Page 51 of Entangled

Chris handed over Gian’s charging cell phone, still plugged into the cigarette lighter. “Here, it’s been going nuts. Probably trying to catch up with all the shit that it’s missed out on these past few months.”

“Thanks. Drive.”

The enforcer did as he was told.

“What did he say when I was gone?” Elena asked from the back seat.

“Ignore that fucking bastard,” Gian replied.

He was more interested in checking his phone. A brand-new message scrolled across the screen, one sent within the last few minutes.

From Cara.

Twenty-eight weeks today, it read. He could see, through looking at her messages for the past several months that she had sent him a text like this for every week that he had been locked up.

Gian smiled.

Elena leaning over his shoulder quickly made his brief happiness dissipate. He turned his phone’s screen off, but he wasn’t sure if Elena had seen the messages, or not. Of course, if she had, that didn’t mean she would understand what they meant.

“I’d like to go to the mansion,” his wife said.

“Be my guest. I’m going to the penthouse.”

She sat back in the seat, unbothered and cold once more. “Good.”

Elena dropped her pretense and her mask, as she had gotten what she wanted where her father was concerned, and didn’t think she would have to worry about him again for a while.

Gian expected nothing different.

“Good God, be careful, Claud!” Daniele leaned over the railing, shaking her head. “You’re going to throw out your back again, you stubborn mule.”

“I could have gotten the landlord’s son to help bring the box up,” Cara said, two steps above her aunt.

“Will you donnas shut up? Knock it off,” Claud barked down below in the stairwell. “It is one goddamn set of stairs and a crib. I can handle this.”

Daniele sighed. “I see an emergency room visit in our near future.”

“Oh, just go get the apartment door open!”

“Fine, throw your back out! I don’t care.”

Daniele cared, Cara knew.

Even as her aunt stalked down the hallway, huffing, she still looked back over her shoulder with concern to see if her husband was coming. Cara leaned over the railing to see her uncle scratching at his jaw while he stared at the crib.

“I’ll get the landlord’s son to come help,” she told her uncle.

“I had a son to help, but where is he now, Cara?”

She only stared at her uncle, unsure of how to answer that. She had no idea where Constantino was. There had been no funeral, no memorial, or anything to suggest he was dead, yet her uncle spoke like Constantino was buried somewhere, or dead in a ditch.

“So, do you want me to get you help, or not?” she asked.

“Not, girl. Not.”

“Zia was right, you are a stubborn mule.”

“She only uses that word because she’s too polite to call me an ass!” Claud shouted as Cara followed the path her aunt had taken.