Max gave a small shrug. “It’s just not ringing any bells.”
“That’s it!” Ash moved onto the bed, stretching out beside a much-better-looking Streep. “I’m done with this. I don’t know you. You don’t know me.”
A tiny knock at the bedroom door paused the ridiculous conversation and Tock gave a relieved smile. “You’re alive.”
Dani, frowning and gazing at Tock, bit into the brownie she had in her hand. When she finished chewing, she said, “Charlie wanted me to tell you that if you want anything she’s made, you’d better come down and get it now.”
“Why?”
“The wolves are coming.”
*
Mira followed the massive cat up the stairs for five whole floors until they reached a doorway that led out onto the roof. He snarled at one of his brothers or an older nephew—she didn’t really feel like figuring out who was who among all these big cats—to leave and walked over to the edge. That’s when he finally shifted to human. Naked human, but at least he had a very good body.
Giovanni Medici didn’t live the life of most lion males—fighting his way into a pride and letting the females feed him and breed with him until he was forced out by younger, stronger males. Some moving on to have their own families with full-human women; those who were particularly lazy might end their lives living with their sisters if they got along at all. Most older, full-blood lion males, however, just ended up dead in the Sudan.
But the Medicis—like the de Medicis in Italy—were not a pride. They were a coalition. A coalition of brother lions that ran their own family. It was rare but was known to happen in the wild. Over the centuries, there had been other coalitions, but none as powerful or long-lasting as the de Medicis. None as brutal, either.
Mira walked over to stand next to Giovanni. She no longer had her weapon trained on him. Wasn’t sure she needed it.
“You certainly have brought a lot of problems on yourself today, kitty.”
“It wasn’t us.”
“Don’t lie to me, Medici.”
“It wasn’t us. If it was, I’d have eaten your head by now and left your gnawed-on bones in front of the Israeli Embassy.”
“Just like your father would have?”
“Exactly.” He took in a deep breath, then let it out. She wondered if he did that any time he had to talk about old Giuseppe. “Only my father could authorize an attack like this on protected soil, but I seriously doubt he would. He’s not a nice man, but he’s never stupid or crazy.”
“Whoever authorized that attack has put a target on the back of the entire—”
The harsh laugh that cut her off was bitter and angry.
“There will be no one coming for my father or any other de Medici. Katzenhaus won’t do a damn thing. The BPC will only sanction bears that work for the family, but the pay is so good, there will always be bears working for the family. And the Group’s excellent snipers will never get close enough to put a bullet through any de Medici’s head. So if your hopes are resting on any of them, forget it.”
Mira turned to look at Giovanni. He looked just like all the other de Medicis. That blond mane, mixed with thick layers of brown. Over six and a half feet tall with those massive lion shoulders. The de Medici lions were swamp cats, used to fighting their way against the current. When Giuseppe’s early ancestor and his brothers were forced out of the Pride by their mother, with no money and no prospects, they started their own coalition. And his first move as the head of that coalition was to eat an entire Mafia family during some Roman Catholic holiday. He and his brothers tore through that family’s compound, killing everyone and eating most of the bodies. When a clan of hyenas showed up to scavenge the next day, they were shocked to find that no one had survived the massacre. Not even the children or the pets.
Centuries later, nothing had really changed. Except for one thing . . .
“We’re not with him, you know,” Giovanni said. “The Medicis are our own coalition. The de Medicis, and my father, run Europe—”
“And you run the States?”
“We leave that to Katzenhaus. We just manage our little domain here. In New Jersey.”
“Then your father has invaded your ‘little domain’ and has left a trail of bodies for you to follow.”
“If you think I’m going up against my father . . . I’m not. I have too much to protect right here. And trust me when I say he wouldn’t hesitate to kill one of his own sons if any of us even thought about getting in his way.”
*
“You weren’t kidding,” Mads said to Tock when she saw all the food Charlie had laid out. And she was still going. Even letting some dough rise so she could make her amazing cinnamon buns at a later time.
Sitting down at a table by the floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the kitchen, Tock and her teammates began to eat the baked goods that were right in front of them. Shay and his brothers were tearing through the pastries placed on the marble counter. The brothers weren’t even speaking to each other; too busy just . . . devouring.
Dani had been right. The wolves did come, but they stayed outside. Most of them were in their canine forms, running back and forth at the glass windows and the glass double doors that led into the kitchen, but not daring to enter.
After about thirty minutes, Mads’s aunt entered the room with her three badger friends. She went to the double doors and pulled them open. “You can come in and eat,” she loudly announced, “if you’d like. Charlie has clearly made enough for everyone.”
The wolves stopped pacing long enough to stare at Tracey Rutowski, but none of them entered.
Leaving the doors open, Tracey came over to their table and sat down.
“They never listen to me. More than thirty years and they still don’t trust me.”
“Are you the . . . Alpha here?” Max had to ask.
Rutowski and her friends laughed.
“God, no!” she said. “They loathe me. Wolf’s sister is Alpha Female. That one,” she said, pointing at a black wolf staring into the house, “Carrie Van Holtz. Head chef of the Van Holtz Steakhouse in the Village, Alpha Female of the New York Pack, and eternal pain in my ass.”
“So you’re just here, making friends and choosing love?” Tock joked.
“I fell in love with the man. Not his family. Definitely not his pack. But they’ve never given me a chance. And I have to say, I am fucking delightful.”
“They’re probably worried you’ll steal something.”
“Anything of importance the Van Holtzes have is in Germany. . . and we already got that shit.”
When Tock and her teammates stared at her, Rutowski just smiled. It was off-putting.
Rutowski’s phone vibrated and she looked down at it, made a face, and dismissed the call.
“Any news?” Mads asked between bites of a puff pastry filled with blueberries.
“I have every organization trying to contact me, but I don’t want to talk to them yet. Not until I have the information I need.”
“This wasn’t our fault,” Nelle said.
“No. It wasn’t. But tigers running loose in the city . . . that can be a problem.”