She’d needed someone, and when my girls needed me? I was there.
"I’m Dr. Imler, but please call me Ashleigh. This must be Rebel," a woman said as she stepped into the ornate living room. Impressed that she didn't even flinch or glance around at the group of women clustered in the living room to watch a dog be examined, I scooted away to give her just a hint of space. "That's alright. She's comforted by you. I don't want to alarm her any more than I have to. We'll save the blood work for the end."
"Sounds good."
"She's definitely malnourished, so the first step will be making sure she eats small meals frequently throughout the day. Give her lots of water." Ashleigh ran her fingers over Rebel's fur, massaging her hands into her skin and feeling for anything unusual. "I don't feel any wounds or swelling, so I don't think she was hurt. I'm going to give you a list of foods before I leave. Pitbulls are normally known for muscle mass, so a high protein diet will be best for her at this point. Are you planning to keep her?" She pulled a scanner from her bag on the floor, running it in an s-shaped pattern between Rebel’s shoulder blades. Numbers appeared on the small screen on the device.
“Yes, I’m planning to keep her. What’s that?” I asked, my fingers dancing against my thigh.
“Her microchip registration number. When I get back to the office, I’ll be able to find her owner.” She smiled sadly. “There are a hundred possible reasons why she’s not with her owner anymore, so I wouldn’t worry too much just yet.”
I nodded, watching as she continued to examine Rebel: stretching her legs, checking her joints, and listening to her heart.
It was only after she took blood samples and determined my girl was a perfectly healthy young pitbull that the cramp in my stomach eased. She'd be just fine once we got her weight back to normal, we knew what happened with her previous owner, and her blood work came back clear.
Now to just keep her from loving Enzo too much.
14 Enzo
Liam's estate stood as regally as the Bellandi estate. But where the Bellandi home was a two-story that took up a shit ton of property, O'Connell's home was built upward. Looking like a manor that belonged in the sprawling Irish countryside rather than the suburbs of Chicago, the security similarities to Matteo's home couldn't be missed.
Walled in property and huge gates sat behind us as Matteo pulled the Aston up the driveway. Our SUVs sat in front of us, waiting for Matteo's arrival. Simon hopped out the back of one first, moving to stand beside Matteo as soon as he flung his door open. I followed, feeling the comforting weight of my guns tucked into the holsters at my waist. I never tried to hide my own weapons, since as a security specialist my job required me to be armed at all times.
Liam wasn't naïve enough to think we'd come to his territory for a meet and not bring our weapons. Given Matteo's powerful alliance with the man, I didn't see it being a problem.
Armed guards stepped outside, but their weapons remained strapped across their backs. Not a threat, more a reminder we weren't the only ones with weapons. Lino and Georgio climbed out of the SUV that Simon had vacated, stern looks on their face as they prepared for the shit show we were about to walk into.
There would never be any certainty when walking into a man's house to tell him his successor had been trafficking women behind his back. Building up a business that Liam wouldn't endorse, with little care for how it affected the old man.
It didn't matter, since Tiernan’d had plans to kill Liam as soon as Liam’s daughter, Aoife, was his wife. We had evidence of that, too, courtesy of Ryker getting text messages off a burner phone from his latest victim.
The devil himself stepped out of the front SUV, his face etched in hard lines. He’d worn a suit for the meeting, but that couldn’t contain the reality of what Ryker was. Matteo’s Executioner, who lived for blood and pain. He favored his hatchet when the time came to put someone out of his misery. Yavin came out the other side, along with a few more of our guys climbing out of the backseat. Bryan's eyes met mine, and even though I liked the guy plenty, it made my trigger finger twitch every time I looked at him now. The knowledge that he almost spent all his time with Sadie. That he'd almost been her guard, and if it hadn't been for her being difficult, he could have been the one who slipped between her thighs in that boxing ring, had she allowed it.
Brotherhood had always come first for me. Women never came close to competing with that.
But for Sadie, I might have had to kill the fucker.
That didn't sit right with me. Threatened everything I thought I knew about myself, another symptom of the change Sadie inspired in me from the moment I first saw her.
I led the way, nodding my head for Bryan to join me at the front of the pack as we made our way up the steps and greeted Liam's men. "He's waiting in his office," one of them said, his face remaining expressionless as he turned on his heel with military precision and made to guide us into the elegant home.
The interior of the Bellandi estate had been professionally decorated, and Ivory had taken over a year to put her stamp on the space before erasing that cold feeling that dominated the home Matteo grew up in. Liam's estate lacked that chill. Traces of a woman's personal touch were littered throughout, with little decorations and photos everywhere the moment we stepped inside. I briefly wondered if it had been his wife's
