Chapter 27 Kitty
TWENTY-SEVEN
KITTY
I was twelve when my mother rammed home the lesson: Do. Not. Eavesdrop.
She’d caught me listening to my da discussing a rendezvous with his crew. They’d planned to meet somewhere, doing something, with a gun they were intending to throw in the Hudson later that same evening.
To this day, I could remember that conversation because Da had never hidden from what he was and what his plans had been that night.
He’d been a murderer. And if not that, then a co-conspirator.
More than the truth, the clipped ear and the whack to my butt with Ma’s wooden spoon, that had been the lesson I had learned—never listen into conversations that didn’t concern you because you wouldn’t like what you picked up on.
But when, in the middle of brushing my teeth, Stan declared, “Finally!” There was no way in fuck I wasn’t going to snoop.
“I needed to talk to you.”
I pressed my ear to the door, wishing I could hear the other side of the conversation.
“So, when someone wants to talk to you about something they state categorically is urgent, you make them wait five hours?”
“I don’t care if it’s only seven AM, Star.”
Star?
I knew a Star.
Well, of a Star. Star Sullivan. Engaged to Conor O’Donnelly.
Stan wasn’t high-ranking in the Valentini family; he ruled over their slice of the city with his siblings. It’d make sense that he had the O’Donnellys’ ear…
But Star, future O’Donnelly Star?
“Look, there’s no easy way to say this.” Stan hesitated for so long that I wasn’t sure if Star was talking to him or not, then he snarled, “It’s hard to get the words out!”
A wash of air gusted from him, one noisy enough for me to hear.
“Dead To Me’s gone.”
He blurted the statement in a rush, and it was then that the change in him registered—a businessman or a fellow mobster weren’t doing the talking here.
He was a man who knew how it felt to lose someone.
Someone, I got the feeling, that was somehow important to both him and Star Sullivan.
Dead To Me? What kind of a name was that?
“Gone. What do you think I mean? I’m talking… dead.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, I’m not joking! There was an explosion last night. She perished in the blast.”
“Yeah, the papers are saying it’s a gas leak. Albanians targeted her.”
“No, I haven’t seen her body, Star.”
“That cannot be the only confirmation you’ll accept!”
“I’m not sneaking into a morgue to take photos of a dead body.”
“Get your ass down to Cancún then. I’m flying out in two hours.”
“You’re tracking my jet?!”
“Jesus Christ. Since when are you and Jen this close anyway? For fuck’s sake. Cin’s been following me since the hospital? Oh, that’s really reassuring. “Just in her spare time,”” he mocked.
My brow furrowed.
Who had? Sin? Who the hell was Sin?
“She did not see us on the plane. There was nothing to see. Do you goddamn hear me?”
“Fuck. My. Life.”
“All I know is that Mar Blanco is no more. Yeah, that’s where one of the bombs detonated. The person who told me Dead To Me was targeted by the Albanians seems to know his shit. He said she murdered someone high up in their ranks?”
“Martinez. Yeah. He’s the source— Ah, fuck, are you crying? Please, don’t. Do you want me to text Conor?”
“Don’t bite my head off. I’m just the messenger.”
Gaping at my reflection in the vanity, I shoved my ear against the door in a desperate attempt to hear why the woman who’d apparently been goddamn stalking him, had died in my hotel.
But he was dead silent. And fuck that old adage—curiosity would not kill the Kitty, not after I’d just survived a bomb blast!
I dragged open the door, uncaring that I stood in nothing but a towel and had toothpaste froth around my mouth.
Stan spun to face me, eyes tracing every goddamn inch I’d exposed to him.
That look had me in a chokehold.
The heat that flickered to life in his expression was something I had never witnessed before, not even last night after the best kiss of my life.
Everywhere he looked, I felt it like a visceral touch.
And it made me yearn for things I shouldn’t crave, not when he was talking about a stalker/murderer/corpse who was a mutual acquaintance of his and Star Sullivan’s and who appeared to be the reason for/behind that horrible blast last night.
The only thing I could do was refuse to show how he affected me.
But that pinch, deep in my core, returned with a vengeance.
I sucked in a breath, ignoring my hormones when they urged me to drop the towel. “What’s going on?”
“Yeah, that’s Kitty,” Stan answered, but not to me.
To Star. That didn’t piss me off. Nope. Not one little fucking bit.
“She’s upset. Justifiably. We’re leaving in ninety minutes, Star.
And don’t tell her brothers. They’re safe with me.
We’re heading to Vegas. Yes, this is me giving you their location so you don’t have to send another fucking assassin to stalk me.
What the hell were you thinking anyway?” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, you weren’t wrong.”
“Stan?”
The quiver in my voice had him flinching.
“Look, I have to go. I need to explain things…” Annoyance crept into his expression.
