I hustled across the street to get to the little shop before she could stop me. She had mentioned that the night she found them, they had been in the window. They were all gone. The shop owner was nice enough, but he said that someone had come in right before me and bought them. He gave me the number to a place in France that might have more. They were antiques.
Bracing myself for the cold, I left the warm shop, walking past a few men coming out of Dolce. I didn’t allow my eyes to linger, but I couldn’t help but notice the tattoos on all of their hands.
Wolves.
The same tattoo Mari’s husband had on his hand. Except Mac’s wolf was black with electric-blue eyes.
One of the guys, the one with the hardest eyes, watched me as I walked across the street and got into my car. He stood there, staring, like he owned the entire world.
“Keely.” Mari looked even paler. “Get us the fuck out of here!”
“You know them?” I looked in their direction while I started the car.
“Fucking go!” she shouted.
“All right! All right!” I swerved into traffic, barely missing a taxicab. He shot us the bird as he whizzed past. Then he got in front of us and kept tapping on his brakes. “Was that the Scarpones?”
“How do you know that?” She seemed truly scared—the kind of scared she’d avoided while on the street. But something else moved behind her eyes. Hate for them.
“Fucker!” I laid on the horn. The asshole was determined to make me slam into him from the back, or get sick from the constant stop-and-go. This car was smooth and fast, and I whipped around, giving him the bird as I passed him up. Then, because I was on the edge, I did the same thing to him. Cut him off and then tapped on my brakes. “I’ve heard things. I was curious so I looked them up online. I didn’t find anything too juicy, but those tattoos mean something, don’t they?”
Again, after I suspected Mac wasn’t an average man, I tried to do more research on him. I could never find anything that hinted to anything. Not a fucking clue. Until I asked an old gangster that lived in our neighborhood if he knew what the wolf tattoo meant.
“Yeah,” he’d said. “Bad news. Scarpones have them. Which means stay on the opposite side of the world from ’em if you can.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Mari waved off the tattoos, clearly trying to downplay the fact that her husband had one, too. “They kept staring. It scared me.”
“It should. They’re insane.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
She had her shit to deal with. So did I. Neither one of us wanted to go there. Maybe later, but the time wasn’t right. I knew my husband was in trouble, he was in the middle of a war, and even if her husband was in the same game as mine, it was best to keep our secrets for the time being.
“Bad news.” I blew out a breath. “No more figurines.”
“What happened to them?”
“Someone wiped them out.” I checked my outside mirror and then went a different way. “Maybe you can find another store that has them. They’re French, like you thought. Antiques. The seller said they’re rare. Expensive. He told me to try a place in Paris. He wrote down the name. I have it in my pocket.” I told her to ask her friend Scarlett if she knew of the place. Scarlett was married to Brando Fausti, who was Rocco Fausti’s brother. Scarlett had been a ballerina in France at one time.
After a few minutes, Mari looked around. “Where are we going, Kee?”
“Harrison’s. I told him I’d swing by later, but then you called. I’ve been meaning to give him his baseball glove from when he was little. When we moved out of Mam’s place, somehow it got mixed with my stuff and I kept telling him I forgot it at home whenever he asked me for it. I took it to Home Run without telling him and had Caspar frame it with his old jersey. I was hoping to surprise him. I never bought him a house-warming gift. And he got a new puppy. I’ve been dying to see it.”
The real reason I wanted to go was because I wanted Mari and Harrison to stop avoiding each other. Even though there was nothing romantic there, they could still be friends. I missed us all being together.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Kee. I should go home.”
“Come on, Mari. You can still be friends with him. We don’t have to stay long.”
She nodded, but she was quiet on the ride over, checking the mirror every once in a while. I did, too, because for some reason, after we’d pulled off, I got a very bad feeling in that sensitive spot on the back of my neck. Like some wild animal was about to take a bite out of it.
* * *
There wassome awkwardness between Harrison and Mari when we first arrived at his house, but I knew after a little time, it would work itself out and things would be fine. We would establish a new normal, and maybe, with more time, Mac could even be welcomed into our group as family.
Harrison had been seeing Mac’s cousin, Gigi, ever since Mac and Mari’s wedding. Gigi was a big actress in Italy, and even though she made my brother smile more than I’d ever seen him smile—even though he refused to admit it—I didn’t like her. She had it in for Mari for some reason, and that didn’t sit well with me. It didn’t sit well with me that Harrison seemed to be using Gigi to make Mari jealous, either, but that was their problem, and for once, I was keeping my nose out of it.
Though for the sake of the relationship we once had—my brother, Mari, and me—I wanted them to work it out. I missed my brother. I missed my sister. The shit needed to end.
