“Hi,” he said, in his now adorable way of being. “I’m sure you—”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, grabbing him by both arms. I looked around at the darkened street. “You need to be on your way out of the state.”
He shook his head, then nodded, sending mixed signals. “Listen,” he said, shrugging my hands off me. “I—”
“Spit it out,” I said, snapping my fingers with two sharps clicks. It signaled to my driver, Roland, who was across the street in my car. It hadn’t meant to signal him, but it did—habit, I suppose. “Quick.”
“I don’t want to quit my job, well, maybe eventually, but I want to see you—to keep seeing you,” he said. “And I’m sure you’re gonna tell me again to leave, but I don’t think that’s what you really want. Do you?”
I stared at him. Sometimes it did feel like sleeping with me was a bit of a novelty, something to say you did, or at least one of the Bianchi brothers. We werecriminals, and that turned people off, but it only turned them off about relationships. I didn’t know how much of what Kalen was saying could be believed. He was still a Fed at the end of the day, and I couldn’t havethathanging around the Palazzo. A stink I don’t think I could clean if it was found out.
“I’m not even—”
Roland grabbed both of Kalen’s arms from behind. It was always a little fun to see the drivers exercise their strengths, especially considering they were former associates who’d become a little too old to be running around the streets with arms.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “You need to leave now. Before my—”
Santo’s distinguished cologne smell arrived before him. He laughed. “Before what?” he asked. “Spill, brother.” He looked at Kalen, and then back at me. “I’m no mind reader, but it sounds like you’ve been fucking a federal agent.”
At this point, Kalen was burned as an agent—if that was the term they used. Could he be burned if he wasjustan analyst? I didn’t even want to think about it, but he was on my mind, he was consuming my thoughts. “You make it sound like I’ve done this before.”
Santo continued to look Kalen over, and I was glad he was being quiet. Santo hummed, shaking his head. “If Dad was here, he’d have him put in some cage like a beast,” he said, stepping toward me. “I take it you like him?”
Kalen’s eyes were directed to his feet. I knew he wanted the answer to that question as well. I liked him, but I didn’t know if I wanted him to be around me, or this entire operation. He’d end up dead, and we’d end up being the family that worked with the Feds. I always put family first; it was practically burned into me. “Yeah, I do,” I said. “We have fun together.”
“I’ll leave,” Kalen offered up.
Santo laughed. “You can’t leave now,” he said.
“What?” We both said at the same time.
“Listen, brother, I don’t care who you’ve decided to sleep with, or what your relationship is like, but Dad is dead,” he said, laughing a little more. “We can do whatever we want now. We run this.”
I stared at Kalen, and his eyes filled with hope. “I can still go,” he let out. “I just wanted to come and see you again, just to—”
“How is he at poker?” Santo asked.
“No,” I said. “He’s not getting involved.”
“Well, I wasn’t suggesting he play,” he said. “But having someone with a good set of eyes, who knows the games, the rules, and all that, it would help. And it would force him to decide.”
“On what?” Kalen asked.
Looking around, people were leaving the restaurant and passing us. Nobody batted an eye at the way Roland continued to hold onto Kalen, or that the way we were standing like this was an interrogation.
“You came here for him. I’m assuming that means you’re a compromised agent, wanting to sacrifice all that for whatever Rocco has to offer,” he said, giving my arm a gentle punch.
“He already said no, and we’ve got bigger shit to deal with,” I said. Our brother was out cold in my office, and if he woke up, there was no telling what he’d do. The last thing I needed was the smell of his piss in the room, mingled with the old book smell I’d curated. “He’s best off going home, leaving the state, and forgetting about me.”
Kalen’s jaw trembled, and I wanted to cup his chin, to keep him from slumping like someone whose big gesture was over and done. “I thought we had something,” he let out. “The way you touched me, it was like—like the touch of someone who cared.”
Roland let go of him on that note.
“Can you go to my office and make sure Tomaso is still out,” I instructed Roland. I sucked in a deep breath and looked at Kalen. “I offered you the chance to quit and come work for me,” I told him. “You said no, you decided on a one-time thing. If you’ve changed your mind—”
“I’ve changed my mind,” he let out, chest swelling and dropping with his deep breaths. “But—I can’t just quit out of the blue. I—”
“You could, if you had to take care of your mom,” I said. “And—”
