They were still holding hands, but Tock intertwined their fingers. Shay decided to take that as a good sign.
“Did you get home okay after you left the Hamptons?”
“Yeah, but . . .” Shay blew out a breath. That conversation with the Malones had been interesting. Uncle Cally and the others never admitted to anything. They never said, “We’re here to do this. Or we’re here to do that.” They never said, “We’re here to protect you because we feel bad about how shitty we were to you after your father died.” Or even, “We’re vengeful tigers, too, and pissed someone shot at us. We’ll get even together!” Instead, they drank Irish beer, made jokes, and promised to hang around until, one day, as Shay and his brothers knew, they’d all be gone. Off to torture another street in another neighborhood.
Their next-door neighbor had stormed out of his house to complain about all the noise and the strangers on “his” street, but one roar from Uncle Cally had sent the idiot fleeing back to his house. They hadn’t seen him since. More upsetting was the interest that a few of his dad’s cousins were showing in Shay’s mother. Something Keane, Finn, and Shay weren’t going to let get any further than general flirting. Because . . . just . . . no! Absolutely not!
Dani had been happy, though, getting to meet her younger cousins and playing with them. But Tock had been absolutely right. When Dani had had enough socializing, she walked off. When a young male cousin tried to follow to keep the fun going, she slammed him into a wall, told him “No means no, Michael Patrick!” and returned to her room. The dogs were the only ones she didn’t seem to need time away from.
“But what?” Tock asked.
Telling Tock all that stuff could wait. Instead, he asked, “Would you like to go out to dinner tonight? With me? Just the two of us,” he added before she could suggest her friends or Dani, who had been bugging him on the drive over about spending the night with Nat again.
“Do you mean, like, a . . . date?”
Shay grinned. “Yes, Tock. I mean, like, a date. A normal, average dinner date between a Siberian tiger and an African honey badger.”
“Israeli-Jamaican honey badger and, yes, I’d love that.”
She moved close and wrapped her arms around his chest because she was wearing sneakers and couldn’t reach his neck.
Leaning down, Shay kissed her. Nothing, except the birth of his daughter, had ever been so perfect.
When he pulled back, he told her, “I’m glad you’re home.”
“Me, too.”
“Did you have a good trip?”
“Uh . . . yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Good trip.”
Shay gazed down at her and, after letting out a breath, asked, “What did you guys do?”
“No, no.” She stepped back and took his hand, tugging him toward the front door. “Not tonight, Shay. Tonight is date night. And we are going to have a nice, normal dinner before the shit storm we started in Italy comes crashing down all around us. Sound good?”
“Yeah, sure.” Shay stopped cold. “Wait . . . what?”
*
“So, Charlie MacKilligan killed Giuseppe de Medici?”
Mira shrugged. “Yes.”
How many times did she have to say it to these people? What were they not understanding?
“And she really didn’t ask him anything? She just killed him?” the wolf asked again.
“Right.”
“In other words, Paolo de Medici is now in charge.”
“Right.”
“Oh, this just gets fucking better,” the house cat snarled.
“And to get all the bad news out now,” Mira said, “the two older MacKilligan sisters dragged my granddaughter and her friends to Italy on a private jet.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
“Why?” the older Van Holtz asked.
“Don’t know yet.”
“Great. Just great.”
“And I’ve lost track of Rutowski and her friends.”
“In other words,” Bayla Ben-Zeev said, “you have no control over your people.”
“Those three MacKilligan sisters and Rutowski and her friends are not my people, and they are not badgers. They’re insane rodents, running around, chewing through wires, and burning down the world. And they’re dragging my beautiful granddaughter with them!”
“Maybe if you didn’t call them rodents, Mira, they’d listen to you more.”
“Shut. Up. Bayla.”
“If the MacKilligans have slipped their leashes,” the cat suggested, “perhaps we should have them—”
“Killed?” Bayla asked. “Because that worked out so well the first time.”
“That was not the first time someone tried to kill the MacKilligans,” Mira said with a headshake.
“Not killed. Managed.”
“Have you ever tried to lock up a honey badger?” Mira turned to look directly at the cat. “Even Stalin’s Siberian gulags couldn’t hold them.”
“I know of several badgers locked away in full-human prisons,” she countered.
“Because they want to be there! Either they’re hiding from something far worse or they’re making money. And, when they’ve finally gotten what they want or the threat has gone away, those badgers will get themselves out. And the ones who locked them up? They’ll wake up one day to find badgers in the walls and one of them pissing in their bed.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I’d normally say we should try to reason with them before this gets out of hand.”
“There is no reasoning with MacKilligans, Van Holtz.”
“Mira,” he said, his gaze across his office, “I believe you’re right.”
The wolf grabbed a remote from his desk and pressed a button, taking the mute off the TV that had been on but mostly ignored since Mira had started talking. They all stared at the footage of the burning home of the de Medici Coalition, which had stood for centuries in Northern Italy. But the burning house wasn’t Mira’s concern. It was the “number of dead police officers” who had burst into the home to arrest the de Medici brothers moments before the house burned to the ground.
When the news report ended, Van Holtz muted the TV again and the five of them sat in silence for nearly ten minutes until Bayla finally said, “Well, this all took a nasty turn, didn’t it, Mira?”
Her fangs sliding out of her gums, Mira said the only thing she could think of in the moment: “Shut. Up. Bayla!”