“I had my reasons.”
“Which were?” Sal asked her.
“None of your damn business, Sal Luca!”
Teddy frowned. “You don’t talk to Sal Gabrini like that. Who do you think you are?”
“Tell them to leave me alone, Mick,” Cleo said as if she had a right to ask him such a thing. “You know how they treat me. Tell them to back off. Like for real.”
Sal and Teddy looked at each other with smiles on their faces. “Check this chick out,” Sal said as he nodded his head toward Cleo.
But Mick didn’t entertain any of it. “Where have you been for the last two years?”
When he asked that question, they all saw a far less defiant look come over her face. Then she frowned as if she was reliving it. “He came and got me.”
“Which one?” Sal asked.
Which only pissed her off again. “What you mean which one? I wasn’t messing with no other man but Ricardo, and Mick knows that.”
“Were you in on it?” Mick asked her.
She looked at him. “Why would you ask me something like that?”
“There was no blood.”
They all looked at Mick. “What do you mean, Uncle Mick?” Sal asked him.
“When we doubled back to the scene of that shooting, not only was her body gone, but there was no blood left anywhere. Not even a sprinkle.”
“Shit,” said Sal. “So you suspected the bitch was lying all along?”
“Don’t you call me a bitch,” Cleo said.
“I didn’t even see it at the time, Uncle Sal.”
“That’s because you believed your eyes,” said Mick. “She was shot down and we were being shot at and we had to get out of there.”
“Didn’t you think it was strange that they took my body?” Cleo asked him.
“What’s strange about that?” asked Teddy. “That’s what mobsters do. They get rid of the evidence. We figured the shooters took your ass to dump you in the river to get rid of the evidence. But we were certain you was dead.” Then he looked at his father. “At least I was certain of it.”
But Mick was staring at Cleo. “Answer my question,” he said to her. “Were you in on it?”
She was offended again. “No, Mick, no! You know I wasn’t in on it. Richardo shot me with a tranquiller gun that knocked me out immediately, and then he and his crew put me in the car and flew me out of Philly that same night.”
“Flew you to where?” Teddy asked.
“First to Dublin.”
“To Ireland? I thought his ass was Jamaican. Why would he fly you all the way to Dublin?”
“Because he was afraid Mick would figure he had something to do with the shooting and send his goons to Jamaica. We stayed away from the Caribbean the entire time.”
“Doing what?” Mick asked her.
Another sad look appeared on her face. “You know what. We flew from town to town, country to country, yacht to yacht as we ‘entertained,’” she said as she made air quotes with her fingers, “millionaires and billionaires. I was still his biggest draw and he knew it.”
“So you’re saying your ass was trafficked all this time?” Sal asked her.
