Castle yawned widely as he walked into the precinct on Monday morning; all he wanted was to go back to bed, but the siren pull of a possible mob hit was too strong. He walked into the lounge and was surprised to see Shane there, his dark blue eyes tired with the look of someone seeing the ass-end of a long night shift.

'Morning, Doctor,' Castle said at length, watched his daughter's boyfriend make himself a triple shot cappuccino. 'Long night?'

'A double, thanks to the demand from the powers that be to re-run every last test on those tattooed bodies we found last Tuesday. I'm here to do the briefing, then I'm going home to call Lex and sleep.'

'Are you sure a triple espresso's a wise idea?'

'I need it to stay awake through the briefing.'

Castle shrugged, waited until he was done, and set about making his own coffee. 'Nice shirt, by the way,' he added, noting the elf-like caricature on the organic cotton polo shirt. 'You hoping Christmas comes early or something?'

'No, this is my football team, AFC Ajax. I got it when Alexis and I went to Amsterdam.'

'Oh, nice, you guys catch a game?'

'Yeah, we had a great time.'

Coffee made, Castle added milk and smiled. 'Glad to hear it. You ready to do your thing?'

'Better sooner than later.'

They walked out and Shane went to the murder-board to update the captain, Ryan, Esposito and Karpowski and Newman whom Esposito had tagged in as help since they were dealing with a three-for-one.

'Doctor Waver thanks for taking the time on this one,' Montgomery said appreciatively. 'I understand it's been a busy time since you got back from your trip.'

'Yeah, but this is a big one.'

They all watched, patient as a group of Buddhas, as Shane explained everything he'd found.

'We identified all three victims, not too hard since they all had their prints in the system. The two men are Gregor Fyodorovich and Evgeny Fumarenko, the woman is Fyodorovich's cousin Pelegya affectionately known as Pesha. All three were enforcers for the Stavinskayov family, one of the three main Russian mafia families operating in New York.'

'A lady enforcer, that's not one you see all the time,' Karpowski commented.

'Based on what Doctor Parrish-Robbins and myself have found during autopsy and examination of the body, we believe that Pesha Fyodorova was the intended target and the other two are just collateral.' Shane moved to pin up photos of the tattoos and passed around copies of his reports for all the investigator files. 'Amid all the bullet holes, we found four types of bullet wounds in Pesha. The one that we didn't find in the other two was a twenty-two to the head, just above the left eye, and we found residual splatter on Gregor and Evgeny that indicates they were alive when Pesha was executed.'

'How's that?' Montgomery asked.

'There were smears on the two men's fingers of Pesha's blood indicating they tried to wipe it off her body. We also found through the tattoos that Pesha, Gregor and Evgeny were all trained together by the Ithai Boaz, which means they had to be killed by someone they'd never expect and see coming.'

'What about those marks above the wrist tattoos, Shane?' Esposito asked, examining his copy of the photos. 'They don't look mafia.'

'These marks above the tattoos in multi-coloured ink represent different specialties of training. Purple is strangulation, blue is gunplay, grey is knives, et cetera. Only assassins wear them so it narrows the field.'

Castle's cellphone went off and when he saw the ID on the number, he groaned and excused himself; there was no way he'd be able to avoid this one, so it'd be better to do it and get it over with, much like when RJ had to have his booster-shots. He went into the breakroom, so he was out of sight from the real cops who couldn't afford to have his personal life interrupt him.

'Meredith, what can I do for you?'

'You can give me an explanation, Richard.' On the other end of the phone, Castle's first ex-wife sounded both prissy and pissed off. 'Why are you letting our child date a man so much older than her? Do you even know about this doctor? Do you want her to get her heart broken by some moron who's probably married chasing underage girls?'

'Meredith, Alexis will be twenty-three less than a month and how did you even find out about her and Shane?'

'She showed me pictures from when he was here in London visiting her.'

'You're in London?'

'Yes, I'm doing press for my latest film and called my daughter up for dinner. She talked about him like it was no big deal, and I wonder where she gets that from?'

Castle, who'd been wandering around the breakroom stopped in front of the soft-drinks machine and actually thumped his forehead against it. 'Meredith, Alexis is a grown-up who is going to medical school next January, she has a boyfriend in the same field whom she adores and he adores her right back. It's still very new and exciting to both of them and hard enough that they only had a month together before she had to leave and they are no doing the long distance thing. Kate has known him for about eight or ten years, and she is just as supportive as I am.'

'Oh, I see. You think because Little Miss Muse with the Bambi eyes and fancy handgun gave you a son she has a say in my daughter's life? Is that it?'

'Meredith, I don't have time to deal with your insecurities right now, I'm at the precinct learning about why a trio of Russian mobsters were executed in an alley in Little Italy. The bottom line is Alexis is happy in her relationship with Shane. He doesn't drink or sleep around and he treats her like a princess so that's all I need for now. And if you refer to my wife as Little Miss Muse one more time, I'm going to stop taking your calls altogether.'

'Oh really, you think-'

'Goodbye, Meredith.'

Castle hung up the phone and because he needed to, pounded his fist on the pop-machine. 'Stu-pid...stu-pid...stu-pid...why...do...you...do..that...to...your...self?' he muttered to himself on each syllable, finished it off with another head thump. When he turned around, he saw Ryan and Esposito there.

'Ry, you wanna fetch the butterfly net or whistle for the funny-wagon?' Esposito asked.

'Three words gentlemen.'

'Deep-Fried Twinkie?' they replied in unison and Castle nodded miserably.

'Apparently she's in London and had dinner with Alexis last night, and then decided to call me this morning to burn my ass over 'letting' my almost-twenty-three year-old daughter be involved with an older man who only wants her body, which is not the case at all.'

Both men shuddered comically. 'I know she's growing up, hell she is grown up,' Ryan amended, 'but please do not make us think of your sweet Lex as some dude's play-thing.'

'Yeah, it's just too weird.'

Castle shut his eyes, breathed deeply, meditatively. 'I'll remember this the next time you two are commenting on how cute Dell and Tessi are together.'

He stayed in the breakroom even after they left with cold drinks and dialed Beckett. The moment she picked up, he instantly felt better.

'Hey, Rick, what's going on?'

'Hold me.'

'Kinda hard to do over the phone.'

'I just got a call from the Deep Fried Twinkie who was on a tirade about Alexis and Shane.'

'Oh dear.' Castle could hear her muttering to RJ as she shifted the phone. 'Tell me all about it.'

R&R&Enjoy.