rage. Always sensitive . . . like your mother.’ ”
“ ‘Troch rage’?” Vic repeated, with a small laugh. “Your father called you Little Rage?”
“Since I smacked him right across the mouth when I was six months old.”
Vic leaned down a bit so he could look in her eyes. “But now you’re sure your father’s gone. Why?”
Livy let out a big breath before looking directly at him and replying, “Because I found his stuffed carcass in Allison Whitlan’s apartment.”
Vic blinked those gold eyes at her, his entire body jolting in surprise. “Wait . . . what?”
“She had him by her fireplace. Someone went to a good taxidermist. You could barely tell he’d been shot in the back of the head.”
“Livy . . . I . . . um . . .”
“Please don’t say you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear sorry.”
“What do you need from me?”
“You gave me what I needed. Time. I needed time to figure out what I should do.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Now we know that Allison Whitlan must be in some kind of contact with her father. Dee and Cella can take it from there.”
“It’s not that easy, Vic.”
“It’s not?”
“Not for me. It’ll never be that easy for me.”
Vic placed his hand over her forearm, his fingers warm and dry. Comforting. “I can’t even imagine how hard all this must be for you. I really can’t. But what I do know is that you need to let the people paid to protect our kind do their jobs.”
“They may be paid to protect your kind but not mine. The honey badgers have always been on our own. We always will be.”
Vic leaned back in his chair. “What’s your plan, Livy? Track down Whitlan by yourself? Take him down by yourself?”
“Honey badgers are a lot of things. We’re mean. We’re rough. We’re mostly felons. We take shit from no one. But the one thing we’re not . . . is stupid. I have no intention of going after Whitlan by myself.”
“Then what are you planning?”
“The only thing I can.” Livy picked up her cell phone, pulled up an important number she’d never used before, and sent out a quick text before she focused back on Vic and said, “Vengeance.”
Baltazar Kowalski pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket and looked at the text he’d just gotten.
One of the men breaking into the reinforced safe in the basement of the bank—a safe that held millions in diamonds—glared at Balt over the ski mask he wore.
“Do we really have time for you to chat with your pretty girlfriend?” the man whispered in French.
Balt ignored the man and studied the text.
“What is it, brother?” Kamil asked, his gaze straying from the guards they’d secured and drugged so that they were out cold during the job.
“It’s from Damon’s girl.” Damon. Their brother was supposed to have been with them on this job. They all did their own individual jobs, of course, but several times a year, the Kowalski brothers worked together. Especially on these kinds of jobs where a lot of money and risk were at stake. And Damon had been the best at organizing and pulling these jobs off without a hitch. So his loss was felt most at this time.
“What does she say?” Edmund asked.
“She wants us to meet her in New York. Now.”
The five brothers stared at each other. Olivia wasn’t like any of their children. She never contacted them for anything. Had never involved herself in the family business. Before Damon’s funeral, they hadn’t seen her for a good seven years or so. When they did see her, she did no more than wave at them before disappearing with Balt’s boy, Jake. For waffles, Balt had been told later. Although he could never understand why anyone would go out and get waffles when they had perfectly delicious cobras slithering around the backyard of Damon’s old house.
No. The Kowalski men had never understood Damon’s girl . . . including Damon. But Olivia was still family. She was a Kowalski. A strange Kowalski, but still one of them. Which meant only one thing to Balt, Edmund, Kamil, Gustav, Otto, and David.
The brothers locked gazes and, without another word between them, stopped what they were doing and packed up.
The full-humans they were working with looked up at the brothers. “Where the hell are you going?” one of them asked.
Balt zipped up his black bag, and slung it over his shoulder. He didn’t answer the man; there was no point.
Another full-human pulled his .45 and aimed it at Otto. Baltazar stepped in front of his brother and walked up to the man until the gun pressed against Balt’s chest. He gazed at the full-human and waited. After several seconds, the man looked away. Balt reached over and took the gun from the full-human’s grasp.
“Nice Glock,” Balt said in French. “I have one at my house.” Then he used the weapon to beat the man who’d pointed it at Otto until he was bleeding and sobbing on the ground.
Balt tossed the gun to the ground and motioned to his brothers. “Come,” he said in English, trying to get used to the difficult language again since they were going to America. “We have plane to catch.”
CHAPTER 18
Toni stepped away from the Russian bargaining table and walked out into the hallway before answering her phone. It was Livy, which was strange. Livy wasn’t really a fan of talking on phones. She’d been known to text when necessary, but that was about it.
“Hey, Livy.”
“Hey.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I need to ask a favor, though.”
“A favor?” Toni frowned. “You?”
“I’ve asked for favors before.”
“Yeah. I guess. Can’t really remember one, though.”
“Can I ask a favor or not?”
“Okay, okay. No need to get testy. What do you need?”
There was a pause, then Livy asked, “I need to borrow the brownstone.”
“The brownstone?” Toni wasn’t quite sure what Livy was talking about. “What brownstone?”
“The one your parents rent from the wild dogs.”
“Oh! You mean the wild dog house.” At least that’s what Toni’s family called it. It was a beautiful piece of real estate that the wild dogs could sell for a fortune but instead chose to rent out for an insane amount of money. Of course, Toni had thought her family was only renting it for that one summer when Toni’s mother was “stalking” the Alpha Female’s adopted son, Johnny. Not literal stalking. Her mother, thankfully, was not interested in Johnny as anything but a music student. A prodigy training a prodigy. But the wild dogs were as protective of their pups as jackals, so it had required a lot more work. Still, Toni thought her parents would stop renting the house once that summer was over and they’d returned to their lives on the West Coast. But her parents were still renting the place, whether they were in it or not, with the logic that they could crash there anytime they were in Manhattan. The wild dogs loved this plan, as well, because they still received their rental payments without having to worry about out-of-control neighbors or squatters.
“Yeah. Sure. But are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”
“Nothing you have to worry about. A family thing. But I swear, any damage done to the place, I’ll make sure it’s fixed and perfect before you get back to the States. Okay?”