He signed off with “Capo.”
“Smart ass,” I muttered.
A smaller card was below the handwritten one listing the time and date of the meeting. Two days.Monday. 11:11 A.M.The address was listed in Manhattan, some swanky building, no doubt. A driver would be sent to “fetch” me.
Fucka me.
Was I really going to do this?
My eye caught the swirl of amber liquid that suddenly appeared in my line of sight.
Keely dangled a shot glass filled with whiskey in front of me. “I would tell you not to do this, but what good would it do?” She took a seat next to me on the floor, careful not to spill her own glass. She sighed, leaning her head against mine. “Promise me you’ll be safe?”
I lifted my glass and she lifted hers. I couldn’t promise her something I had no control over. We clinked and then downed, not even bothering with a toast.
9
Mariposa
Monday, 11:00 AM on the dot, I sat in the high-rise building, in some swanky office, in my plastic flip-flops, waiting for Mr. Rocco Fausti to call me back into his office. His secretary gave me a strange look when I asked her what it was that Mr. Rocco Fausti did. There was no writing on the door.
He was a lawyer, she had said, and judging by the riches around me, a very successful one.
At 11:07 on the dot, Rocco Fausti came out of his office and greeted me. His accent was strong Italian, but not hard to understand. He held out his hand and I almost didn’t take it because I didn’t want to dirty his pretty skin. I felt like a kid about to soil some important marble statue with handprints.
He was tall, much taller than me. His hair was black, his skin gold, and his eyes…sea green. His lashes were thick and black. His lips full. And he smelled…whatever equaled to better than good. His body. There was no hiding the muscular physique underneath the custom-made suit. Whoever thisCapowas, he surrounded himself with beautiful people. Competent people.
People unlike me.
If I didn’t already know how basic I was in the looks department, and accepted it, maybe I’d have grown a complex.
We passed what seemed like Rocco’s office—it smelled like him—stopping at a room with a long table in its center. There were twelve chairs situated around it, six on each side, and a circular tray in the middle with glasses and a pitcher of water. He gestured for me to take a seat close to the streak-free glass wall that stretched the backside of the room.
Once I had, he took a seat at the head of the table, right next to me. A minute or two later, his secretary came in and delivered a file full of papers. Before she left, she poured three glasses of water, setting one in front of her boss, one in front of me, and one to the right of him. A third person would be joining us then.
“Mr. Fausti?”
He looked up from his papers, the green in his eyes sparking from the sunlight pouring through the windows. “Rocco will do.”
I nodded. “Rocco. Why am I here?”
While he stared at me, I took the glass of water, drinking some of it down.
11:11 AM on the dot, the water went down wrong and I started choking. I shot out of my chair, waving my hands in front of my face, trying to fight the clog. The third person had walked into the room just as the water tried to go down.
I looked up at the ceiling, still trying to breathe, thinking,Is this sarcasm or just a cruel joke?
The frigging water burned my throat, and I couldn’t stop coughing. Water was killing me.Hewas killing me. What was he doing here?
He couldn’t be…
He held out his hand for me to take. “You can call me Capo,” he said, “if you wish.”
The man in the suit.Mr. Mac. Boss.Capo. Four and the fucking same.
Blue. All I could think was blue. His eyes. They were blue. The kind of blue that you could get lost in, float in, never wanting to return to earth. They were calming, but something about them was guarded. Like if you had to survive hell to earn his heaven.
“Mariposa.”
