Page 47 of Made in Love and Blood

“Marco.”

“Marco,” Salvatore echoed. “I’ll give you another question, if you feel the need. Just to keep things fair between us.”

“How about two? That’ll make it three, for three folders, if you really want it to be fair.”

A chuckle rumbled across the table.

“Shoot,” Salvatore murmured.

“Are you high?” Nico asked, right out with it.

Salvatore froze in his seat. “Excuse me?”

“I heard Carina. She said opiates—”

“Hear less, Nico.”

“Right, but she said—”

“She’s wrong,” Salvatore snapped. “And what happens between my wife and I in private is none of your concern. Including the things we say to one another. You can’t possibly know the context of that conversation, or why she said it in the first place. If you’re asking because you are concerned, don’t.”

“Okay,” Nico replied.

He wouldn’t push it. Except...

“Frankie’s got games. You should be there.”

“I will be.”

“Third question, then?”

“It depends. Now you’re working my last nerve, Nico.”

“I’m good at that.”

“You bet, kid.”

“Anyway, can I go?”

Salvatore’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Frankie’s upcoming games. Can I go? She asked me, so...”

Silence filled the study.

Salvatore stared.

Nico waited.

“She asked Carina, too,” Salvatore said to himself.

“I think she wants to see familiar faces when she looks out from the field. People that mean something to her.”

Salvatore’s gaze slammed into him again. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Don’t repeat that back to yourself too many times, okay?”

Just because Salvatore said not to, Nico did it.

It took him five times.