“So, when someone wants to talk to you about something they state categorically is urgent, you make them wait five hours?”
“I don’t care if it’s only seven AM, Star.”
Star?
I knew a Star.
Well,ofa Star. Star Sullivan. Engaged to Conor O’Donnelly.
Stan wasn’t high-ranking in the Valentini family; heruledover their slice of the city with his siblings. It’d make sense that he had the O’Donnellys’ ear…
But Star, future O’Donnelly Star?
“Look, there’s no easy way to say this.”Stan hesitated for so long that I wasn’t sure if Star was talking to him or not, then he snarled,“It’s hard to get the words out!”
A wash of air gusted from him, one noisy enough for me to hear.
“Dead To Me’s gone.”
He blurted the statement in a rush, and it was then that the change in him registered—a businessman or a fellow mobster weren’t doing the talking here.
He was a man who knew how it felt to lose someone.
Someone, I got the feeling, that was somehow important to both him and Star Sullivan.
Dead To Me? What kind of a name was that?
“Gone. What do you think I mean? I’m talking… dead.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, I’m not joking! There was an explosion last night. She perished in the blast.”
“Yeah, the papers are saying it’s a gas leak. Albanians targeted her.”
“No, I haven’t seen her body, Star.”
“That cannot be the only confirmation you’ll accept!”
“I’m not sneaking into a morgue to take photos of a dead body.”
“Get your ass down to Cancún then. I’m flying out in two hours.”
“You’re tracking my jet?!”
“Jesus Christ. Since when are you and Jen this close anyway? Forfuck’s sake. Cin’s been following me since the hospital? Oh, that’s really reassuring. “Just in her spare time,””he mocked.
My brow furrowed.
Who had? Sin? Who the hell was Sin?
“She did not see us on the plane. There was nothing to see. Do you goddamn hear me?”
“Fuck. My. Life.”
“All I know is thatMar Blancois no more. Yeah, that’s where one of the bombs detonated. The person who told me Dead To Me was targeted by the Albanians seems to know his shit. He said she murdered someone high up in their ranks?”
“Martinez. Yeah. He’s the source— Ah, fuck, are you crying? Please, don’t. Do you want me to text Conor?”
