Broken Vow: A Dark Mafia Romance (Brutal Birthright Book 5)

I drive Riona back over to the Griffins’ modern mansion on the Gold Coast. It’s a palace of glass and steel, a monument to how their family has grown and flourished in Chicago.

As we enter the huge, bright kitchen, I remember that this is where Riona and I first met. I glance over at her to see if she’s thinking the same thing. I catch her eye, making a little tinge of pink appear on her pale cheeks.

I don’t know why I get such a kick from getting a rise out of her. I guess it’s because she’s so determined to keep that perfectly composed demeanor at all times. It’s like she’s setting up a challenge for me. And I’ve always been one to rise to a challenge.

Imogen Griffin is just finishing her breakfast. She’s already dressed for the day in one of those classy business-style sheath dresses, her blonde bob as smooth and sleek as glass.

Riona and her mother look a lot alike. Riona’s a little taller, with red hair instead of blonde. But looking at Imogen is like looking twenty or thirty years into Riona’s future—proof of how gracefully she’ll age. Like an iconic actress who only seems to become more regal with time.

I could have guessed that without ever seeing Imogen, though—Riona’s too stubborn to ever let herself look less than her best.

Imogen comes over to Riona at once and kisses her on the cheek.

“How are you, love?” she says. Imogen strokes her hand gently down Riona’s hair.

I’m surprised to see that Riona allows this. In fact, she rests her cheek against her mother’s for a moment. She obviously respects Imogen.

But she still won’t admit that someone trying to murder her has affected her in the slightest.

“I’m fine, Mom,” she says.

“Imogen Griffin,” Imogen says, holding out her slim hand to me.

“Raylan Boone.”

“Thank you for coming to help us,” she says. “Dante speaks very highly of you.”

“I’m surprised,” I say. “He’s usually so honest.”

Imogen smiles, her blue eyes fixed on mine. “He is honest,” she says. “I’ve come to trust him. It never ceases to amaze me how even the bitterest of enemies can become friends. Or the reverse.”

She checks the delicate gold watch on her wrist.

“I’ve got to go,” she says. “I have a board meeting for the Chicago Library Association. Riona—Butcher and Meecham are here to keep an eye on things.”

I assume that’s her security team. I plan to give them a once-over before I leave, though I’m sure the Griffins are supremely careful who they hire for that type of position.

Riona is already spreading out her work on the small table of the breakfast nook. It’s obvious she intends to dive right in.

I admire her work ethic. Makes it kinda tiring to watch her though—she doesn’t get much sleep.

Callum comes into the kitchen right as his mother is going out. He kisses her on the cheek, almost exactly the same way she kissed Riona. It’s always funny to see the little habits in families—the gestures passed along like a silent code that only the members would recognize.

“How’s Miles?” she asks him.

“Fantastic,” he says. “I think he and Aida are soulmates. All they do is nap and cuddle and eat.”

“You better be getting up with him in the night,” Imogen says warningly. “Don’t leave it all to Aida.”

“Do you honestly think she’d allow that?” Callum laughs.

Imogen smiles. “No. Probably not.”

Imogen waves goodbye to us all, and Callum pours himself a cup of coffee from the large carafe on the spotless white marble countertop.

“You want some?” he asks me.

“No, thanks. Just had a cup.”

“How’s the guarding going?” he asks me with a glance at Riona, already bent over her work.

“Great,” I say.

“Really?” I can hear his mild disbelief.

“Of course.” I grin. “What could possibly go wrong, following Riona around twenty-four seven, constantly right next to her, watching her every move, sticking right by her like I’m surgically attached? How could she not enjoy that?”

Riona doesn’t dignify that with a response—she keeps her eyes on her papers. But I can feel the disdain radiating out of her all the same. Callum has to work hard not to laugh.

On a more serious note, I say, “How long have these guys Butcher and Meecham worked for you?”

“Six years for Butcher, eight for Meecham,” Callum says. “We can trust them.”

