*
Max was near the Range Rover when she heard the lion’s roar. She stopped long enough to look back at the house she’d just left. This cat was definitely not like his father, who would have just bribed his way out of prison. No. Paolo de Medici would rather cause as much destruction as he could manage just to prove a point to a group of She-badgers with rage issues.
Grinning, Max got into the backseat of the Range Rover and Charlie started driving.
The funny thing was, Max had originally thought it weird that her big sister had insisted on keeping Giuseppe de Medici’s body in a twenty-five-foot chest freezer she’d had placed in a storage space in Brooklyn. Because Max had never been a big fan of keeping evidence of their crimes around, she assumed they would just call in some hungry hyenas to help with cleanup, but Charlie had been adamant. The body had to go in storage.
Now, however, Max got it. And loved it.
“Tock,” Charlie said from the driver’s seat. “Time?”
“We’re good.”
“I’ve texted the pilot,” Nelle said, tapping on her phone. “The jet will be fueled and ready when we get there.”
“You know, Charlie, since we’re in Italy anyway, why don’t we have a little stopover in—”
“We are not going to Vatican City, Streep.”
Streep flounced back against her seat, folding her arms over her chest.
“Waste of a perfectly good body dump, if you ask me,” the actress complained.
“No one asked you!” they all yelled back.
Chapter 25
As Charlie had suggested, Shay, his brothers, Dani, and Nat had stayed two extra days at the Van Holtz compound. Shay didn’t know what Charlie had said to Keane to make him change his mind about that, but Shay was impressed. Not a lot of people were able to get through to his brother. He was hardheaded on and off the field.
When they did finally leave, the Van Holtz adults were a little nicer than they had been when the Malones had first arrived. And Dani actually had wolf pups to say goodbye to, which was nice for her. A couple of the families had even asked to adopt Princess’s pups when they reached eight weeks old. A good thing, too, since Shay had been planning to dump them off at a rescue when they were old enough to be separated from their mother. A statement that earned him that look from his daughter. The one he hated. As if he’d disappointed her yet again. So, he would see about getting the rest of the pups properly adopted to ensure he didn’t keep getting that look. At least not until she was firmly in her teens.
At this point, all Shay wanted to do was go home and relax, but as soon they turned onto their street, Keane suddenly hit the brakes.
“What the hell . . . ?” Finn whispered from the front passenger seat.
“What’s wrong?” Shay leaned forward, trying to see around his brothers’ big heads. But Keane and Finn were already getting out of the SUV. “Stay here,” Shay ordered his daughter before he opened his door and slowly eased his way out. Ready to dive into the driver’s seat and take the kid away if it became necessary.
Thankfully, it didn’t.
“Hello, boys!” one of his uncles called out, motioning for them to come over with a wave of his arm.
The Malone trailers and RVs took up both sides of their street, using up most of the available parking and, for those who’d been parked there before the family had arrived, boxing in the rest.
“What is happening?” Keane asked. But neither Shay nor Finn had an answer for him. The family had never stopped by like this when their father was alive. So it was never expected after he was dead. Seeing them all here was, to put it mildly, very weird.
Keane turned to face his brothers. “Think it’s a setup?”
“They’re barbequing,” Shay pointed out.
“Fresh smoked meats. An easy way to distract us before an ambush.”
“Or they’re just here for some other non-ambush reason.”
“Let’s go talk to them,” Finn suggested. He started to walk off, realized that Keane wasn’t with him, and reached back to grab their brother’s arm and yank him forward.
Shay went back to the SUV and opened his door. He leaned in and smiled at his daughter. “Want to meet some of your cousins?”
Her eyes widened. “Yeah!”
“Come on.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and scrambled across the seats until she reached him. He lifted her out and together they walked down the street toward their house. Malones called out from where they’d set up lawn chairs and tables for all the food they were cooking.
What the Malones were doing was completely illegal, of course. Blocking driveways and the sidewalk. Blocking most of the actual street itself. His neighbors must be livid. Not that he blamed them.
When Shay reached his brothers, their Uncle Callahan nodded at Shay. “And who is this darling little kitty?” he asked, crouching down to eye level with Shay’s daughter.
“I’m Dani.”
“Well, hello, Dani. I’m your Uncle Cally and this is your Auntie Muriel. She can introduce you to our grandchildren, which would be your cousins. Would you like that?”
“Yes! But first, I need to get my dogs out of the car and into the house.”
It was as if Dani had suddenly screamed “Death to the Irish!” while swinging a musket. Everyone stopped talking, stopped moving, stopped eating and drinking.
“Dogs . . . ?” Cally repeated.
“Yes. My dogs. My daddy’s dogs, actually,” she amended.
Cally looked up at Shay. “You have dogs?”
“Yes, my brother has dogs,” Keane said, leaning down so he could glower right into their uncle’s eyes. “It’s absolutely okay for my brother to have dogs.”
“It is?” both Dani and Shay asked him.
“It is now,” Keane snarled through clenched teeth.
“Why don’t we get the dogs, as Dani suggested,” Finn offered, “and get them settled in the house. We’ll be right back. You guys just stay here and do what you’ve been doing and, um . . . wait for the police!”
“Oh, darlin’, they’ve already been and gone,” their Aunt Muriel said.
“They have? And?”
Muriel shrugged. “It’s fine.”
“It’s fine?”
“It’s fine.”
“Okay.” Finn walked back to the SUV and the rest of them followed. They took out the dogs and the puppies and walked them back to the house; everyone watched in disbelief as they moved past.
Once in the house, they put the dogs in Dani’s room and left his daughter with them. She had a way of making the puppies and Princess comfortable. The last thing she wanted was her father or uncles involved in that complex process.
Returning to the kitchen, Keane said, “Okay, what is going on? Why are they here?”
“I have no idea,” Finn said. “Maybe because of what happened in Manhattan?”
“What if they want something? Money? Our cars?” Keane gasped. “The dogs?”
“Okay, you’re snapping,” Finn warned.
“Then what do you suggest? That we just hand over our organs?”