Page 21 of Made in Love and Blood

“Do you think you’re ever gonna get the button if you can’t follow a simple order, hmm?”

He had a point. “And three?” Nico asked, opting to leave number two up to his own discretion.

“Three is the one that matters, personally, to me the most.”

“Okay.”

Sal exhaled slowly. “No lying. Ever. Again, no exceptions. If I ask, you tell. If something’s happened, I need to know. Omission is still lying. Changing a detail for whatever reason is still a lie. I need honesty. I’ve got enough bullshit on my plate coming from every corner of life, be the one thing that I don’t have to worry about catching me up in something I could have done without. Simple.”

“Yeah, simple,” he echoed.

“Good. Let’s test it.”

Nico straightened in the chair, placing the mug to the glass coffee table. “How?”

“Last night,” Sal stated, “what were you doing?”

“Scouting. It took thirty minutes before I got bored, and you didn’t say I couldn’t go outside. You just said I couldn’t leave the walled-in section.”

“Yet, you did jump over the wall.”

Nico shrugged. “I thought I had a good reason to.”

“Yes, my daughter. Remember what I said, omitting is still a lie.”

His chest became tighter. Nico sucked on his teeth before asking, “What, do you want a play by play of what went down, or...?”

“I’m just trying to figure out the details that Larkin couldn’t fill in for me this morning.”

“Who’s omitting now?”

Surprise flitted across Salvatore’s face. “Excuse me?”

“What you’re not saying, and what I already figured out last night while scouting, is that you have a blind spot in your cameras back there.”

At that, Salvatore sat back in the leather chair and wove his fingers together, staying silent.

“Right in the area I chose to be. The two closest cameras weren’t moving like others I saw, and so I figured the gate between the two sections, nearby hose, and the pin cherry tree all happened to be in that blind spot. I wondered how long it would take before someone came looking. They had to know I was outside; I needed to use the fob to open the door leading to the back, after all.”

“All because you were bored, huh?”

“I could have done worse,” Nico admitted and to others, he had.

Salvatore rubbed at his mouth a little. “And Frankie just what, came upon you?”

Yeah, shit. Nico hadn’t thought this far. He’d just made a deal not to lie, too.

“Not really. I mean, you know she runs, right?” Nico asked, wondering if the man could fill in his own blanks regarding his daughter’s secret.

Salvatore said nothing.

“Because that’s what she was doing. For an hour. Maybe a little more or a little less. I wasn’t exactly trying to get her attention. That just happened to be where she stopped. My guess is, because she also knows your cameras aren’t picking her up there. You’re not seeing how the running ends.”

Without warning, Salvatore leaned forward and jammed a finger against the phone on the desk. Almost instantly, a buzz echoed, and a voice came over the speaker.

“Yes, Mr. Gallo?”

“Sissy, could I have a word?”