“Alright.” I nod. “Just checking every box.”

“I appreciate that,” Cal says. “You ready to see the broker?”

“Most definitely.”

Cal gulps down his coffee and puts the mug in the sink. I can tell from the dark shadows under his eyes that he was telling his mother the truth—he’s definitely been getting up with a newborn. You can’t hide that haggard-but-happy look of new parents.

“We’ll be back in a couple hours,” Callum says to Riona.

“Don’t hurry,” she replies, still not looking up.

“I can drive,” I say to Cal as we head back out the wide, curving driveway where I left the Escalade.

“Thanks,” Callum says. “That’s probably for the best. I felt like a zombie on the way over.”

I get behind the wheel, and Cal climbs into the passenger seat, rubbing the inner corners of his eyes.

“I don’t know what it is about interrupted sleep,” he says. “Even if you get eight hours, it’s not the same.”

“Nope,” I say. “Not even close.”

I never sleep eight hours straight through anymore. Too many nights sleeping on sand or rock or dirt, always having to keep one ear open for interruptions—the kind of interruptions that can kill you. You never really recover that deep and peaceful slumber.

“So who’s this guy we’re going to see?” I ask Cal.

“He’s a connector,” Cal says. “And he’s a nasty piece of work. You armed?”

I nod. “Always.”

“Good. Me too. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but I’m not sure he’s going to want to cooperate.”

Cal directs me as I drive us down to Riverdale. It’s on the far south side of the city. The neighborhoods seem to get older, poorer, and more rundown the farther south we go. Instead of towering high rises, I see squat concrete apartment buildings, boarded-up businesses, and vandalized bus stops.

Riverdale itself seems sparsely populated by contrast to the downtown core. Most of the area is taken up by rail yards, landfills, and industrial sites, including a massive wastewater treatment plant.

Callum tells me to drive up toward the Union Pacific railroad tracks.

“Right up there,” he says, pointing to what looks like an abandoned warehouse. Every single window is shattered, and the metal sides are layered with what looks like twenty years’ worth of graffiti—color and pattern so dense that it’s hard to tell what any of it is supposed to represent.

“Is the car gonna be here when we get back?” I say skeptically.

“Who knows.” Callum shrugs.

“They still have trains coming through here?”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “A fuck-ton of them. Probably five hundred a day. They get jammed up on the tracks and left overnight. Then guys who work at the rail yard tip off other guys about what’s in the boxcars. And if it’s something worth stealing—guns or TV sets or designer shoes—it goes missing that night. The railways are insured, so they’d rather save money on security versus trying to stop cargo going missing.”

“And your broker here—what’s his name?”

“Zimmer,” Cal says.

“I take it he facilitates the thefts and finds a home for the goods.”

“Right,” Cal says. “Exactly. He’s the middleman.”

We get out of the car, walking across the broken pavement of the empty lot. It’s hard to believe there’s anybody inside the warehouse, but when Cal knocks three times on the metal door, it creaks open almost immediately.

A bouncer both tall and fat silently looks out at us. His head is so big and round that his piggy little eyes are just slits in the flesh of his face.

“Here to see Zimmer,” Cal says calmly.

The bouncer pats us down with hands that are surprisingly small for his huge frame. Even that amount of physical exertion makes him breathe heavily.

“Leave your guns there,” he grunts, pointing to a cardboard box set on top of a stool.

Callum drops his Glock into the box without complaint. I don’t really like disarming in an unknown place, but if that’s the price of entry, I guess we don’t have much choice.

I drop my gun and follow Cal into the dim warehouse.

It’s a strange kind of clubhouse in here. I see several dusty couches and armchairs, and a whole lot of games. A pool table, air hockey, foosball, and three separate TVs with gaming systems. A dozen kids ranging from teens to early twenties are lounging around, killing each other in Call of Duty, and already drinking even though it’s ten o’clock in the morning.

