“You get that with loyalty.”
“Not all men are truly loyal,” I retort softly. “They can pretend to be. Even women.”
Cairo falls silent, and then bows his head. “You gonna tell me one day what happened with that girl?”
“I’ll tell you now.” His dark eyes slice up to me, appearing a bit surprised at my openness. “She ratted Levi out to Matteo. I was…pissed, naturally. She had a gun on Trav… We were arguing.” I don’t remember the exact words. Only how unbelievably stupid I felt that I never sensed her slipping away from us. “Travis told me he…” Sudden tears burn the backs of my eyes, and I quickly skip over that part. “She wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it. She kept saying he deserved it. All because he didn’t want to fuck her or date her—I dunno. But shegloatedabout it. She knew exactly what she’d done. She didn’t care. She fuckin’ keptsayingit. All because Matteo promised her Queen of South Shore, and she took it. She jumped at the chance to kill him. She told him where he was. She set him up and?—”
“I got it, Little T,” he mutters ever-so-softly, running the pad of his thumb back and forth methodically over my skin. “You stood on business. You handled it. I would’ve done the same.”
“You would’ve?” I’m having a hard time imagining that. “Youwould’ve shot someone?—”
“Over you and my boys, yes.”
I gape at him. Unable to comprehend or allow his words to fully sink in because he includedmein the equation.
“Did you think I said you belonged to me because I needed another pain in my ass?”
I mindlessly shake my head because he has plenty of those. I just…can’t believe he admitted it andkeepsadmitting it.
“Did you wanna know about this one?” His pinky shoots out, drawing my attention to the barbed wire wrapped around a skull. “Ozzy drew this for me. He used to get so pissed off at me worrying about him getting out of prison that he sent me this in one of his letters. Said it’s what he’d look like by the time he got out. Dead, apparently. The prick has a mean sense of humor when he wants to show it.”
“Was he scared?”
Cairo bobs his head. “I think, at first. He was fifteen when he went in.”
“Juvenile detention?—”
“Prison. The age you can be transferred due to your crimes.”
“What did he do?”
Cairo averts his gaze back down to my arm. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s that I don’t know if Oz wants to do it himself.”
“Vivian?”
He nods.
“Why have you kept her around? I mean, I get Muncy being up your ass, but…you have ways of getting past that.”
“Like what? You have some magic potion that will make her father forget he had a daughter?”
“No. But she got your brother locked up.”
“I know what she did.”
“I know that wasn’t okay with you. So, that means she has something on you.”
Cairo pushes his cheek out with his tongue and lifts his shoulders. “A little.”
“She’s a female, Sinatra. You push her away enough, she’ll out you.”
“That’s what I have you for, don’t I? I bet you have a few ways of keeping her quiet.”
I narrow my eyes. “I’m too pretty for jail.”
“I’d agree to that.” He blows out an exhale through his mouth as if he’s thinking about it. “But, damn, what I wouldn’t do to you on those conjugal visits.”
My hand lightly smacks the side of his head, which gets him to smirk wildly. “Listen, prick, I’m married. You wouldn’t get shit.”
