Well, fuck Trace.
It’d been three months and no word, and my life was calm. Quiet. Steady. Val was entertainment every day through morning sickness, and she was starting to gain weight. She’d skipped her family’s Easter, so there’d been no word from her cousin. Also, Kelly and Justin got over whatever hitch they’d had.
I was a regular fixture on Sundays at Easter Lanes again.
Bear and Leo both checked in with me, and my mom was doing good. Course, I didn’t believe a word they said, but it was what it was. I wasn’t getting cursed over the phone on a weekly basis.
I was almost glowing.
Work was the same. Same people going on parole. Most hating me. Travis was still a dick.
Yep. Familiarity was good. Boring. Boring was good.
Boring.
Blah.
Bleh.
Fuck Trace.
“Did you see this?” A newspaper was dropped on the table in front of me as Kelly slid into the chair across from me.
See. We were these friends, meeting for lunch again. Not boring. Steady. Stable.
I was becoming a somewhat healthy individual.
“What is this?”
“Page three. Also, I need to grab a hero before Mrs. Kappaleweitz gets the last good bread. You’re going down today, Mrs. Kappaleweitz. Down.” She was off, shoving through the crowd toward the counter. We weren’t in a normal diner. I needed some excitement. The deli on Seventy-Fifth was all about loud customers and orders being yelled out, and some days there was a shoving match. One could only hope for the shoving match.
I turned to page 3, wanting to know what Kelly wanted me to see.
New Mafia Head?
The headline was large and in bold print, along with a picture of Trace and Ashton underneath.
Holy shit!
I jerked forward, skimming over the article. It said there had been a major shake-up in both the West and Walden Mafia families. New heads were thought to be stepping up, as there’d been recent shootings at a warehouse, listed to be controlled by the West family.
A full workup was done about Trace. They were using his first name of Tristian, so they didn’t know about his name preference. They talked about his schooling, his work on Wall Street. He’d been on the crew team when he was at Yale. Why was I not surprised?
There were more pictures of him leaving another nightclub. With a woman by him.
Another image, another woman.
After the third woman, I flipped the paper over.
Fuck. Him.
A headache was forming behind my forehead.
This was good news. He was obviously moving on. He’d chosen when I couldn’t, and good. Great. Wonderful. Just, fuck him to the highest mountain and ram an ice pick up his ass.
“Can you believe that?” Kelly was back, her hero in hand, and she gestured to the paper.
“What’d you do? Kill Mrs. Kappaleweitz? That was record time.”
“Oh.” She grinned, taking a big bite out of her hero, and waved it over her shoulder to the counter. “Me and Sal are best buds now. I told him about some pigeons I’m feeding from Justin’s patio, and he had set aside my hero for me. I don’t need to worry about Mrs. Kappaleweitz anymore.”
“Who’s Sal?”
“The guy who owns the place. He’s got a soft spot for pigeons. I forgot I had a whole conversation with him last week when we were here. He said he knew to start my hero when you came in. Said he recognized the ‘scary badge lady.’” She was snickering but leaned back. An older lady was going past our table, and Kelly took a giant bite of her hero before waving at the lady, who harrumphed on her way out of the deli.
I was guessing that was Mrs. Kappaleweitz.
Kelly leaned forward again. “We’re coming here every Thursday. I’m going to take pictures of the pigeons and show Sal next week. He’ll melt over them. He told me he has a pigeon video channel on YouTube. I’m so subscribing to it.” She frowned at the newspaper. “Oh, right. I forgot. You’re still at Katya?”
I nodded.
She got quiet before gesturing to the paper. “You think that stuff is true?”
My throat was burning. My chest felt like a closed fist was being pressed down on it, rubbing forcefully up and down to slowly break my sternum. But I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Says the one guy who works on Wall Street. You think that’s going to hurt him? Says he’s a big guy down there too.”
“It’ll probably help him, actually.”
She grunted. “Yeah. Funny how that works sometimes. You haven’t seen them at Katya?”
“Not for a long time.”
I’d never told Kelly that the door visitor had been him the night she’d come over sobbing about Justin. She’d never told me what their fight had been about. It was a night she wanted to avoid talking about, so it’d been easy not to tell her.
“I can’t believe the hockey hallway guy had been our boss the whole time. That’s wild, right? And the other guy—Justin’s family knows him. Can you believe that? It’s all crazy. You couldn’t make this up.”
I frowned. “What do you mean about the other guy?”
“The other boss guy. Ashton. He was at the party that day, and Justin’s cousin was all over him. I guess she actually asked him about Justin. It’s why he was hired at Katya.”
“When did you find all this out?”
“That night. When I came over.” She took a big bite of her hero and looked up at me. She stopped chewing, holding my gaze, and then sat back and swallowed everything. One big swallow. I saw it go down her throat. “I never told you any of that, huh?”
“No. You did not.” Since she’d brought that night up . . . “Was that why you were crying?”
She opened her mouth, stared at me blankly, and closed it. “Um. What’s the question again?”
“What else did Justin tell you that night?”
She began looking around.
“Kelly.” I leaned forward, a hand on the paper. “What else did Justin tell you that night?”
She shook her head, her eyes clouding over. She hunched forward, her head lowering, and her voice got quieter. “I can’t tell you. I want to. I really do, but I can’t, and it’s nothing to do with me or Justin. But Justin’s family . . . he’s got a big family, it turns out. Big and pushy. He told me the real reason we quit Katya. Not because his cousin got him the job, though I think that was part of it. He really doesn’t like Vivianna, but he said the two owners are into some shady business dealings, and he couldn’t tell me any more because of you. He didn’t want to put me and you into a bad spot. So, yeah. I kept quiet about it. You mad?”
Was I mad? Jesus.
I was more mad at seeing those women with Trace. Different woman every night, it seemed.
I shook my head. “I’m not mad.”
“But.” Her head dipped even farther down, her eyes still on me. Her chin would be grazing the table if she hunched any more. “I knew your bosses were shady, and I never told you. That’s shitty of me.”
Now I really felt like a shitty friend. “I already knew.”
“You knew?!” She sat back up.
“But you don’t work there anymore . . .” I was lying to cover my ass. I’d made a conscious decision not to tell Kelly when she was working there. Yep. Shitty. Me.
“Guess you have a point, but what about you? You’re still there after all this time?”
She was right. Trace had clearly moved on.
It was time I did as well.
