At Stone’s nod, he continued. “My wife was accommodating enough to agree to speak to you in the kitchen, where it was warm, but you led her out into the cold. Do you make it a habit, Detective, to make pregnant women step outside in negative temperatures without a jacket?”
“I didn’t realize she was pregnant.” Stone’s voice couldn’t hide his shock—not at the pregnancy comment, but at seeing the man standing in front of him. Stone’s eyes traveled to Capo’s throat before they went to his hands. His coat’s collar came above his throat, and the hand with the tattoo was stuck in his pocket.
Had he evaded the police all of this time?
“Even if she wasn’t,” Capo said, his tone sharp, “I don’t appreciate my wife being out in the cold and you harassing her for no reason.”
“Harassing?” Stone’s face screwed up. “We were just talking. This visit was personal.”
“In that case.” Capo raked his teeth over his bottom lip. “No fucking more. You have a problem with my wife’s friend, you take it up with her. You have a problem with my wife’s friend being connected to Cash Kelly, you take it up with her. Or him. None of this nonsense comes close to my wife again. Are we clear?”
A low whistle sounded in the air. At first, I thought it was the wind. Then I realized it was a person. I turned to look, but Capo kept me firmly in place.
“Deeee-tect-ive Stone! Is that you? We should have a chat outside of the precinct for once. Hell, I’ll even buy you a drink. You gotta be human under that cheap suit, right?” His throaty laughter echoed.
The familiar voice made the cold feel even colder. Achille. Capo squeezed me tighter to him. He glanced at me once, and then he met Stone’s eyes. Stone didn’t seem like he knew where to look the longest. At Capo or at Achille, who moved closer to us.
“It seems our business is done here.” Stone nodded at me once and then headed in the direction of Achille.
Capo directed me back toward the kitchen, almost shoving me through the door to get me back inside, before his brother saw us both.
* * *
Capo hadn’t saida word to me on the ride back to the firehouse. I thought that was for the best. We both had too many thoughts to offer normal conversation. If he were to ask me if I were hungry, I’d probably blurt, “You’re a Scarpone? Are you fucking kidding me?”
I knew he had run with them, was maybe one of their men at one time, but he wasoneof them. The King of New York’s son!
Then there were other issues. The first being—you killed my parents. The second—if his father was the King of New York, his brother the Joker, and my husband the Prince, what did that mean for our future? For this baby? The third, and probably not the last—in the eyes of the world, my husband was dead, a fucking ghost wearing expensive men’s clothing.
No wonder Capo had refused to give me the heart of the matter and the veins, as he had called them, at the meeting. The heart he was going to offer me had no beats, no blood flow, because, again, it was dead.
The man walking beside me into our house was not supposed to be using his legs. He was supposed to be submerged underneath the Hudson River, cement weights attached to his ankles, drowned long ago. When I was five years old. After he had saved my life. His fucking bloodthirsty family had slit his throat because he hadn’t killed me.
Who told on him?
Was it his brother?
That bastard looked like the Joker. He looked nothing like my husband, the man Stone called Vittorio, the Pretty Boy Prince.
And Arturo? What a fucking king he was. To kill your own son? And that savagely? Someone needed to takehishead off.
Hold up, Mari.I stopped the thoughts before they got carried away. Why was I getting so upset about what they’d done to him when I should’ve been upset about what he’d done to me? The least he could’ve done was told me who he was from the start. He had told me who I was, what he had done, but he had left out a vital part of the conversation.
He killed my parents before he saved me.
He hadn’t swooped in while someone else from that vicious family took care of my parents— he had done it, and then changed my name, my address, and gave me new people to take care of me. He basically wiped me clean.
Why didn’t he tell me?
If it had something to do with me accepting his offer…why did it matter if he married me or not? Sierra or me, another one of those faces at The Club or me, he just wanted a starved woman, a woman who wouldn’t bite the hand that fed her. For a Gucci purse, Sierra would’ve spit in Stone’s face.
Why didn’t he just let me go after he realized it was me?
Why is he playing these games with me?
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, leaving him in our room. “I’m still cold.”
He stood at the entrance of the bathroom, leaning against the frame. “You disobeyed me, Mariposa.”
