It was a gamble whether he’d take it or not. I hadn’t seen him or his partner before. Some appreciated it. Some didn’t.
He took it with a shocked look on his face.
I whistled as I walked down the street.
They had a job to do.
So did I.
21
Rosalia
“You’re right where I need you to be for this.”
I looked up from my bowl of cereal. A piece dropped back into the bowl before I could catch it.
“No pictures,” I said to Cilla. She had her phone pointed at me. “I have milk on my chin.”
“I already got that.” She waved me off, then set her phone next to me.
I was sitting at the bar, trying to enjoy my breakfast before I got ready for some sleep. Though sleep was stretching it. It was more like cat naps. After Aniello left, and hardly kept in touch, and after what happened with Ben, it was a struggle to find a few minutes, much less hours, of good sleep. My brain was constantly on, so manywhat ifsrunning through my thoughts.
I glanced at her phone but went back to my cereal. She was obsessed with the news. It only depressed me.
“No,” she said, pushing the phone closer to me. “You need to read that,amica.”
Sighing, I picked the phone up and pressed the side button. The screen came to life and my eyes, suddenly starving for information, inhaled the words. I had to read it twice before I could look at her and form a coherent sentence.
“He’s dead,” I said.
“Uh huh,” she said, scrolling to a picture of Ben on the page. “His father, too. The news is claiming that there are no suspects right now. But if you read the comments, the public is sure that the other two guys in the picture, the other two high-ranking government officials, are responsible for this. A few conspiracy theorists are saying Warren Dalton had some pretty incriminating information on the other two. Deals they never should have made on behalf of us, the people. After the scandal at the strip joint, these theorists believe the other two guys got scared and decided topluckDalton and his son from the situation.
“And get this—one of those conspiracy theorists has a mole in the police department. They’re claiming that Ben was roughed up before the bullet lodged between his eyes. He had a busted lip and scratches all over his face. Not from fingernails, but what looked like a rough surface. Good thing this conspiracy theorist never took into consideration a fourth party getting involved. Because then he would have gotten thewhodone itright.”
Automatically, I touched the fading crack on my lip and the scabs left behind from the brick wall.
“Yeah,” she said. “Makes you feel all tingly inside, doesn’t it?”
“No,” I said, sliding her phone back. I picked up my bowl and set in the sink, running water in it.
“Wait,” she said, taking the seat I’d just occupied. “You feel bad about this?”
Shrugging, I watched the bowl fill up with water. “Not so much about Warren, but Ben. I think he was just caught up.”
“He was an empty shadow of a man who couldn’t think for himself. Years from now, you’d be married to his father, not him, because that’s who thought for him. His old man was filling all those empty places with solid shapes and colors. Warren Dalton’s shapes and colors. I mean, did you really want to be married to putty? Because that’s what he basically was. He stood for nothing.”
I shut the water off and started to head toward my room. Cilla stopped me with a hand on my arm. Her eyes narrowed at whatever she saw on my face.
“You’re a good person, Rosalia. A good person in a life full of nothing but bad. Most people probably think it’s wise for the women in this life to have sharp edges. To a certain degree, you need them, and you have them where it counts, but it’s okay to have a good heart too. As long as you protect it with armor.”
“Only let the ones we trust behind it,” I said.
She nodded, then she shook my arm. “You never showed me your dress for the event. I want to see!”
I hadn’t had a chance to show it to her. I agreed and then came back out a few minutes later wearing it.
“What do you think?” I asked.
