“So, you let him slap around his girlfriends and then blame it all on you?” Nico said, like the notion was unfathomable.
“As I said before, up until you people showed up, I didn’t know anything about any girls. At least, not specifically. We don’t talk about personal shit. Just work stuff. If anyone knows the real him, it’s Leo. Maybe he can help you. But I have nothing else to say.”
Mal nodded. “Let’s go.”
Nico stood, putting his gun away. Mal did the same, watching his boyfriend move on auto-pilot. He was deep in thought, but Mal wasn’t sure what was on his mind.
He found out a moment later when they were standing at the door.
“Hey, one more question before we leave,” Nico asked.
Frankie eyed them warily. “What?”
Nico’s cheeks turned pink. “We kind of had a look around your house before you came home.”
Frankie stiffened. “Yeah?” he asked, tone hardening.
This time, it was Mal who stiffened. Where the hell was Nico going with this?
“We found your…c-collection in the closet,” Nico stammered.
Frankie’s expression darkened. “Are you trying to blackmail me now, too?”
Nico’s eyes went wide. “What? No. I just… I just wanted to know where you got that case? It seems really handy.”
Frankie stared at him in disbelief, then huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “The Pink Pussycat on 3rd Avenue. They’redesigned for people who host home sex toy parties to cart around samples.”
Nico balked. “That’s a thing?”
“Yes. Is that all?” Frankie asked. “I’d like to get my dog out of the bathtub.”
“I do have one more question,” Nico said. “What do you do with all that lu?—”
Mal slapped his hand over Nico’s mouth. “We’re leaving. Do us a favor and don’t mention this to Jason or anyone else.”
Frankie looked at him like he was insane. “Yeah, that’s not a problem.”
It was dark by the time they left Frankie’s. Nico’s head was spinning with all this new information they’d been bombarded with. Before sitting down with Jason and Frankie, Nico couldn’t imagine anyone other than Frankie as ‘the pig.’ But sitting down with both of them, it was hard to understand how any of them were fooled. There was something so slick about Jason, like an…eel.
They stood on the rain-soaked streets just outside Frankie’s apartment. The air outside was thick, the scent of petrichor and motor oil surrounding them. The sound of tires on the wet pavement made Nico want to take Mal’s hand and just walk home in the rain. It had stopped for the moment, but the night sky was still overwhelmed with heavy black storm clouds waiting to burst.
“What do we do now?” Nico asked.
Mal gave a heavy sigh, wrapping his arms around him from behind, letting Nico lean against him. “We could question Leo, but I can’t imagine he’d have the brains or the guts to be in onthis with Jason. At dinner, he looked like he didn’t know what day it was, much less where Amy might be.”
Nico nodded, resting his head on Mal’s shoulder. “Yeah, he looked pretty strung out, but I don’t think he’d help Jason halt production just so he could get his dick wet.”
Mal rocked Nico in his arms, partially throwing him off-balance just to catch his weight before he tipped over. “Push the button for the crosswalk, Fidget.”
Mal leaned Nico forward enough for him to reach the button, then pulled him back against him. Nico huffed out an exasperated sound, but he secretly loved when Mal clung to him like this. And Mal knew it.
“He probably thinks Amy ran away after Jason forced her to—whatever they were doing together? Sleeping together seems like a wildly inaccurate description for blackmailing someone into sex,” Mal said.
“Rape. The word you’re looking for is rape,” Nico said, quietly seething as he thought of how helpless Amy must have felt in that moment. “Or maybe even coercion?”
Nico ached for Amy. She had tried to turn to Leo for help and all he’d done was push her to accept Jason’s advances. Nico knew what it was like to be forced. He knew what it was like to feel like he had no way out. While his mother hadn’t blatantly sold him to men for money like Naomi had Levi, she hadn’t protected him from all the men she’d brought home either.
He knew what it felt like to live with that broken, defeated feeling that came from…giving in. But at least Amy had tried to leave something behind to point them to her assailant. They’d just almost missed it.
