Page 47 of Tristian (The Doherty Mafia)
“No. I want to stay awake. Where is Elsie?”
“I’m going to go find her,” I replied.
“Where did she go?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to look for her.”
“I like Elsie,” Davey continued.
“I like her too.”
“She’s very nice.”
“Yes she is. She’s very nice,” I said with a smile.
“I’ll give her Teddy if she wants him,” he added.
“I’m sure she’d want you to keep him. You guys look like you’re best friends,” I said.
“Who is Elsie’s best friend?” Davey asked.
It was a sudden reminder that I didn’t know much about Elsie. I hadn’t asked her the right questions. I hadn’t taken the opportunity to get to know her, and I regretted it now. I regretted all of it.
“I’ll ask her when I see her,” I replied.
We were ready to go when I got a call on my phone.
It was from a blocked number and I knew immediately it had to be Aldo. There was a flicker of hope in me that it was Elsie. That she had somehow managed to find my number and call me in secret.
But it was a slithery man’s voice on the other end of the line.
“I’m guessing you’ve been expecting this call by now,” he said.
“And you’re not calling me to tell me where to find her,” I growled into the phone.
Aldo laughed, and I heard him sucking in cigar smoke. I pictured him standing in front of Elsie while he smoked and spoke to me. If she was there in the room with him, she wasn’t speaking because I hadn’t heard her voice.
“No, of course not. I have no intention of giving her back to you. I have some important tasks for her that she’s been assisting me with, and when she’s done with them, I plan on getting rid of her.”
My grip tightened on the phone. In a fit of fury, I was close to flinging the phone to the ground. I didn’t want to hear his voice, but I also knew it’d be in my benefit to keep him on the line.
“I’m not going to try and convince you to change your mind. I’ll just make sure you have no choice,” I said.
“And how will you manage that when you have no idea where she is?”
“I’ll find her. You can count on it, motherfucker,” I hissed, ending the call before he said anything else.
There was no way I’d let him have the last word.
My brothers stared at me as I slid the phone back in my pocket. Maybe they didn’t expect me to be this calm about it, but for Elsie’s sake, I wasn’t going to lose my mind. Not yet.
I needed to keep calm and execute our plan to perfection. There was very little room for error here.
Killian walked into Brendan’s apartment just then.
“We’re good to go. You have Dad’s blessings,” Killian said to me. It was exactly what I needed to hear.
I couldn’t do this without my family’s support.
Everyone else stormed out of the apartment, gathering up the other men who’d join us in the attack. We needed to act fast before the Barons got wind of what we had planned.
They had been one step ahead of us this whole time, which meant our walls had ears. We knew that already. There were leaks in our system, clearly, which we’d deal with later, once this was all over.
For now, we needed to eliminate a basic problem—Aldo Baron.
“You sure about this?” Nolan asked when we drove up to the back of the farmhouse. It was four in the morning, a few hours before sunrise. The sky was a deep violet color and it was only because our eyes had already adjusted to the darkness that we saw the scene around us.
We drove for close to two hours to get to this particular farmhouse. We’d already checked a few other potential sites and none of them were the ones we were looking for. But I had a feeling about this one.
Especially because of how unassuming this one looked.
It was a farmhouse nobody would take notice of. It wasn’t swanky, and neither was it derelict. It didn’t stand out at all. Just looked like the kind of place a struggling farmer and his family would occupy on the outskirts of town, close to a river and a forest trail.
The others were in their own vehicles and we’d driven up to a lookout point at the back of the building where we hoped we wouldn’t raise any alarms.
“I think this is the one,” I replied.
Nolan and I stared out at the house. The others were all in their cars, waiting for my signal. Killian had made it clear to everyone involved that I was leading the mission. This was going to be my first time.
Nobody else in the family had led a mission at twenty-two, but my brothers had faith in me.
