Chapter 43 Kitty
FORTY-THREE
KITTY
After the day we’d had, I wasn’t in the mood for socializing. I didn’t think he was either but when he didn’t put the get-together off until tomorrow, I knew he wanted to meet his pen pal in the flesh.
It was the hum of excitement about his person, something borderline hopeful, that had me refusing the offer to return to the city alone—melancholic and solitary by nature, it made me happy for him to meet another likeminded friend and I wanted to meet her too.
I just really needed a nap at some point.
So, through the enormous gates we went, my hand locked in his as we chose to ride this storm together.
The chaos our trip to Ohio had triggered let me see how much had changed in such a short space of time.
Before him, I’d been a physician assistant.
I’d complained about how the hospital treated us like indentured servants, uncaring if we were exhausted, only complying with work hours because the law said it had to.
Neev and I had trained for 5ks and Raisin had styled my hair to save $$$.
Now, I wore a two-thousand-dollar dress while being driven through gates that must have belonged to some French aristocrat in the old country with a mobster at my side as a conspiracy raged on in the background of our lives.
“You ready for the show?” said mobster murmured, drawing me away from my thoughts.
“I am.” As Luigi pulled up outside the house, I toyed with Stan’s fingers. “It’s funny how we’ve been heading in the same direction for years without knowing it.”
Despite the stressful day, Stan didn’t seem all that fazed by it—I didn’t even want to wonder what that meant for his cortisol levels.
“I already told you what I think about that.”
Soul mates.
I might have rolled my eyes, but I didn’t have a chance to tease him because someone yanked open the back door before either of us could react.
“My goodness,” the woman shrieked. “You’re actually here!”
Stan tensed, his hand sliding into his sports coat, but he relaxed almost a millisecond later. “Sofia!”
The genuine joy in his expression made this whole trip worth it—conspiracies included.
A man wandered out from behind her, chivvying, “Sofia, for God’s sake, he could have shot you!”
Sofia shrugged off the guy’s hold. “Dmitri, do not push my buttons damn.”
Dmitri’s head popped over the woman’s shoulder to excuse, “She gets the curse words the wrong way around when she’s mad. You’ll get used to it.”
“Which is all damn the time when I’m with you!”
The odd curse placement had me huffing out a shocked laugh. Sofia spoke like something from a Bronte novel. Her cut-glass tones were so effortlessly British that it made her inability to figure out the appropriate syntax even more perplexing.
“Come, come,” Sofia continued, elbowing Dmitri in the side. “I’ve wanted to meet you for so long.”
Stan, clearing his throat, climbed out of the car. As his hand swept to the side for me, Sofia immediately clutched at him, hugging him tight.
I didn’t have it in me to be jealous. Not when he’d just reminded me that we were soul mates. But the hug was more than the embrace of a woman in love. If anything, it seemed grateful. Filled with relief. Warm. And that same thing I’d picked up on with him—hopeful.
They both wanted the friendship to continue.
“You saved me,” Sofia whispered, her arms clinging to him. “Dead To Me told me that you were behind my rescue. Thank you. Thank you!”
Stan patted her back then did the smart thing and sent me an apologetic look.
Dmitri grumbled, “Sofia, less touching.”
“Shut up, swine. I touch one man and you’re jealous, but that physiotherapist is all over you and I’m not allowed to complain?”
My brows lifted at the tea being spilled, especially when Dmitri blushed. “It’s their job to touch me!”
“Is it also their job to leer?”
I chuckled—I couldn’t help myself. “She has a point, Dmitri.”
Everyone stiffened at my insertion, but Sofia’s head whipped around. “Thank you! See, Dmitri? It is not just I who believes this.”
The other man groaned. “Not this again.”
“Yes, this again. You’re the one complaining about me hugging the man who saved me from my father!” She sniffed. “You should be hugging him too as far as I’m concerned.”
“Please, don’t,” Stan chortled, but he curved his arm around Sofia’s shoulders in a friendly way and then held out his hand for Dmitri. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Turgenev.”
“The pleasure’s mine,” Dmitri greeted. “Especially as Sofia is correct. You did save her. I was in a coma at the time. Completely unaware I could lose—” He cut himself off. “I can’t thank you enough for being there for her when I couldn’t.”
Stan shrugged. “There are ways to thank me.”
“I bet.” Dmitri’s gaze turned shrewd, but oddly enough, I could sense his relief.
