Page 45 of Ready or Not
Cooper
My impulses want me out there, ensuring everything goes smoothly with my mom and Vale.
I also know my mother well enough to be sure she’s going to set the mother of her grandchild at ease. She had another stern conversation with me this morning about how I should propose to Vale.
After all, she’s carrying my baby.
I had to remind my mom that Vale is already married to my best fucking friends.
Oh yeah, and she hates me.
Merrick sighs, glancing between his laptop screen and the computer on Mercy’s desk. “Okay, so something has been bothering me, and it took me until last night to figure it out. We all know the Andretti brothers and what they did to Ranger’s family, so I’m not going to get into that.”
The Andrettis took out Ranger’s family in a turf war a few years back.
I grimace, looking at Ranger, but his face is placid. It boggles my mind that he manages to stay so calm at the sound of their name. I don’t know anyone else who wouldn’t give some kind of reaction.
Then again, the only time he really shows any emotion is when he’s speaking about trying to locate his sister.
“The Andrettis are big time in the skin trade all up and down the East Coast,” Merrick says, typing away. “I’ve been through their records with a fine-tooth comb, but they recently hooked up with the Barrett family out of New York.”
My head whips between Steele and Merrick.
The job they were involved in when they lost their omega had ties to the Barrett family.
The Barretts had somehow acquired the former mob boss of New York’s daughter and gifted her to another slimeball whose name I can’t remember.
Ivanov’s daughter, Keeley, wasn’t supposed to be Merrick and Steele’s mission, but they caught feelings, and the rest is history.
Ivanov is a known mobster, but he’s the kind we ignore. For being on the wrong side of the law, he only trades in drugs, weapons, and information. We leave organizations like that alone.
The main problem is, Ivanov lost his hold on New York to the Barretts a couple of years ago.
The Barretts don’t have the same values Ivanov has.
That’s a clusterfuck, if the two families now running New York and Boston are teaming up in the skin trade.
The Barretts in New York and the Andrettis in Boston.
Individually, we haven’t had a hope of taking them down while staying under the radar.
Together?
They’re a day-ruining problem.
It’s definitely not something we can tackle right this second, though, so I’m baffled why this meeting had to take place while Vale and my mom are meeting for the first time…
Kinda.
They’re just getting to know each other with their newfound connection. And I need to be there, because I can’t concentrate on a single fucking thing outside of whether they like each other.
My priorities are obviously skewed.
It’s difficult to fathom that I’m going to have a daughter in roughly a month. It’s exciting and terrifying all at once. In our world, boys are safer than girls. It’s a disgusting reality of life, but this is why we do the shit we do.
If someone hurt Vale or the baby…
I think I could make Ranger’s work look like child’s play. It’s complicated because I no longer want to put my life at risk out in the field.