Sophie: See? Case closed.
I groaned as I stared at the photos she sent. They must have been taken ten years ago, and yeah, she had the whole casual Converse-sneakers-sweatshirt-knit-cap look going on, the complete opposite of the woman I knew now. Still, she was hot then, and she was hot now, and no matter what, she turned me on. Fucking hell.
Ryan: Hot as hell. Gorgeous as heaven. Sexy as sin. You are just as deliciously enticing in jeans and a hoodie as you are in a tight dress. Everything looks good on you because you look good in anything. And everything. And especially in nothing.
Sophie: Same to you.
After a lunch meeting with a new client later that day, my phone rang. My spine straightened as I headed to the parking lot of the restaurant and answered John Winston’s call.
“Hey,” I said.
The detective said a quick hello then slid into business. “Mr. Sloan,” he began, and I found it vaguely amusing that Winston was so formal with the way he talked. “I hope you don’t mind, but I had another question for you.”
“Sure,” I said as I unlocked my truck and turned on the radio. It was an old habit to have a little background noise during a private conversation.
“Luke Carlton. The piano teacher your mom had an affair with,” Winston began, and I clenched my jaw, a visceral reaction to that name and that description. There was so very little anyone could say of my mother that was good. She’d had an affair, she was in prison for murder, she’d been a—
But I couldn’t even say those words in my head.
“Was he ever at your home?” John asked. “Did your mom spend time with him at the house?”
I took a deep breath, letting the air work its way through my frustration at having to discuss her cheating. As if that was the worst thing. “Not really. She kept it pretty secret.”
“Sure. Of course. I get that,” the detective said, and I forced myself to compartmentalize, to see John solely as the detective and not as the brother of the woman I’d taken on a limo ride up and down the Strip last night. “Did they ever meet on James Street?”
I furrowed my brow. “James Street? Not that I know of. But that’s a pretty long street. Cuts through a lot of town.”
John laughed lightly. “Yeah. I know. That’s the problem.”
“Why are you asking?”
“Just trying to put some things together.”
“Man, I wish I could help, but I sure as hell wasn’t privy to the details of her affair,” I said, though that wasn’t entirely true. My mom had told me how much Luke had helped her to come out on the other side of the trouble she was in. But all that data fell under the don’t breathe a word category. She’d warned me before she left for prison to guard those secrets, and I did—to keep her out of more trouble and to protect her honor, even from behind bars. I’d buried that secret and hadn’t breathed a goddamn word.
“Listen, I would really appreciate it if you could give me a call if you remember anything about their relationship.”
I shoved a hand through my hair and nodded. “Of course.”
The call ended, and I banged my head on the steering wheel.
What the fuck was I supposed to say to Sophie? Your brother called me today to ask about my mom’s lover from eighteen years ago?
The last thing I wanted her to know about was my shitstorm of a past. I’d never met a woman I’d wanted to tell, but Sophie was already starting to feel different, and I had no clue how I’d even begin that conversation. I wished, I really fucking wished, that I could just be the man I was now. Not the guy whose family story had been dragged through the headlines in all its salaciousness years ago.
I only wanted the woman, not for the past to spill over into my present with her.
14
Ryan
The puck screamed across the ice, streaking right through the goalie’s skates and smacking into the back of the net.
I raised my arms and cheered. My teammates echoed my excitement, skating over and clapping me on the back for putting us ahead with five minutes to go in the game. I skated off the ice with the line.
Breathing hard, my muscles working overtime from the intensity of the game, I grabbed my water bottle and gulped down some liquid. I momentarily parked myself on the bench with the line change.
“Good job,” Marshall grunted with a pat on the knee.
“Gotta keep up with you,” I said, since he’d scored the first goal in this game for the recreational league team we played on. We’d been playing together for years—all the way back to varsity high school. Marshall was as close to my inner circle as anyone could be.
“Hey, need to ask you a question,” I said, lowering my voice as I tugged off my bulky gloves. “You told me a few weeks ago about Stefano being questioned by some of your attorneys for other crimes.” Marshall had tipped me off about the visit before the investigation had reopened, but he’d been away on a family vacation for two weeks so this was the first time I’d been able to catch up on the details.
“Right,” he said as he tightened his skates. “Some of my colleagues are working on that.”
“Do you know anything more about it? Because a detective brought me in for questioning a week ago. He talked to Shan, Colin, and Michael as well. My grandparents too. He asked a lot of the same questions that the guy who investigated the first time around did, but some different ones as well. He really seemed to want to know who my mom was friends with and if there was anyone new in her life at the time,” I said, speaking as casually as if we were catching up on the latest sports scores. It was damn nice, in a strange way, not to have to dig in and serve up my messy family story to someone. Hell, I couldn’t remember ever having to tell Marshall at all—he simply knew because we’d grown up together.
Marshall gestured with his clunky gloved fingers for me to come closer. I scooted over as he spoke low. “Listen, you didn’t hear this from me,” he said, beginning with his usual caveat when he shared something he wasn’t supposed to. I never violated that trust. “But Bianca Rosa came to us a few months ago. She told us she had some information.”