Callum beelines straight toward a guy who can’t be more than twenty-two years old. He’s wearing ripped skinny jeans, an oversized Fila sweatshirt, and a puffy pair of Yeezy boots. He’s puffing from a vape and he looks blazed out of his mind.

“Morning,” Cal says politely.

Zimmer gives him a slow nod.

“Can we talk in private?” Cal says.

“You can say whatever you want to say,” Zimmer tells him lazily.

“It’s for my privacy,” Cal replies coolly. “Not yours.”

Zimmer regards him with narrowed, bloodshot eyes. But after a minute, he hauls himself up from the oversized beanbag chair he was lounging upon and leads us to the back corner of the warehouse. Here we can all sit down on a sectional couch of uncertain age and color. Quite honestly, I’d rather not sit down, seeing as it’s stained with mystery fluids. But those are the kinds of sacrifices you have to make when you’re the guest of a gangster.

Zimmer sprawls out on his side of the couch. Cal and I sit at a ninety-degree angle.

“So?” Zimmer says, taking another long puff off his vape.

Without preamble, Cal says, “I want to know if you brokered a hit against my sister.”

Zimmer lets out his breath in a plume of thick white smoke. It curls out his nostrils and mouth simultaneously. His eyes peer through the smoke, dark and glittering, like a dragon.

“If I gave out that kind of information,” he says, “what the fuck kind of broker would I be?”

“I understand that,” Cal says, keeping his voice measured. “But here’s the thing, Zimmer. We’ve never had any conflict. I stay up on the north end of the city. You run things how you like down here. We maintain a mutual level of respect. If you were to broker a hit against a member of my family, and I were to find out about it . . . I would consider that an act of aggression.”

Zimmer takes another pull off his vape. His relaxed posture hasn’t changed. But I can see a new alertness in his eyes and a tension in his muscles. His face is still, but there’s a gleam of anger in his eyes.

“I would consider it aggressive,” he hisses, “if you came into my house and threatened me.”

The silence stretches between Cal and Zimmer for several minutes. I’m not planning to say a goddamned word. Cal knows this guy, I don’t—but I am watching everyone else in the room, out of the corner of my eye. Keeping track of the big bouncer who’s standing off on our right-hand side, close enough to be summoned at a moment’s notice, and the rest of Zimmer’s people, too, who might be fucking around on Call of Duty, but are no doubt armed—every single one of them.

Finally, Cal says, “I have a piece of information in trade. I know a boxcar full of Rugers went missing from the Norfolk rail yard a couple weeks ago. One hundred and fourteen guns spread out across the city. Mostly here on the south side.”

Zimmer’s face remains impassive. I can tell this isn’t news to him at all.

Cal goes on. “They picked up three of the men involved last night. Bryson, England, and Dawes. Two of them kept their mouths shut. But the third seems to think he can link you to the robbery. He’s making a deal with the DA as we speak. I guess you fucked his girlfriend a couple months back, and he’s holding a grudge about it. He seems to think that, unlike your usual hands-off approach, with this particular shipment you tested one of the guns. The same one used to rob the liquor store on Langley. Remember that? The one where the clerk got shot? Dawes says he knows where that particular Ruger is. He says it should still have your prints on it, along with the prints of the idiot who shot the clerk.”

As Cal speaks, Zimmer sits perfectly still. But his face gets paler, until it looks as gray as the smoke still seeping from his nostrils.

“I could tell you where they’re holding Dawes,” Cal says quietly. “So you can shut his mouth for him, before he says too much. But I need to know who hired that hit on Riona.”

Zimmer lets out the last remaining smoke from his lungs.

“Alright,” he hisses quietly. “Alright.”

He sits up straighter on the couch, leaning forward on his knees and speaking so low that I can barely hear him.

“I didn’t broker the hit myself. But I heard about it.”

“Tell me what you know,” Cal says.

This is the first time Cal’s voice loses its casualness. There’s an edge to his tone now, and I see the stiffness in his shoulders. He’s angry, hearing it confirmed that someone dared hire a killer to attack his sister.

