I took a step closer to him and put my hands on my hips. “Are you going to lecture me? When I did the exact same thing you did?”
Nick closed the remaining distance between us and put his hands on either side of my face. “No,” he whispered. “I’m not going to lecture you.” He brushed his lips over mine. “I’m going to thank God you’re on my side.”
The introduction of danger to Nick’s life seemed to have an interesting side effect: it made him frisky. And while I liked knowing his attraction to me existed on many levels, I was starting to get a little worried about how difficult it would be to maintain this level of heat in the future when Angela’s murderer was in jail.
Nick’s tender kiss turned into something more. His tongue flicked against my lips and I opened my mouth slightly and kissed him back. My fingers got lost in his thick, curly hair while his hands glided down from my face to my shoulders, down my arms, and then to my waist. Moments later, they were on my backside, pulling my hips toward him.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said in a husky voice.
He pulled out a set of keys and aimed them at shiny black Cadillac in the driveway. The lights blinked. Nick opened the door and climbed inside.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s a rental,” he said. “I thought it was a good idea to blend. Don’t tell me you didn’t have the same idea.” His eyes moved from my face to my outfit and back to my face.
I climbed in and buckled up. Nick threw the car into drive and backed out into traffic. He reached across the front seat and took my hand in his. He raised it to his lips and kissed the back of it, and then held it while he drove one-handed in a direction I didn’t recognize. We weren’t headed to his apartment or to my house.
We arrived at Vito’s factory a few minutes later. Nick turned off the engine and stared at the building.
“Why did you come here?” I asked.
“If they have their say, this is what I have to look forward to. Give them control of my business or lose it all.”
“You can’t just sit back and let them control your life. There has to be something else you can do.”
He reached across the car and opened the glove box. A small black gun sat inside on top of the owner’s manual.
“After your car blew up , you told me you thought I was one of them and that we were over. Even if you were out of my life, I had to find a way to protect you. I didn’t know what else to do. Now the only way to protect you is to give them what they want.”
“Nick, did I ever tell you I did my senior thesis on Bob Mackie?” I asked.
Nick looked at me like he was considering the possibility that my level of denial was so off the charts he might have to have me committed.
I kept my voice level as though we were discussing the chance of snow. “Everybody knows Bob Mackie had a successful career in Hollywood. His name is synonymous with Cher, Carol Burnett, Mitzi Gaynor. A lot of people don’t even remember those Mitzi Gaynor specials, but if it wasn’t for his costumes, they never would have been as successful as they were.”
“Kidd, I don’t think you’re listening to me.”
I closed the glove compartment.
“Bob Mackie wasn’t just a costume designer. He was a full-on fashion designer. And there was a time when he borrowed money from questionable sources and it almost cost him his business.”
“Questionable sources?”
“The mob. Vanity Fair did an article about it. You know how there’s a stereotype of mob women in glitzy, bedazzled clothes?” Nick’s eyes flickered to my outfit and then back to my face. “You see it in the movies and TV. Think Edie Falco in The Sopranos.”
“Sure, I know what you mean. The outward display of wealth.”
“That’s because of him. He couldn’t pay back their loan so he worked off the debt. He dressed the wives, mothers, and mistresses of the men he borrowed money from.”
I let my words sink in for a moment, and then pointed to the glove box. “That’s one solution, but it’s not the only solution. If these people think you owe them something, there’s got to be another way to pay them back.”
“Like offer free shoes to the wives, mothers, and mistresses of the men who want me to do business with them?”
“Make the women happy and the men won’t touch you. That’s how Bob Mackie did it.”
“That’s a bandage. It’s not a solution.” Nick looked like he heard what I’d said, but that he didn’t believe there was a way out other than the one he felt trapped in. He opened the driver’s side door.
“Nobody’s going to look for us here. Come with me.”
Nick climbed out of the Caddy and I slid across the seat and followed him. The building in front of us had been vacant for a long time. Light from the moon and the streetlamp by the road cast weird shadows the gravel. The entrance was dark. I reached my hand out for Nick’s and held tight. My skinny stiletto heel caught between some broken concrete and my ankle twisted. I stumbled and Nick pulled me up.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“My shoe got caught.” I said. I bent my foot at an awkward angle and pulled it out of the shoe. Nick freed the shoe from the gravel where it had been caught. The small black heel tap remained wedged between the rocks. If I put the shoe back on, I’d be walking on the exposed nail. Walking on it in that condition would destroy the leather on the heel quickly. Even worse, the nail would provide no traction against the exposed concrete floors inside.
