“They have that instruction, Georgie, but I talked to Tommy after he got back from dealing with Green and Dr. Baldwin. Tommy told me that Gill picked up Green. He took his phone. Dad still has it. And I’ve no doubt he did that because he wants money coming in and he knows I’ve given that instruction to my boys. So he’s not getting straight answers because they come to their meets with me in tow and we feed him information everyone knows is bogus so he won’t lose his mind and, say, shoot one of his own men.”

“Fuck,” she hissed.

I said nothing. I wasn’t the kind of woman who rubbed it in when I was right.

“Green is gonna bail,” she declared.

I said nothing to that either because this time, she was right (except about the “gonna” part) and I wasn’t about to confirm that just in case she was in a seriously bad mood and decided to do something about it. If Green intended to disappear, I wanted him to have as big a head start as he could get.

“He sniffs around Sloan or Benito, Liv…” She made the statement and trailed off so she didn’t have to make her threat verbal.

“You need to have a word with Gill,” I advised. “He can’t do that again. He has to work with us to keep Dad from tying our hands.”

“I’ll talk with him,” Georgia muttered.

She would. She’d do this before and/or after she fucked him.

Gill would come to heel.

I wondered if I should monitor the rats in the warehouse since, if they abandoned a sinking ship, perhaps, even in a warehouse, they’d do the same and this would provide forewarning when the house that Clive Shade built was going to come crashing down.

I again knew it served no purpose to say what I was next going to say considering I’d mentioned this to my sister repeatedly and she’d ignored it repeatedly.

I didn’t give up.

“We need to focus on the legitimate businesses, Georgia.”

“Facilitating the export of dart guns is not going to keep you in your house, Olivia,” she retorted.

“Perhaps not, but that’s not all we have and we don’t pay enough attention to any of it, including the man Dad has handling it.”

Now it was me saying something she knew, mostly because I’d been sharing my concerns about this now for years.

But David Littleton was Dad’s man. A friend from back in the day. They’d met in grade school.

So David got to do what he wanted.

“David is good,” Georgia decreed.

“David has too much power and not enough oversight.”

“Then oversee him.”

My back shot straight. “Is that permission?”

“Fuck yeah,” Georgia said. “What do I care?”

Georgia was my big sister.

Georgia was also heir to the throne.