and downed the contents in one long swallow. Then, they turned without a word and watched Gina’s bowling ball swerve down the alley before ending up in the gutter just shy of the pins.
After that, they went through the lineup with each of them rolling total crap until it was Gina’s turn again. If she knew they were letting her win, she didn’t let on. She just wiggled that perfect ass of hers, smiled as if she didn’t have a care in the world, and had the time of her life—which was way better to observe than Ford had imagined.
“They’ll never find your body, you know,” Rocco said, falling back into his mob-connected loan shark persona.
Ford puffed out his chest and scowled at the brothers. “Excuse me?”
“Fuck with Gina…” Rocco paused as he turned to look at Ford straight-on and laid his meaty forearms on the table, then leaned forward on them. “And they’ll never find you. It doesn’t matter where we are at the time, we’ll come back and hunt you down.”
Out of all of that, there was only one thing Ford needed to address. “I’m not fucking with her.”
One of Paul’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going with that, instead of the fact that we just threatened a police officer?”