“You better study me.” Growling, he drags out a chair and plops onto the cushion so the faux leather wheezes as air releases. “Study me hard. Because after this bullshit with Minka, she’s gonna be cautious, too. We already knew she was wary, and she doesn’t trust easily. Now you’ve gone and Fletched your entire marriage up.”
“Did you just use your own name as a verb?”
“Yes! Because when I do things, I do them well!” He runs his hand through his hair, frustrated and frazzled. “When Delicious deigns to allow you to breathe the same air as she once more, you’re gonna be glad you got a front-row seat to my shitshow.”
“You’re not evenwithFifi. Why the fuck would I study your method?”
He drops his hand and harrumphs, narrowing his eyes. “It’s a slow build.”
“Slow build todeath. And in the meantime, you risk some other prick waltzing in and taking your seat. While you’re out here tiptoeing around her, too terrified to sneeze in her general vicinity for fear she’ll run, there are countless other entrepreneurial bastards who won’t be nearly as gentle. If she isn’t fielding dinner requestsat leastonce a day, I’ll eat my hat.”
He grits his jaw, the muscles beneath his skin swelling. “If I move too soon, she’ll dip. If my daughter mentions thebeing in her bellything to her face, this whole situation explodes. My process is better, I promise.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.” But I look to the board and cast fresh eyes over Morty Presley’s life. His work. His marriage and parenthood. “Have you considered what life is gonna be like when Moo is sixteen and looking at boys?”
“Yeah. I’ve got it all planned.” He tips his head back and grins the grin of a desperate, slightly unhinged man. “We’ll be living in a cave in the Swiss Alps. No technology, no internet, no phones. Not sure which boys you think she’ll be looking at, since I’ll be the only one in a five-hundred-mile radius.”
I snort.
“And besides, what makes you think you have the luxury of setting Delicious aside?” He brings his eyes back to mine. “She’s beautiful. She’s intelligent. Successful. She’s got a mean right hook and a bad attitude, but folks don’t really notice those until after they fall head over heels stupid for those cute little dimples in her cheeks. You’re out here telling her toget. But you haven’t considered the very real risk someone else might step in and ask her out?”
“Someone else already has.” I push up from my seat, too fidgety to stay seated, and circle the table. I steal his marker and pull the cap off. “For the first time in her life, my darling wife decided to go for a run by the bay this morning.”
He spins in his seat and watches me through tight eyes.
“She pulls on a pair of tight shorts and ties her hair up, and just like that, she’s luring a dumb motherfucker in and making dinner plans.”
“And you just…” He gawks. “Letit happen?”
“I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t break his hands in the moment. His punishment for touching what’s mine. But Harrison was there, and he would’ve stepped in if the dude crossed a line. She’s got a date planned for this evening.” I flash a savage, feral smile and thrill in the fury beating through my veins. “Second day in a row I’ll intervene and ensure my marriage stays intact.”
“Secondday in a row?” He bounds up from his chair and shoots a wary look toward the door. Ensuring we’re alone, probably. Then he brings his focus back to me. “She’s working her way along the list, isn’t she?” He bites out a furious snarl. “She and Soph are hunting these pricks down and…” He can’t say the word, not while we’re in the belly of a police station. Instead, he brings his hand up and makes the slashing motion across the front of his throat. “Isn’t she?”
“She’s trying.”
“And you?”
“Intercept. She thinks last night’s date stood her up because of a business meeting he couldn’t escape.” I shake my head. “He was with me. Now he’s sleeping. Permanently.”
“Dude!” He swings his gaze back to the door. “You can’t just?—”
“I can. I am. Harrison’s riding Minka every minute of the day she’s not with me. She’s on the phone to Soph, planning their hits and coordinating their little Barbie Doll militia. Every morsel of information they share, he overhears and feeds it back to me. That way, I’m staying two steps ahead of my wife and keeping her out of the crosshairs. She has a date planned with a dude on the list tonight. Too bad I made a more tempting offer. He’ll meet me, not her, and when it’s done, he’ll be sorry he ever crossed me.”
“But you’re… if you’re…” He scratches his inch-long hair and frowns. “You’re doing the exact thing she’s doing. Different methods, but it’s still the same mission.”
“So?”
“So this is the reason you sent her away! You were pissed, you fought about it, and now we’re in this mess. If you were gonna do the work anyway, why not just collaboratewithher? Two brains are better than one, and it would save Delicious from feeling like you gave up on her!”
“Those are two separate situations.” I point toward the board. “The daughter’s boyfriend?—”
“Onetopic,” he snaps, snatching the marker and lobbing it across the room. It bounces from the carpet to the wall, then back to the floor again. “One fucking thing at a time. How are these two different situations? Your entire fight is because?—”
“Our fight was because we’re both hotheads who care more about saving the other than staying safe. We fought because that’s what we do. If I’d had five more fucking minutes, I would’ve come around and suggested, as you have: working with her.”
“Instead, she got in the car and left,” he grits out. “And whenshe realized she, too, is an idiot hothead, she called home and said she was coming back. But you told her not to.”
“I told her not to, because in the fifteen minutes she was gone, word had somehow gotten back to Cordoza. All of her hard work convincing the prickIdidn’t kill Agosti was for naught. As a result, he had no choice but to act. Even if she didn’t take my name, she’s a Malone. Therefore, the rules had been broken. One family hit another.”
