Piling into Johnny’s conference room at the club, everyone was tossing around their ideas for bringing down Dragonfly, round robin style. Don Carlo had assigned the task to Johnny, which made sense since the younger gangster had his heart set on running the business once they took it.

She listened as everyone threw in their two cents worth. Darkness thought they should blow up every office, but his father quickly pointed out they’d be destroying the very business they wanted to run.

Enzo had some strange idea about gassing everyone in each building. Several people objected at once that it wasn’t feasible without killing a bunch of innocent people and a business wasn’t much use without employees to run it.

Johnny was thinking out loud. “We need some way to figure out the foot soldiers from the people with a vested interest.”

Margaret chimed in what turned out to be critical information. “That’s much easier than you think. Hired help gets paid per contract they execute and the movers and shakers get paid a salary.”

Gino gasped. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. It won’t be foolproof way to tell but it’ll get us in the ball park.”

Johnny frowned. “It seems ignorant that we didn’t start there. Even my pops sets up his business that way.”

Gino spoke again. “We separate them out and pick them up. Remember those fuckers are the ones who decided to electrocute information outta your pops even though Lenny promised to give them the gun business.”

Margaret murmured. “It’s how they do business. They call it ‘building in redundancies’. They never rely upon one stream of information or one plan. They’ve got plans inside of plans at Dragonfly.”

Johnny folded his arms over his chest. “Well, the fuckers are about to be dead, so it won’t fuckin’ matter what plans they have. The doctors say my pops is going to have a limp the rest of his life ‘cause of what they did to him. The electrocution cause some kind of nerve damage. I ain’t gonna let that shit go.”

Margaret spoke up. “I noticed the admin team at Dragonfly doesn’t like to leave the US. They’ll fly out to make a deal but they come straight back.”

“They got six offices around the world. We need every single one locked down while we pick up their little dream team.”

Dark spoke up. “We’ve got nine chapters. If I pull out every single brother I can spare, we might have enough to pull it off. Is your pops giving us any men?”

“He offered but I don’t like his men much right now. Every single one of the fuckers was approached by Dragonfly and though they didn’t turn on him, they didn’t tell us either.”

“We’ll make it happen without them.”

“The deal is, if I make this happen then the business belongs to me not my pops. Me and the girls will knuckle down the east coast site and we’ll give your crew right of first refusal on every international job.”

“My crew ain’t never been much to travel but some of our brothers might be up for a new challenge.”

Margaret slid off the side table she’d been perched on. “If Dark wants we can nail down the London office. It’s the biggest and most employee heavy of all the international offices. I’m pretty familiar with their procedures.”

Jerking his chin, Sarah saw Dark giving her sister the once over. Margaret moved to his side and they seemed joined at the hip thereafter. Everyone worked into the night, coming up with a plan. If the truth be told, Sarah was glad her sister was tucked under Dark’s wing far away from the real battle. The arrangement suited her just fine.

By dawn, the entire building was flooded with strong men wearing MC cuts. Some were scruffy, some were clean cut and more than a few looked like they were ex-military. Excitement shimmied in Sarah’s belly. In the beginning she hadn’t thought they had a chance in hell of making this work. Now, she was beginning to believe. Walking out of the building, she noticed a security camera panning across the room to keep them in sight.

Grabbing his arm, she whispered. “Johnny, are we being watched?”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Doll. It’s just my pops. He likes to keep an eye on things.” Looking down at her his voice turned serious. “Consider him our redundancy plan.”

“The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place. This whole fiasco was just a little experiment in how well Johnny could develop and execute a plan of attack. She breathed out a sigh of relief as she realized his father’s men would have their backs, no matter what went down. It honestly bled away some of the stress. The idea of plans within plans came to her mind, reminding her how very similar Dragonfly was to the mafia. Maybe that partially explained the coveting.