Page 9 of Fastest Kill

Dario's laugh carried through the house, warm and delighted, and Frederica closed her eyes and briefly considered whether it was too late to go back to jail.

5

Nobody had asked Dario if he wanted breakfast. This was not, it turned out, how the Alesci household operated.

The kitchen table was scarred wood, the kind that had absorbed decades of use and showed it without apology. Someone had gouged a fish or a knife into the far corner, and he could guess who.

A Greek newspaper lay open to the crossword, half the clues filled in two different handwritings. A collection of mismatched coffee mugs clustered in the center like a small terracotta settlement.

Dario stared at the walls while Despina moved through the kitchen with focused energy.

Blue, red, and white hand-painted tiles patterned the wall around the counters and sink. Copper pots hung above the stove. A magnetic strip mounted beside the window held knives, and most of them were kitchen knives. Three were not. A fourth, he couldn't even classify.

Well, this is awkward. He wasn't sure what to say or what to do, so he just tried not to gape at everything.

Frederica had gone upstairs scowling, and Tore was at the counter with his coffee, watching Dario's every move.

Dario had been assessed by professionals before. It had never felt quite like this. Most people looked at him and read the surface: the size, the tattoos, the easy smile.

People made their assumptions, and the assumptions were useful. He had built a career on what happened in the gap between what people saw and what was actually there.

Tore Alesci looked at him as though the surface were a document he had already read and set it aside as bullshit. Dario felt unmasked in seconds.

"You've been awake all night," Tore said bluntly.

"Occupational hazard."

"Which occupation? The nightclub or my daughter?"

Dario smiled. "Both. They turned out to be the same job."

Something shifted in the older man's face. He pulled out the chair across from Dario and sat, setting his mug between them, and Dario noticed that Tore's eyes were exactly the same hazel green as his daughter's. The threat behind them was also the same.

"I knew your father. Not well, but we crossed paths a few times. Good man, from what I saw of him," Tore said.

The words landed the way they always did when someone said that about Niccolò, a quick, solid pressure behind the sternum that Dario had never found a way to outrun. He kept his face relaxed. "He was the best of men. Better than we deserved."

Tore nodded and didn't push further. Another point in his favor.

"Eat this while you wait." Despina set down freshly made pita bread, figs, honey, and a plate of soft cheese.

She went back to the stove, and Tore stared at him until Dario reached for the bread. His body had been complaining about hunger for several hours, and he had no arguments left.

Tore glanced up at the ceiling as something clunked upstairs. "You were going to leave this morning. Just drop her off and go."

"That was the plan, yes."

"What changed it?"

Dario chewed, considering. "Your wife pointed a gun at me, and it's worth hanging about just to see the horror on Frederica's face."

Tore studied him for a long moment before he smiled. It rearranged his face entirely, making it warm and sharp at once.

There it is. That is where Spartana gets it.

"She has talked about you," Tore observed before taking another sip of his coffee.

Dario raised an eyebrow and swallowed his mouthful of fig. "Has she now?"