My eyes widened at the sound of that name. I hadn’t heard it in ages, hadn’t thought of her since way back when.
Now I was damned curious what Jerry Stefano’s girlfriend had had to say to the authorities.
15
Bianca
A few months ago
My mother extended her arm and unclasped her gold bracelet with the bunny charm. “Here. Take my bracelet. For luck.”
My stomach churned as I sat in the front seat of her parked car outside Applebee’s, my knee shaking. “Do you think I need luck?”
“Baby,” she said, stroking my hair, “we all need luck. You already have guts.” She poked my stomach for emphasis.
I clicked on the bracelet, hoping to channel her strength. I raised my face. “I’m doing this, right?”
She nodded. “You’re doing it. I’ve got your back. Just like I always have.”
“You always have. Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
“Not true. You always deserved it. I always believed you’d come home.”
“And I did.”
Still, nerves skittered through me. I tried to ignore them, but I knew I’d only be able to let them go once I met with the authorities about what I’d heard.
My gut churned and my head ached with the sick, twisted realization of what I’d unwittingly been tied to for years. Decades, even.
I opened the car door and gave my mom one last look. “Wait for me?”
“Always. I waited for you when you were sixteen and confused and scared. I’ll wait for you now,” she said, and my heart squeezed. She’d welcomed me with open arms after I’d run away as a teenager—then returned just having given birth to a murderer’s child. “And don’t you worry. We will do everything we can to make sure Lee stays away from those guys. Whoever they are.”
My son, nearly eighteen. The reason I was here. But not the only reason.
I was here because, well, I liked to think I was a decent human.
And decent humans needed to tell the cops what they’d heard.
What they’d suddenly put together.
Head high, I strode across the parking lot and walked into the cool, air-conditioned Applebee’s on the outskirts of Vegas, near my new home. I scanned the establishment, wondering briefly if there were any other recently minted paralegals meeting with law enforcement.
Maybe that table over there had a thirty-four-year-old mom telling a detective that she feared her former boyfriend had associates who were still in a gang, men whose names she didn’t know, but who’d called and said they had been looking out for her son. Maybe in that booth there, a woman was revealing all those years ago she’d overheard her then-boyfriend making calls to meet with friends about a job.
And maybe at the counter, a woman was telling a local deputy, a DA, or a cop that she feared that said long-ago boyfriend wasn’t the only one who ought to be behind bars.
Or, as I sat down across from the detective, maybe I was the only one here about to tell that story.
I extended a hand and introduced myself, saying the words I’d practiced with my mom: my rock, my strength. “I’m Bianca Rosa. I was involved with Jerry Stefano at the time of the murder of Thomas Paige, and I have new information that may be useful to the authorities.”
The detective’s blue eyes were caring, his voice gentle. “I’d love to hear it.”
“I don’t think Jerry acted alone. I don’t know who his partners were, but we’ve been getting calls that make me believe he asked someone to look out for us when he went away.” I swallowed roughly. “And I believe that based on things I overheard at the time, it’s possible there were others involved.”
“And why didn’t you share this eighteen years ago?” It was a question, but not an accusation.
“I didn’t fully realize it. I was sixteen and had run away from home. When Jerry told me he was meeting with some of his friends about a job, I didn’t ask questions. He told me it was an honor thing. They worked together. They did everything together. Honor—he kept talking about honor and protecting each other on the job. I thought . . .” I paused, shook my head. “How stupid of me to think this, but I figured he was talking about tree trimming of all things. Like, they protected each other and looked out for each other on those jobs. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, and then as soon as he was under arrest, I did what I knew how to do. I left.”
“Where did you go?” he asked in that same calm tone.
“A woman’s shelter in Idaho. Until I gave birth.”
“Your disappearance was one of the unsolved mysteries of the case,” he said.
“I know,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “I was sixteen. I was a baby, and I was having a baby. That’s all I could focus on.”
“That’s very young.” His tone was sympathetic. “How is your son?”
I shrugged. My throat tightened like a noose. Tears pricked the back of my eyes. He’d been great, so great.
But then, he had too much of his father in him.
He was drawn to trouble, lured by the wrong side of the law.
Or maybe by bad people. I had a hunch he was starting to spend time with the same men who I feared had played a part in the murder Jerry went to prison for.
I only wished I knew their names.
But maybe this man could figure out that piece of the puzzle. Maybe then he could keep them away from my son. For now, I shared what they’d told me on the phone.
“‘Jerry asked us to look out for you and for your son. We’re bound by honor to do him right,’” I said, telling him exactly what they told me.
“That’s why you called us? That’s why you wanted to talk?”
I nodded fiercely. “That’s when I started to think the code of honor extended to the job Jerry was serving a life sentence for.”
16
Ryan
I couldn’t believe what Marshall had just told me.
