“I will, Boss.” But I pause again, and he waits, impassive. “But you could work on Wall Street and feel the same. So…is that the only reason?”
He regards me silently and then shrugs as though thinking,why not. “I want Finch safe. Always. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, Nick, but I do this—allof this—so that Finch will be safe and happy. Maybe you can’t understand it, though, if you’ve never been in love.”
Something tight and anxious builds up in my belly as I walk downstairs and out the door. Because Luca’s right—Ishouldn’tunderstand it. I shouldn’t understand it at all.
But there’s a part of me that does. It’s the part that kept my mouth shut just now, when Ishouldhave told Luca what happened with Gatti.
Fuck.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Carlo
When Nick gets back, I take a second to hide in the walk-in pantry, just in case it’s an assassin coming for me, but as soon as I hear him calling for me I step out again, making him jump.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Bianchi?”
“Are you serious? Whatisn’twrong with me right now? I had no idea who was coming up in that elevator. You said you were going to text when you left!”
“I forgot. And the elevator only responds to my fingerprint.”
“Someone could have cut your finger off!”
He gives me an exasperated look, but then shakes his head. “Okay. I should’ve texted you to let you know I was on the way back.”
It does seem awfully domestic, texting each other so we know where we are. But I have another problem on my mind. “What if I needed to get out?”
“You don’t need to get out. You need to stay in here, safe.”
“It’s a code violation. What if someone starts a fire? And I’m stuck in here like—”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, then you go out the fire escape!” He throws his hands up. “But I’ll program your fucking fingerprint in too, okay?”
“Okay,” I say, mollified. Basically, I’ve demanded a key to Nicky’s apartment. Maybe we should just get married while we’re at it.
Nick moves into the kitchen area. “You get in touch with your cop?”
“Ex-cop. I sure did. He said he’ll get to work on it.” Nick merely grunts in response and begins taking off his jacket. “And you?”
He throws his car keys in the fruit bowl on the counter that holds no fruit but several cell phones. “Me?”
“How’d things go with the Boss?” The way he’s dodging the question is only ramping up my tension. “Nicky, come on,” I say, as he wanders over to the window and looks out over the now-dark river. “Did you tell him? How’d he take it?” Still nothing. I walk over to him, put a hand on his arm. “Hey—you’re making me nervous. If he put out a hit on me or something, I’d like to know.” I wish I hadn’t joked about it as soon as the words come out of my mouth, because of the somber way Nick looks at me after I say it.
“No one’s going to hurt you, Harvard. Not on my watch. No, not even Don Morelli,” he adds, as I start to say something. He pulls me in front of him, facing me out the window, and puts his arms around me. “I didn’t tell him,” he murmurs into my ear as he continues to look out over the dark river and the lights of New Jersey, over there across the state line. But me, I can’t look away from his face, reflected dimly in the window.
“But you said—”
“I know what I said, but I didn’t tell him in the end. Wasn’t the right moment. And actually, he asked me to look into it.”
I pull away from his arms and turn around to stare at him. “He asked you to look into the Gatti situation? And you—what, you saidyes?”
His hands are still on my upper arms. He gives a reassuring squeeze and a slight nod. “I did. It means we can control the narrative, and we don’t have to operate so quietly as we have been. I even got his permission to talk to Sophia Vicente, find out if she knows anything.” Everything he’s saying makes sense, but I still don’t like where this could end up. But then Nick gives me this affectionate smile and leans in to kiss my forehead gently. “For now, let’s forget about all that. We need dinner.”
* * *
We geta delivery of very good Ethiopian, which we eat in the lounge room at the coffee table, me sitting on the floor and him on the couch, my notes and laptop pushed to one side to allow for the mini-feast.
“So you think your cop’ll come good?” Nick asks, splatting a spoonful of lentils onto his plate. We haven’t spoken much since he told me that our secret was still a secret.
