“Of course not. Don’t have a saw, for one thing, or the time, and that’s just unnecessary mess. Nope.” Nick flips up the skirt of the wheelie table and I see the whole thing is actually something of his own making. There’s an empty metal chest under the tablecloth, big enough to stuff a body into.
And that’s exactly what he does, while I stand staring out the window at the black night outside, gritting my teeth.
“All done,” he says in satisfaction afterwards, and when I turn back, it really might all have been a bad dream, except for the pain in my nose, the bruises on my ribs, and the fact that Nick Fucking Fontana is standing there dressed like a waiter.
“Now what?” I ask dully.
“Now I get rid of this. Lucky we have a whole ocean just waiting out there, huh?”
This isn’t my life. This can’t be my life. “Thenwhat?” I demand.
“Then nothing. Soon as I leave here, you go to bed. Tomorrow, we act just as surprised as everyone else.”
I stare at him. “I’m not staying in this room tonight.”
“Yeah you are.”
“I’m really not.”
“You bounce early, and they discover a missing groom? You’ll be the first fucker on their radar.”
My pulse is thundering in my ears, but I pull myself together and try to make a persuasive argument, because I really, really don’t want to stay in here alone tonight. “That’s not gonna fly, Fontana. You think his bride will let this slide? That she won’t go running around asking everyone if they’ve seen her ten-minute husband?”
“Sophia’s a smart woman,” he tells me confidently. “She’ll wait to see the lay of the land before she says anything. Her gramps is Al Vollero, for Christ’s sake. She knows the score.”
“Uh-huh. And the Giulianos and the Clemenzas are going to shrug and say, ‘Oh, well, guess Gatti got cold feet after all? Guess he must’ve run back to New York on his own?’”
Nick studies me for a moment and then says, “Okay.”
“You know I’m right.”
“No, I meant: okay, I can’t leave you alone here overnight. You’re going to crack up and you’re going to get us both killed.”
I wish I could argue against that, but it’s the God’s honest truth, unfortunately. I’ve faced CIA-trained interrogators along with my clients, kept my face straight in the face of indisputable evidence, but I’ve never had to stare down a cool six dozen of New York’s toughest mobsters, which is exactly what I’ll have to do if this gets out. And if I’m panicking now, what the hell will I be like then?
“So what do we do?” I croak.
Nick rubs a tired hand over his face. “I’ll go take care of this. You stay here until I get back. Then we’ll go spend the rest of the night in my room. I got put next to Luca and Finch. By the time we get back, they’ll have knocked themselves out boning.”
“Wait—my father’s staying in that house too. If he sees me—”
“I want him to see us.” Nick gives a sly little smile. “Admit to something else, something you’d wouldn’t want to admit unless you really had to, so they can’t get you for the big stuff. Right?”
My mouth falls open. That’s advice I’ve given to him before, too, like when I told him to take the fine on speeding and running a red light to avoid the more serious reckless driving charge. “You’re not supposed to be the smart one,” I tell him weakly.
“Yeah? Well, one of us has to be tonight. You down with that plan?”
I think about my father’s face if—when—he finds out I allegedly spent the night with one of the Morelli Capos. He is going to kick. My. Ass.
“You don’t feel like dumping me in the Atlantic, too?” I ask. “I might be better off once my father finds out about you and me.”
A slow grin spreads across Nick’s face. “There you go, back to normal. Kidding around about me killing you again, eh? Okay, Bianchi. We got this. Sit tight; I won’t be long.”
When he leaves me there, I can’t help staring at the place where the body lay before Nick shut it away forever in that little metal box. There are no marks. No blood. Nothing but a slightly-scuffed carpet that smoothes down when I run my foot over the pile.
“Nothing happened,” I whisper. “Absolutely nothing at all happened.”
All I have to do now is wait for Nick, and hope he really is coming back to get me. Because if he leaves me here, I have a terrible feeling I’m going to start screaming and I won’t be able to stop.
