Her Mafia Brothers

Busted

Logan and I were sitting in the kitchen eating blueberry muffins and drinking juice and playing on our phones. I loved my new phone. It was by far the best phone I've ever had - which wouldn't be hard, considering I've only ever had one before this and it was cheap and nasty. But this was a seriously awesome phone.

Subconsciously, my hand went to the sore spot on my leg where Logan had whacked me, and I absently rubbed at it.

"That can't actually still hurt," Logan said, mocking me. "Stop being dramatic."

"I'm not!" I whined. "It does! You hit me really hard!"

Logan rolled his eyes and scoffed. "Yeah, ages ago. Get over it."

I pouted, but broke off another bit of my muffin and put it into my mouth, and sent another Snap to my new besties. Blondie upsetting me so I got sent home was the talk of the school, apparently. Not that I even got sent home. More like I left. I'll have to address those rumors tomorrow. I was starting to think that perhaps being in the Mafia was a handy thing. I could use my brother's power and influence to scare the living crap out of people like Blondie. I could threaten them with all sorts of horrific crimes, and they'd probably believe me, once they knew who my brothers were. I smiled smugly. Maybe having brothers in the Mafia wasn't such a bad thing after all?

"What are you grinning at?" Logan asked me, peering over my shoulder at my phone screen.

"That Melissa girl is a bitch. Is that who caused you problems today?"

I nodded my head. "If you're talking about the blonde girl, then yes. If she's such a bitch, why don't you sort her out? Use your Mafia connections?"

Logan looked at me, amused and annoyed. "That's not how it works," he said. "Damon would kill me if I did anything like that. The peace he and Alex negotiated with the rival families would be over in a heartbeat if I tried anything like that."

"Oh." I nodded my head as if I understood, but the truth was, I didn't have a clue. Peace negotiations? Rival families? I had no idea what any of that meant.

"And don't you try it, either," he warned me. "It will not end well for you if you do; Damon would not be happy."

"Why?" I asked. "I don't understand. What good is it you guys being in the Mafia if I can't use it to my advantage?"

"Talk to Damon if you want answers, I don't have them. But I do know that if you try to use the Mafia to intimidate or threaten anyone, Damon will be pissed."

"Oh." I swallowed. "I don't like it when he's pissed."

Logan snorted. "You haven't even seen him pissed, yet."

"I have too!" I insisted. "He was plenty pissed the day Nick took me shopping and Damon shot that guy in the carpark."

Again, Logan snorted. "That wasn't pissed," he said. "That was only mildly displeased. So if that scared you, you really don't want to piss him off."

I played with the rest of my muffin, lost in thought. I didn't know what to do with all this newfound knowledge, and part of me wished I didn't know it. Because now that I knew, I couldn't un-know, and I couldn't think of any possible advantages to knowing. Now that Logan had put the kibosh on me using the Mafia to terrify people who crossed me, that was.

I sculled back the rest of my juice and picked at my muffin some more. I was restless. I don't really know what I wanted, but it surely wasn't this: sitting here picking at food I didn't want to eat, pretending everything was all perfectly okay when it totally wasn't. I hated that my brothers had all essentially abandoned me, after flipping my life on its head.