“I know you?” Venezio asked, looking at me, instantly suspicious. Which tracked. He wasn’t Family. Not by blood. He was a former street kid who just so happened to get on the right side of the mafia.
I understood Christopher’s confusion too.
Nothing about Venezio screamed ‘mob associate.’ He didn’t even dress the part. He was in a tee, jeans, and Timbs.
He was tall and scrappy with chiseled bone structure, dark hair, one fully brown eye, and one partly brown and partly green eye.
He was gorgeous, though on the young side still. He would be almost intolerably hot once he hit his thirties.
“Who?” Christopher asked.
“Venezio. He worked under Cosimo for a while. Brought in by Miko. But has worked his way up ever since. Has been sort of interning under Salvatore.”
“You keeping a file on me?” Venezio asked in that gargled glass voice of his.
“Stalker board,” Christopher corrected, making Venezio’s brows pinch. “Where’s Salvatore?”
“He’s on his way. He was over with the Morellis on Staten Island. But I can get started.”
Christopher looked down at me. “Up to you.”
“Okay, listen, even if you figure out exactly what’s wrong with me, can I have Salvatore examine me too?”
Venezio snorted at that.
“You sound like a groupie.”
“She is,” Brio said, coming in behind us.
“How about I take your vitals and shit while you wait?” Venezio suggested.
“Works for me.”
We made our way into the exam room where Christopher put me down so gently, I might as well have been spun glass.
Venezio moved around, grabbing a thermometer and blood pressure cuff.
“Alara, you mind filling us in on what happened?” Brio asked once the velcro on the sleeve ripped as Venezio removed it.
I exhaled hard through my nose.
“Robin Moody.”
“Who?” Brio asked.
“The chick who just got murdered?” Venezio asked, looking up from jotting down my blood pressure.
“Yeah. Really close to the pawnshop. I literally almost stumbled into the crime scene.”
“Did you get attacked at the murder scene?” Brio asked.
“No. Okay. I need to rewind. Robin was in my pawnshop a little while back. She needed to pawn a music box. But was asking that I, you know, not sell it right away.”
“That ain’t how it works,” Venezio said.
“It is at my pawnshop. I just… didn’t think about it after that. But when I saw the news of her murder, I realized that the break-in was likely linked to that.”
“The what?” Brio snapped, biting off the words.