Gah, I’d never understand mobsters and their bizarre honor code.
“Come, we have a meal waiting for us,” Sofia chirped, tugging on Stan’s hand like an eager puppy.
No, I deliberated, like Neev with Lucas.
The sisterly vibe was unreal… Which meant this mad professor had a habit of collecting sisters. Something I’d need to prepare myself for, I guessed.
“Sounds good to me,” Stan answered, finally stepping away from the car door so I had more space. “I’m starving. We’ve been traveling since this morning.”
He held out a hand for me to take. I latched onto it and slipped from the back seat with as much elegance as I could.
Sofia might be channeling ‘cat high on catnip,’ but everything about her spoke of wealth, of politesse, of nobility bred into her very marrow…
Strange considering her father’s position, but undeniable all the same.
Sofia chattered away as she tugged Stan down the hall, but their conversation was wholly academic, purely scientific. It also meant that Stan walked slightly ahead of me, leaving me with Dmitri, while still keeping his arm tucked around my waist.
“You are with the Five Points, aren’t you?”
“Hardly,” I reasoned with a polite smile. “My brothers are. I’m just a nurse.”
“I doubt you’re ‘just’ anything. News has spread about the state of Agon Prifti’s corpse when the cops found it.”
The admission had me freezing, which earned me Stan’s attention.
“It’s fine,” I assured him, but I slipped free of his hold with a gentle tap to his wrist and let them step ahead. “His body was planted somewhere in the city?”
Dmitri tipped his head to the side. “You did not know?”
“Does this look like the expression of a woman who knew that?”
“I don’t suppose it does.” His lips curved before a calculating gleam made an appearance in his eyes. “They say that before the foxes and the rats got to him, he’d been beaten black and blue, an incision in his crotch the true modus operandi. The actions of a nurse.”
“Why would—”
“Someone dump a body out in the open?” Dmitri held out the crook of his elbow for me to take.
When I did, he shuffled us along at a steady pace as we traversed a hallway that was magnificent in size and stature.
This place had to have been transported from Europe—honestly, it was part palace!
“It sends a message without having to say a word.”
I bit my lip. “But the evidence—”
“The cops don’t police people like us.”
“The criminals in jail would disagree.”
Tone dry, he dismissed, “They’re there because men like me and Custanzu want them there.”
Uneasy, I muttered, “What kind of message did that bastard’s corpse send?”
“That the Valentini Capo has chosen a bride and she’s as bloodthirsty as he is.”
I swallowed at that observation, and the irritatingly dichotomous reaction that triggered had me pulling him to a halt.
I didn’t want to be known as bloodthirsty!
But I didn’t want anyone to think I was weak either.
Torn, I stared at Stan’s back.
“Which part stole your breath? I can’t help but notice that you’re wearing an engagement ring…”
“I’m not bloodthirsty!”
He shrugged, and it was effortless and casual and all things annoying. “It’s good for a man’s enemies to know that his woman is not a burden for him to carry, but a partner in all things. Strength begets strength.”
I gritted my teeth. “A woman isn’t a burden if she can’t kill to defend herself.”
“Women and children are burdens in our life.” He held up a hand when I started to argue.
“They’re a weakness. Our Achilles’ heels.
We want them to be safe, we’ll kill to protect them, but one wrong move, one man trusted undeservedly, and that’s what it takes for a house of cards to come tumbling down… as you know more than most.”
Mind racing, I tried to ignore the dull rush in my ears. “People know who I am?”
“They will when you go public.” Another pat to my fingers. “Don’t worry. He’ll keep you safe.”
My throat bobbed. “He should have told me.”
“Some things have to happen whether a man’s partner wants him to do it or not.” Dmitri turned to me. “Can you honestly say that you’d like the world to perceive you as weak? To think that you can be captured—”
“Like being kidnapped was my fault?!” I spat.
“—a vulnerability to be exploited and to be held over his head?”
I closed my eyes. “No.”
“Well, then.”
“Why have you told me this?”
“Because Sofia is about to bombard you with questions, and she will be graphic and won’t understand because in our world what you are ashamed of, she sees as a strength.
And because,” he continued with a simple hitch of his shoulder, “she is fond of your Custanzu. He did save her. I would like us to be friends.”
“Goddammit to hell!” Stan roared.
Dmitri chortled as I stuttered to a halt. “Ah, I see he’s met our other guests.”
I froze.
“Taube, what the fuck are you doing here?!”