Page 30 of Dishonored

“Offer to be the one to do it.”

Raffe liked Nico for a lot of reasons, but most prominently because he believed Nico to be gay on one hand but also because he didn’t know that Aria’s father had first asked Nico to be her husband before Raffe. Nico wasn’t gay, not that it would matter if he was, but all of those things meant he wasn’t a threat to Raffe, or his wife.

“Will that do it, do you think?” she asked.

Nico passed her a look. “What?”

“He shot Mario—could that get us the meeting with the boss. He’s my guard; I’m the acting boss. That should do it, shouldn’t it? It should get me in.”

“I’ll make a few calls.”

Good, good.

Time for the show to start.

The Philly restaurant most famous for its cheesesteaks wouldn’t have been Aria’s first choice for a meeting with the Accardo crime boss, but that had been Angelo’s demand once Nico had finally made contact with the man a few days earlier. He wanted to choose the location, one unrelated to either of their respective organizations other than perhaps by association, and they could arrive first to greet only him before his men would enter.

That worked for her.

Except … Angelo hadn’t quite followed the rules.

“Three of his men are inside, and the boss is waiting in the private dining area,” Nico said, glancing at Aria in the rearview mirror. “Or, at least three that our men recognized. Unarmed. One of them is Caesar, and his little friend that we had the run-in with a while back.”

She heard him, but she was still staring at the missed call on her phone.

Raffe, the caller ID read.

She’d opted to ignore her husband’s call if only because she simply couldn’t afford the headspace he would put her in should she actually spend two minutes talking to him. She couldn’t afford to be off her game at all today.

No doubt, she was going to pay for that choice later. Raffe always made her pay for anything he considered a slight or misstep.

“You all right?”

Aria finally dragged her gaze away from her phone, and met Nico’s gaze in the mirror. “Of course, I am.”

“So, I have been having a conversation with myself for the last ten minutes for no particular reason, then.”

“You don’t have to be a bastard about it.”

Nico smirked. “Who would I be if not a bastard?”

“My friend.”

“Well … that’s fair.”

“And I did hear you,” Aria said, staring at her reflection in the dark tint of the glass as they passed familiar Philadelphia streets. “Three men inside—that we know of, but there could be more. Unarmed as far as they can tell, but that’s a toss-up depending on what you consider to be armed. Angelo is in the private area. I’m not concerned.”

“Not even a little bit?”

“I hate when you do that, you know. Just because you’re my friend doesn’t mean you can get away with the same shit I’ll cut someone else for doing, Nico.”

“What did I do?”

His false innocence almost made her smile. “You question me. Don’t question me.”

“Someday, you’re going to be grateful to have a friend who does question you, De Rose Regina. Someday, it may be that one friend who keeps you from going a little too far when it comes to certain things because they make you stop and consider other options.”

“This is the only option.”