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The rust smell in the abandoned Brooklyn shipyard mixed with briny wind, dried into dark red crusts on the cement.
The two DeLuca rats planted in the union knelt in puddles, foreheads to the frozen ground, shaking like waterlogged leaves. My right hand had split along the webbing, knuckles edged with sticky blood I couldn't wipe clean. Normally when I dealt with these two-faced parasites, I didn't waste words. I'd have Rocco stuff them in steel drums and dump them in the East River.
But today, I didn't even have anyone pick up the pipe.
"Sign. Then take your families and get to Miami." I pulled the handkerchief from my jacket, wiped my knuckles slowly, and tossed the bloodstained cloth onto the trembling treasurer's head. "If I can still see your names in New York Harbor by sundown, don't bother buying tickets."
Behind me, Rocco looked like he'd seen a ghost.
The ten-year veteran knew Don Marcelo rarely showed this kind of "mercy" during cleanup. On any other day, this warehouse would've held two corpses by tonight.
But I couldn't even hold onto the edge in my eyes.
The pain in my hand was real. But every time I closed my eyes, I saw that red-dress girl at ten fifteen this morning, slamming those heavy Ecuadorian roses onto my desk. Her flushed ears, that stubborn spark in her eyes—like a scalding neurotoxin flushing out the blood scent from my knuckles.
My mood was absurdly good.
Even stuck in forty minutes of traffic on the way back to Manhattan, even with bloody water soaking my cuffs at the sink, it didn't dent the clawing satisfaction in my chest.
I kept that cheerful mood all the way back to the Upper East Side townhouse.
I pushed open the heavy walnut door. Warm yellow light spilled from the foyer, the air thick with rosemary-roasted lamb and tomato basil.
A skillet clattered in the kitchen, followed by light humming.
Isabella came out wearing a linen apron, hair in a messy bun, carrying a plate of fresh-cut buffalo mozzarella and fig salad.
"You're twelve minutes late, Mr. Moretti."
She set the plate down hard on the long table, lifted a face seventy percent identical to mine but brighter and sharper, gray-green eyes smirking. "If you didn't bring Pierre Hermé rose macarons today, I'm locking your wine cellar for a year."
Chapter 19
Marcelo
I dropped a paper bag tied with dark green ribbon on the entryway console and shrugged off my cashmere coat, still cold from outside. "Two boxes. And if you touch those two bottles of '82 Pétrus in my cellar again, I'm freezing your allowance account until next summer."
Isabella snatched the bag, her fingers working the ribbon loose. One glance inside and her tense expression melted into a satisfied smile.
She clutched the bag, her gray-green eyes like twin probes scanning me from head to toe.
"Something's off with you tonight, Mr. Moretti." She pulled out a chair and sat down, chin propped on one hand, a teasing curve at her lips. "Let me guess—Brooklyn docks finally sorted? Or did DeLuca's idiots finally fuck off to Miami?"
"Both." I sat across from her, yanked my tie loose and tossed it aside, and picked up the silver fork. "So tonight you can spare me the commentary."
"Wow." Isabella's eyebrows shot up dramatically as she pushed the salad plate toward me. "You not only bought the macarons early, but you're also actually admitting you're in a good mood? Daddy, you sure you're not running a fever?"
I shot her a look and said nothing, cutting into the perfectly cooked lamb chop on my plate.
Rosemary and black pepper bit the air. The fireplace spat an occasional sharp crack.
"How's the magazine?" I asked, my knife scraping faintly against porcelain.
"Exhausting." Isabella speared a fig and popped it in her mouth. "The fall-winter feature got killed by the editor-in-chief three times. The whole editorial team's pulling all-nighters now. But there's good news—my emerging designer column got a thirty percent bump in clicks."
"Good." I nodded. "Looks like I was right to put you through your paces at the magazine."
"Please. I earned that spot myself." She rolled her eyes. "All you did was not vote against it at the board meeting."
