I looked over my shoulder. Neil. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
We both turned in the asshole’s direction, and he took a step back. And another when the owner of the store came out holding a baseball bat. I finally took an easy breath when he disappeared down the street.
“You both okay?” Joe asked us.
Yeah, another Joe in my life. All men seemed to beJoeto me, except for a special few.
Neil looked at me and squeezed my shoulder.
“Okay,” I said.
Joe nodded and slunk back into his store.
“I see you made another fan,” Neil said, coming to stand on the other side of me. The one Hoffa wasn’t occupying.
“Don’t I always?”
He gave me a sweet grin and ran a hand through his hair. “Are you out reminiscing?”
“Something like that.” I felt eyes on me from the ground. Hoffa. She was looking up at me with dispassion, and I shot her the bird. I swear, if a cat could roll its eyes, she could. “What about you? The Armenians?”
He nodded, and without a word, we started walking in the opposite direction of the store and bakery.
Neil tucked his hands in his pockets. “The news broke about Tigran, though we both know the ‘family’ knew before anyone else. You talk to your sister?”
“Yeah. I called her last night. Lilo’s silence was louder than words.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice husky. “He lost his mom not long ago.”
“Now his uncle.”
We walked in companionable silence until we reached an old apartment building that had been kept up. It looked storybook New York, flowers on the windowsills and all. An Italian flag hung from one of them.
“I was looking for Aren,” Neil said. “That’s one of the reasons why I made a trip here.”
Aren was Lilo’s uncle, his mom and Tigran’s brother. Lilo was all Aren had left.
We turned our faces and met each other’s eyes.
“You want me to ask him?” I asked.
He shrugged. “If you think he’d talk to me. I’d like to go at this from a more personal side. I meant it when I said Tigran was a good boss. He wasn’t some hot head off the street. For his position in that life, he was still a gentleman.”
“You fell under his spell too.”
He nodded and fixed his glasses.
I sighed. “I can ask Aren.”
He pulled me in close by the shoulder. “You’re fucking one of a kind, Peps.”
I’d met my quota for enough emotion for the day, thinking about my sister and missing her. I nodded toward the building. “What’s up with this place?”
“Andrea’s great-aunt has a rent-controlled unit here. We want you to take it.”
“What?”
“Yeah.” I could feel his eyes on my face. “She passed this morning. I know it’s soon to be thinking about such things after a loss, but again,rent controlled. We have a place we love. And we thought this one would be perfect for you.
