chapter 35

ASHTON

We’d slept through the rest of the morning.

I was sitting on the edge of the bed. Molly was still conked out behind me. She’d fallen asleep after our last time, so I’d moved her, positioning her back under the sheets, but I couldn’t sleep. My body was a mix of satisfaction, exhaustion, and also readiness for whatever was to come.

I liked this next stage. Not in a Mafia war, but in our businesses. I enjoyed where the next move was ours to make, where our adversary was wary, where we were the predators. But the stakes were different here.

They’d hit us last night, and before we’d even retired to our separate bedrooms, Trace and I had already coordinated our attack. Each of us still handled what our families handled before, with Trace’s family covering transportation and distribution and mine handling the cops and higher-ups, but it was different now that he and I were the heads. We could coordinate better. There was no more needed time to call for a meeting or to decipher if that