AllFreeNovel
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I laugh and press an eggnog into her hand. “Hit me with it.”
“You told me to organize astaffChristmas party. Why is your entire family here?” She sneers toward the stage. For some reason, Benny’s now sliding across it on his knees. It’s not even nine p.m. “And why’s that idiot asking the Lord Jesus for a Mercedes Benz? He already has three of them.”
“Uh-huh, and how would you know?” Nico asks, quiet humor tugging his lips.
Laurie doesn’t flinch. “I’ve fucked him in two, and I keyed the third,” she says simply.
I shake my head. “I really didn’t need to know that. Here.” I pull out a small velvet box from my pocket. “I was going to give this to you later, but since you’re pissed off, it might sweeten you up a little.”
She eyes it in mock suspicion, but she can’t hide the excitement dancing behind her glare. “If it’s an engagement ring, I’m not signing a prenup.”
“Good thing it’s not an engagement ring then.”
Her annoyance evaporates when she snaps it open and tugs out an Audi car key. “Oh my god, you’re shitting me.”
I raise my glass to her. “Heated seats, white trim.Already parked outside your apartment. Now you can fuck my cousin in your car where there’s more room.”
She flings her arms around me, squeals her gratitude and insists Benny’s sticky fingers won’t be allowed anywhere nearher white seats, then she bounces over to the other girls to jingle the key in their faces.
As my gaze follows her, it slides left and locks onto Penny’s. Man, she’s just got this way of making my heart flinch every time she does that—catch my eye from across the room. She’s at the side of the stage with Rory, who’s studying the karaoke book. Penny grins at me, then pretends to pick her nose. Only when I realize it’s her middle finger stuffed up her left nostril do I realize she’s flipping me off.
I huff a laugh into my vodka and flip her off back. The heat of Nico’s stare burns my cheek.
“Be good to her, Rafe.”
Nico’s voice is quiet but it still squeezes my spine.Good to her?Fuck, if only he knew howgood I am to her. This morning, I stared at her for an hour as she snored beside me. Maybe it was the guilt of nearly slitting her throat or the fascination that she was sleeping in my bed,but I brought her breakfast on a fucking tray. Even put a flower I’d swiped out a vase in the dining room on it. When she tells me not to be nice to her, she no longer says it with a grimace but a smile, and this little eye roll that makes me want to be nice to her all the time.
I drag my hand over my throat. An hour watching her, yet I still don’t have a plan to get out.
“What was she like?” I say suddenly. “As a kid?”
By the way Nico purses his lips, I don’t think he’s going to answer. He glances up at Penny, who’s now impatiently tapping a stiletto and glaring at Benny as he takes an unrequested encore.
“She was a little shit,” he laughs. With a more serious tone, he adds, “She was lucky. Still is.” I rub my mouth, the irony prickling at my skin. “All the patrons at the Grand thought it. At first, it was just because of her name. You know—find a Penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck? Well, when they actually started picking her up and letting her blow on their dice, it turned out that old adage was true.”
I frown. “She’d actually make them lucky?”
“Always. Back then, I only knew her from seeing her around. But then one day she started charging men a dollar to blow on their dice, and I wanted to know why.”
I bite out a laugh. “She was hustling from a young age, then.” Nico glances at his shoes, but I press on. “Did you know her parents?”
He cuts me a dark look. “Alcoholics. She spent more time with me in the cloakroom than she ever did with them. Some nights, they’d forget she existed and one of my father’s men would have to drive her home.”
This irritates me beyond belief. The thought of this little red-head sitting on the steps of the Visconti Grand, waiting in vain for her parents, makes my stomach churn and my fingers twitch to break something.
“Who killed them?”
He shrugs. “No one important. Two men they were in debt to. Not a Visconti.”
Like stills from a black-and-white film, my mind cuts from the little girl on the steps to the teenager cowering between the fridge and the washing machine,a gun that’d never go off pressed to her head.
“And where can I find these men?” I ask, as calmly as I can muster.
He swallows. Shakes his head. “Both were found with bullets in their heads a few days later.” He gulps his eggnog and grabs another. “They were unofficial loan sharks in Visconti territory, you can connect the dots.”
Penny’s loud laugh touches my ears and draws me back to her. She’s going through the karaoke book now, my watch sliding up her wrist with every flip of a page.
“Nico?”
