"Brother," he says. "It's four-thirty in the fucking morning."
"I know what time it is."
"Do you also know I'm busy?"
"I don't care."
He sighs. The music cuts out. I hear a door close, and then it's just his breathing and mine, synced the way they've been synced since the womb.
"Leone's got me on the Richardson woman," I say.
"The pretty one Carmelo dragged in?"
"I dragged her in."
"Right, right. The one who bit you." He's grinning. I can hear it. "So what's the problem?"
"She's hiding something. Not the financial data. Something else. Something she saw."
"So shake it out of her."
"She's not the type you shake."
Emilio goes quiet. That's rare enough that I notice. "Claudio," he says slowly. "You sound weird."
"I sound the same as I always sound."
"No, you sound like a man who's trying to figure out a woman instead of a problem, and those are two very different things." A pause. "Is she pretty?"
"That's irrelevant."
"That's a yes."
"Goodnight, Emilio."
"You like her."
"I'm hanging up."
"Youlikeher and you've known her two days and you're calling me at four in the morning because you can't sleep and it's not because of the mole, it's because she's in your head."
I hang up.
The phone buzzes immediately. A text.
You're fucked, brother. Claudio and Charlotte sitting in a tree…
I shove the phone in my pocket and walk back to the armory. Sit at the bench. Pull the Beretta apart for the fourth time. Oil. Cloth. Reassemble.
My hands know the rhythm. My hands are fine.
The rest of me is a problem I don't have a protocol for.
She is spicy and funny and she doesn’t give a fuck about pretensesandshe called me useless to my face. I can still feel the bruise where she bit my arm two days ago.
Principessa.
The word sits in my mouth like cotton.