“I heard there was a hit happening, and nobody could know about it. It had to look like an accident.”

Cal gives a small, almost imperceptible nod. That’s what we guessed.

“It was expensive. They hired this guy they call the Djinn.”

“The Djinn?” Cal says, frowning like he doesn’t believe Zimmer. “What the fuck is that?”

“That’s his name,” Zimmer says defensively. “I don’t know his real name. Nobody does. You call him up—and he makes people disappear.”

“Fine,” Cal says, cutting to the point he cares about more than the identity of this hitman. “I don’t give a shit. I want to know who hired him.”

“I don’t know!” Zimmer says. “I don’t. When hits are hired, it’s a double-blind system. The client doesn’t know the hitman, and the hitman doesn’t know the client. It’s all anonymized. That way nobody can rat.”

Cal scowls, obviously wishing he’d implemented a similar system between him and Dawes.

“So where’s the snitch?” Zimmer demands.

“They’re holding him in MCC,” Cal says. “D Block.”

Zimmer nods.

Cal gets up from the couch, our business with Zimmer obviously concluded.

The hefty bouncer follows us all the way to the door, where we retrieve our guns.

“Don’t come back,” he grunts as he cracks the door for us once more.

Cal turns and fixes him with a cold stare.

“Don’t give me a reason to,” he says.

Even the air of the run-down rail yard tastes fresh after the inside of that warehouse. We head back to the Escalade, which is mercifully untouched. No doubt anyone watching recognized Callum and knew better than to fuck with his ride.

It was bizarre watching the charming and well-bred politician melt away so I could see the Irish gangster underneath. It’s easy to see the Griffins for what they are today—one of the most wealthy and successful families in Chicago. You forget that their empire was built on blood and crime. That Fergus Griffin, and his father before him, and his grandfather before him, had no scruples about crushing anyone who got in their way. I suspect Callum is the same.

“You don’t care if he kills Dawes?” I say to Cal.

“Why would I?” Callum fixes me with his icy blue eyes. “He’s a low-level criminal, not even loyal to his own boss. I don’t give a fuck about him. I’d strangle him with my bare hands to keep Riona safe.”

I nod. “Fair enough.”

I let Cal do the talking in there, because he knows these people and I don’t. But I want to get to know this so-called Djinn. If I’m going to protect Riona, I need to know who he is, and how he works.

For that reason, I call Dante and ask him to meet me at the Griffins’ house.

He gets there around 1:00 p.m., carrying a large bag of Thai food. He spreads it out across the long marble countertop, saying to Riona, “Take a break and eat with us.”

Riona sets down her pen, tempted by the scent of chicken satay and coconut rice.

“Alright,” she says.

Cal, Riona, Dante, and I all dish up large plates of food. Cal and Riona use chopsticks, but Dante and I grab forks out of the silverware drawer. Fucking around with wooden sticks is the reason you don’t see a lot of overweight Thai people, I bet.

While we eat, Cal recaps our meeting with Zimmer.

Dante doesn’t look pleased at all when he hears the name “Djinn.”

“You know him?” I ask.

“I don’t know him,” Dante says. “But I know he’s fucking expensive. The best you can get around here. A professional.”

I glance over at Riona to see how she’s taking this.

She’s picking at her Pad Thai, obviously not thrilled to know that the person hired to kill her is a little too good at his job.

“Hey,” I say to her. “We’ll find him.”

“I’d rather find the person who hired him,” Riona says.

“I went and met with the Russians this morning,” Dante tells us. “Yenin denied having anything to do with it. But he looked pretty fucking pleased about it all the same. And I doubt he’d tell us if it was him.”

“We need to find out more about the Djinn,” I say. “And check the other two people Riona mentioned having a possible grudge.”

“I’ll look up the Hartford family,” Dante says.

“And I’ll find the guy Uncle Oran fired,” Cal says.

Riona pushes her plate away, having hardly touched her food.

“I’m going back to work,” she says. “Sounds like you all have it covered.”