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I jump out while the vehicle still rocks back and forth on its wheels and march up to the red and brown brick building, pausing at the hostess station long enough to get a direction, and soon found myself sitting across from another familiar and unexpected face.
The blonde from the cemetery. The one I considered a possible fit for the mistress of the late Glenn Overmeyer.
What could she possibly want from me?
Bleach-blonde hair tinged yellow hangs down around her frail shoulders, curling at the ends. Her makeup is light, focused mostly on the eyes, which are lined in coal and shadowed with silver-gray, the lashes painted enough to clump together in places. The puffiness around her bloodshot brown eyes indicated that she’s been crying—a lot.
She has my attention…and my curiosity.
“Thank you for coming,” she says in a rough smoker’s voice.
“Didn’t give me a lot of choice. What do you want?”
She lowers her eyes, visibly uncomfortable, and clears her throat. “Someone took something very important from me.Someonevery important. I need you to take care of them for me.”
“Who is this person exactly?”
Unzipping a red leather purse, her hand dives inside, combing through its innards until she comes up with a wallet-sized square that soon reveals itself to be a miniature photo album. She flips through the pictures, finally settling on one. Lifting her gaze, she meets mine once more. Only this time, she appears harder, resolved.
I lower my gaze as she pushes the album toward me…and I feel my blood run cold. I know that face, know the way those lips felt against mine, the way that long, silky hair felt between my fingers. Those eyes, that soft, alluring, demure smile…
Faith. What did Faith have to do with this woman?
I replay her words in my mind, and the puzzle starts to come together. No…
“My daughter.”
Twenty-Four
~Declan~
My brain refuses to compute the new information. This woman was…Faith’s mom? Not the mistress I was led to believe? Or is it more complicated than that? Is this woman both mother and lover? Had she been playing both sides of the coin? And if so, why didn’t Faith ask for me to take care of her while I was at it? I would have done it in a heartbeat.
Anger mounts as I consider the implications. The woman across from me, asking me for my help, for me to murder her daughter, has been the most trifling of all. A disgusting human being to trump all those I’ve dealt with before.
I want to wrap both hands around her thin neck and squeeze the life out of her right here and now, damn the witnesses.
“I’m sorry, but it was a mistake coming here.” I rise to leave, the only choice I can see in front of me.
In a panic, the woman reaches out, snagging my hand and holding it prisoner. Her eyes are large and rounded as she looks up at me, disregarding the dangerous look in my eyes, the one I know I’m casting because I’m seconds from lunging at her.
“Please…I know she hired you.”
For the second time since I arrived, my breath freezes in my chest. Slowly, I sit back down, my eyes darting around the restaurant. Did I hear her right?
Breathing out a sigh of relief that I’m not leaving—yet—she continues. “I wasn’t born yesterday. I spotted you outside my home before. I had you pegged right away.”
That couldn’t be… It wasn’t often—or ever—that I was shook, but this woman is rattling my cage. I don’t enjoy the feeling of lost control at all. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“I’m not.”
“I’m retired.”
“Just hear me out.” Her voice is hard and the delivery straightforward. She isn’t his usual needy, unsure customer asking for something that was outside their wheelhouse. There is no discomfort in her eyes or body language, no hesitation that I can discern.
This woman is on the same level as the men I’ve worked around—the professionals. Yet, I doubt she’s ever been in the heart of anything as crazy as I’ve been. She is experienced, but not enough to have blood on her own hands.
She is what I’ve grown to recognize in the mafia wives. Cold, distant, cunning. And now she was asking for her daughter’s death. I don’t know which is worse: the idea that Faith might have committed matricide, or a mother wanting to murder her own child.
