“The pleasure’s mine,” Dmitri greeted. “Especially as Sofia is correct. Youdidsave her. I was in a coma at the time. Completely unaware I could lose—” He cut himself off. “I can’t thank you enough for being there for her when I couldn’t.”
Stan shrugged. “There are ways to thank me.”
“I bet.” Dmitri’s gaze turned shrewd, but oddly enough, I could sense his relief.
Gah, I’d never understand mobsters and their bizarre honor code.
“Come, we have a meal waiting for us,” Sofia chirped, tugging on Stan’s hand like an eager puppy.
No,I deliberated,like Neev with Lucas.
The sisterly vibe was unreal… Which meant this mad professor had a habit of collecting sisters. Something I’d need to prepare myself for, I guessed.
“Sounds good to me,” Stan answered, finally stepping away from the car door so I had more space. “I’m starving. We’ve been traveling since this morning.”
He held out a hand for me to take. I latched onto it and slipped from the back seat with as much elegance as I could.
Sofia might be channeling ‘cat high on catnip,’ but everything about her spoke of wealth, of politesse, of nobility bred into her very marrow…
Strange considering her father’s position, but undeniable all the same.
Sofia chattered away as she tugged Stan down the hall, but their conversation was wholly academic, purely scientific. It also meant that Stan walked slightly ahead of me, leaving me with Dmitri, while still keeping his arm tucked around my waist.
“You are with the Five Points, aren’t you?”
“Hardly,” I reasoned with a polite smile. “My brothers are. I’m just a nurse.”
“I doubt you’re ‘just’ anything. News has spread about the state of Agon Prifti’s corpse when the cops found it.”
The admission had me freezing, which earned me Stan’s attention.
“It’s fine,” I assured him, but I slipped free of his hold with a gentle tap to his wrist and let them step ahead. “His body was planted somewhere in the city?”
Dmitri tipped his head to the side. “You did not know?”
“Does this look like the expression of a woman who knewthat?”
“I don’t suppose it does.” His lips curved before a calculating gleam made an appearance in his eyes. “They say that before the foxes and the rats got to him, he’d been beaten black and blue, an incision in his crotch the true modus operandi. The actions of a nurse.”
“Why would?—”
“Someone dump a body out in the open?” Dmitri held out the crook of his elbow for me to take. When I did, he shuffled us along at a steady pace as we traversed a hallway that was magnificent in size and stature. This place had to have been transported from Europe—honestly, it was part palace! “It sends a message without having to say a word.”
I bit my lip. “But the evidence?—”
“The cops don’t police people like us.”
“The criminals in jail would disagree.”
Tone dry, he dismissed, “They’re there because men like me and Custanzu want them there.”
Uneasy, I muttered, “What kind of message did that bastard’s corpse send?”
“That the Valentini Capo has chosen a bride and she’s as bloodthirsty as he is.”
I swallowed at that observation, and the irritatingly dichotomous reaction that triggered had me pulling him to a halt.
I didn’t want to be known as bloodthirsty!