The cops had tried to talk to the shooter’s girlfriend at the time of the murder, but she’d skipped town. No one had found her, and Colin had told me at the time that there were rumors that Stefano had had her killed.
I never believed those rumors. Skipping town when you found out the guy you loved was going to prison? That was much more believable. Turned out it was all too true.
“Apparently, that’s why he took the job from your mom. Needed money for the kid. Bianca said she didn’t know at the time that he was doing those kinds of jobs. She thought they were tree-trimming jobs, like he’d claimed at the time,” Marshall said. “Anyway, once he was behind bars and the investigation was over, she went back to her family in Reno with the baby, and only moved back to the Vegas suburbs a year ago when she became a paralegal. Some of Stefano’s friends have looked out for her and the kid over the years, a code of honor thing, unbeknownst to her, until they called to tell her they were looking out for her son. A code of honor thing, only it’s hard to say what their honor truly means. And it’s likely those friends were in the Sinners.”
“Are they still?”
Marshall shrugged. “My guys don’t know yet. All we know is Stefano asked them to keep his kid away from the Sinners. He wanted his son to have a shot at a new kind of life, different from his. But lately, he’s been getting into trouble. Bianca’s not too happy about them breaking their promise to keep her son safe from the gang, being in that world themselves.”
Something about Marshall’s info aligned with John Winston’s questions. If the girlfriend was talking after all these years, maybe mentioning names that had been off the radar during the first investigation, it would make sense that Winston had been asking about any other people in my mother’s life. “Were these buddies involved in my dad’s murder?”
“That’s the part we’re trying to figure out. It’s not even my case. It’s not even at the level of a case yet, to be honest. Just an investigation. All I know is the detectives are looking into it. And you did not get this from me.”
The coach slapped the white wood of the bench then pointed to the ice.
Marshall and I, along with the rest of the line, hopped over and went out on the rink, returning to the game. As I skated, I mapped out a plan. No reason I couldn’t try to work the case too. John Winston might be the lead detective, but I could play that role on my own. It was my family, my life, and my story. I knew how to figure things out, and how to put two and two together. And I had a damn good notion of some of the people I needed to go see.
Later that night, I scheduled a piano lesson with a local teacher for later this week.
17
Sophie
“Wish me luck,” I said as I pushed back from the table after a fantastic sushi lunch with Holden and my good friend Jenna.
Holden stood first and cupped my shoulders. “I know you can do this. Everything is going to go great with Clyde. Just tell him to keep his grandson’s paws off my ex-wife,” Holden said with a wink.
“If only you’d kept your hands on me, I wouldn’t be worrying about my biggest donor to the community center trying to pawn me off on his grandson,” I teased, squeezing his arm. Holden swatted my rear with a light touch.
“Like that? Is that what you want?”
“No. Put some gusto into it,” Jenna said, with a playful note.
I waved them both off. I wasn’t sore, per se, from my spanking two nights ago, but I was keeping this patch of bodily real estate for Ryan’s possessive hands only. Actually, all of my body. True, we’d made no such promises. But after the time we’d spent together, the things we’d done, the messages we’d exchanged . . . well, there was no way in hell I wanted to even dabble with anyone else.
“No gusto, please,” I joked, then glanced at my watch. “I’m off. Enjoy your green tea ice cream.”
“We will,” Jenna said, eyeing the dessert dishes the waiter had just brought the two of them. “Just remind Clyde how important the co
mmunity center is in and of itself. And that building the new additions is not dependent on you dating or not dating his grandson.”
“Absolutely.” I gave a big thumbs-up. I knew what to do. I certainly knew how to handle myself in front of old, rich men, in front of young, rich men, and in front of nerdy, rich men. I’d handled myself just fine when I ran InCode. I’d made pitches. I’d stood up in front of groups of people. I’d asked for funding. And I’d presented on the strength of my vision.
That was what I would do with Clyde. Besides, I didn’t feel my romantic life, one way or the other, needed to be a part of my conversations with him. If I were a man, surely no one would expect me to date someone’s daughter.
I hopped into my Aston Martin and headed to Clyde’s office. He greeted me with a handshake that lasted too long, then a kiss on the cheek that left too much whiskery scratch on my skin. I wished he wasn’t so touchy, but I reminded myself the man hadn’t crossed any lines. He was simply more affectionate than I would have liked. No crime in that, just a wee bit of discomfort.
In his office, I reviewed the final plans for the Beethoven concert benefit as well as the community center. When I was through, Clyde smacked his palm in approval on his grand oak desk. “I am delighted to be able to help fund this. It is so great to have a place for young people to be able to go to stay off the streets and out of trouble,” he said, and I couldn’t deny that I loved his giving heart and spirit. He reminded me in some ways of John, with his mission to help make the city safer and better. They each had their own style of going about it, but the goal was the same.
A better Las Vegas.
Clyde stroked his chin. “Say, do you know who’s here today?” There was a glint in his gray eyes.
My Sinful Desire (Sinful Men Book 2) Page 9