“I’ll send you pictures of the bomb sites but nothing more.
I’m not getting involved. Fine. Yeah. FINE.
” Growling, he cut the call and his arm jerked like he wanted to throw his cell against the wall. “God, she’s irritating.”
“Were you talking to Star Sullivan?” At his grumpy assent, I rasped, “I wouldn’t know if she was irritating. I’ve only ever seen her a handful of times and I’ve never met her. She and Conor don’t go to church.”
That had him focusing on me again. And it was intense. Making me realize that the eyefucking from before contained the scantest of scant percents of his impressive attention span.
Now, I had 100% of it and there was no hiding my blush as it expanded over my chest, diffusing onto my throat and face.
Fucking Irish genes.
His gaze tracked the spread of color on my being. “I’m surprised you do. You don’t seem like the church type.”
“Gives Ma comfort. I hate it.”
“My mother’s the same.” His lips pursed. “How much of that did you overhear? I thought you were in the shower. I heard running water.”
“I was brushing my teeth.”
“You shouldn’t leave the water running when you’re brushing your teeth.”
My eyes bugged. “Is this really the time for a conversation about water conservation?”
His grin was a strange combination of amused and sad. “I come from a water-poor island, duci. 70% of Sicily is at risk of desertification. So, yes. It’s always the time for that conversation.”
I huffed. “Well, as devastating as that statistic is, what’s going on, Stan?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Um, hello? I’m asking. And it’s for me to decide what I want to know.”
“You say that now…” His enigmatic gaze had me grinding my teeth. “Star learned that you were coming to Mexico—”
“How?!”
“—and because she was concerned about you,” he steamrolled over my objection.
“She asked a friend to make sure you were safe. It killed two birds with one stone because that friend has apparently been watching over me recently.” At that, the pinched look around his eyes deepened.
“That same friend is the reason why there were explosions last night.
“Transplanted Albanians took her out for murdering one of their leaders back in the homeland. It’s why your hotel was at the center of the blast. She stayed there too.”
Horror filled me. “How do you know any of this? I doubt the cops are as well-informed as you.”
Even as I asked the question, the notion he was holding something back hit me. I just didn’t know how to pull apart his words to find it.
“Martinez told me.”
I staggered over to the bed and plunked my ass down. “Is this real? It’s like something from a Le Carré novel!”
“You read spy thrillers?”
“I do. Not that my genre of choice is relevant—”
“Nothing about you is irrelevant, duci.”
The term of endearment combined with the way he crooned it sought to distract me by shoving me down the path to being bug-eyed and breathless again.
No.
Concentrate.
The man might be doing something sadistic to your hormones, Kitty Frasier, but this is important.
Focus.
I scowled at him. “How did Star know we were coming here?”
“You’ll have to ask her.”
“How?! I don’t know her!”
He shrugged. “We’re not best buds either. I told her I had urgent news and she called hours later.”
“Yeah, but she called. I’m surprised she knows I exist.”
“Your brothers work for Aidan O’Donnelly. Maybe that’s how it came up.”
My brow furrowed as something occurred to me. “What are you doing here?”
“What?”
“Mexico. Martinez didn’t expect you—”
“I contacted the previous owners of this territory,” he demurred, but it only tripped more of my triggers.
“You really came on business?”
“Why else would I be here?”
“What’s going on, Stan?” I jabbed the air with my finger. “I know you’re not telling me something.”
His gaze dropped to my chest. And that was the moment I noticed my towel had slipped a couple of inches.
I was still decently covered but—
“I’m going to shower,” I growled, furious that my skin prickled wherever he looked. Somehow, he’d managed to turn me on when I knew he’d held something back from me. Maybe several somethings. “And we can pick up this conversation where we left off when I’m done.”
“I look forward to it, gattaredda.”
The rumble of that endearment ran down my spine like he’d pressed kisses to each vertebrae.
Ignoring it and him, I jutted my chin out and stormed off.
Turning around so I could face the door, I went to close it.
I only meant to slam it.
But then, the wickedest, wildest thought overtook me.
He was hiding something from me.
I’d had enough shit hidden from me over the years to know when someone was being cagey with their words.
So, I acted on that wicked and wild thought…
Punishment.
Snagging the fold where I’d bound the two sides of my towel together, I snapped it off and away.
For a second, I flashed him.
Let him see me in the raw.
Let him crave what he couldn’t have.
Let him regret pissing me off.
Then, when his eyes widened, lips parting, hands fisting at his sides, I slammed the door.
Locked it.
And then stomped over to the shower.
It was time to show him the non-Dramamine-drugged, non-drunk, non-murder-witnessing, non-adrenaline-rushed Kitty.
No more Ms. Fucking Nice Girl.