“We’re flying out.” He rubbed his nape, growling as he stretched. That growl didnottake my mind to other places. “You wanted a girls’ weekend away. We’re heading to Vegas in our jet.”
I blinked.
Ourjet.
Nah, he didn’t meanours.
Did he?
“Kitty?”
“Why Las Vegas?” I croaked.
“My brother-in-law’s territory. Party central. No turf war that I don’t know aboutorhow to prevent you from walking straight into.”
Absently noticing how his mouth pinched, I shook my head. “We should go home.”
“You’re not due back until Sunday, are you?”
“How do you know that?”
He rolled his eyes. “I just do.”
“How, Stan?”
But he ignored me. “If you don’t want your brothers to find out that you weren’t where you said youwere…”
Agitated, I slapped my hands against the sheets. “That’s a very good point, goddammit.”
His smirk made an appearance. “Wait until I introduce you to my sister. I trained with the best.”
I squinted at him in annoyance and, trying not to get too freaked out about the ‘until,’ grumbled, “I need to shower.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said wryly, but he didn’t shuffle away. Nope, he returned to the damn armchair and his earlier position. “Eva left clothes for you in the closet.”
“I’m not sure I appreciate being this well-managed.”
“Get used to it,duci.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
KITTY
I was twelve when my mother rammed home the lesson: Do. Not. Eavesdrop.
She’d caught me listening to my da discussing a rendezvous with his crew. They’d planned to meetsomewhere, doingsomething,with a gun they were intending to throw in the Hudson later that same evening.
To this day, I could remember that conversation because Da had never hidden from what he was and what his plans had been that night.
He’d been a murderer. And if not that, then a co-conspirator.
More than the truth, the clipped ear and the whack to my butt with Ma’s wooden spoon,thathad been the lesson I had learned—never listen into conversations that didn’t concern you because you wouldn’t like what you picked up on.
But when, in the middle of brushing my teeth, Stan declared, “Finally!” There was no way in fuck I wasn’t going to snoop.
“I needed to talk to you.”
I pressed my ear to the door, wishing I could hear the other side of the conversation.