I shivered from the cool air. Despite the oversized fur collar and cuffs on my suit, tendrils of cold snaked under the fabric and left me covered in goosebumps. Making out with Nick in front of Mama’s house had temporarily warmed me up, as had the heated seats in the Caddy.
Nick dangled my shoe over his index finger and looked at me. “Let’s be dangerous, Kidd. Let’s take control. All this stuff around us is making me feel helpless. Angela’s murder, the vandalism, Jimmy punching me, and your car. I’m tired of having things happen to me. I want to make something happen. I want to get back at these people.”
He pulled his arm back and threw my shoe at the dirty window. The glass shattered and landed inside the building. Nick looked at me. “My whole life was shattered, just like that window. They took it all.”
“But why? Why is this happening now?”
“They found out there was an informant and they traced it back to me. I paid my dad’s debt off a long time ago. I didn’t suspect anything when Angela asked for a job. When she told me she was my half sister, I acted surprised. I talked to my dad and he told me the truth. That he’d been letting her believe what she wanted to believe. It seemed innocent enough, but I knew what they did to him back then and I wasn’t going to take any chances, so I told Loncar.”
“Were you going to tell me? It’s a big secret to keep from the person you plan to marry. Did you think about that?”
Nick shifted his attention from the window to me. Moonlight cast a faint glow over his face. He looked weathered. “I wanted to tell you a hundred times. But after you saved my dad last year on your birthday, and then the thing over Christmas, I saw how you fight to make things right and I was so scared that I’d lose you. They want me to feel like I have nothing left.” He came closer again and slid his hand around the back of my neck. “They don’t realize that if I have you, I have everything.”
I turned away from him and stared at the broken window. My shoe was on the other side, laying on its side, highlighted by a beam of light from behind us. “Is this how it starts? These people want to get you. They want you to become part of their organization. This isn’t you—breaking into abandoned buildings and making out in public places. You aren’t the kind of guy who throws a shoe.”
“I’m sorry about your shoe,” he said. “I’m sorry about so many things.”
“Nick, they tried to get your company once, back when your dad borrowed money from them. Is history going to repeat itself? Is that what we have to expect from our future? That one day temptation
will be too much and you’ll slip up and start doing things their way?”
“No, shhh, no,” he said. He wrapped both arms around me and held me close, the kind of comforting hug that he’d given me at so many of my low points during the past two years. I tipped my head and laid it on his chest. “Listen to me, Kidd. I’m not my father and you’re not a mafia princess.” He relaxed his arms and pulled back, scanning my suit. “Although tonight it’s a little harder to tell that just from looking.” I smiled. He hugged me again. “This whole situation is making me crazy. I don’t want you to see that side of me.”
“You can’t hide your emotions from me. Not when things get difficult. I’m terrified of the future, about how our lives are going to change, about what you expect of me as a wife, and whether or not you want me to give up my career. But if you shut me out, then that’s worse. I need to know you have fears too.”
He traced his finger down the length of my nose. “I have all kinds of fears, but not about us. I don’t want you to give up who you are for me. I don’t want you to give up anything for me.”
I looked through the broken glass. “I had to give up my shoe. And that shoe looked good with my outfit.”
“How about we get your shoe and go back to my place and see how it looks without your outfit?”
“Nick!”
He bent down and nuzzled the side of my neck. “I think it’s the leopard print. You really should wear it more often.” He stood up straight and pressed his finger against my lips. “Save my space. I’ll be right back.”
He pulled on his glove and reached inside the broken glass to unlock the door. It swung open and Nick stepped inside. He bent down and picked up my shoe from the pile of broken glass, tapped the toe of it on the ground a few times to free it of any remaining shards, and stood up.
Lights illuminated his face and his eyes went wide. Behind me, the sound of tires on gravel announced a newcomer to our party. I turned around in time to see a shiny black town car pull into the factory lot and park alongside of Nick’s Cadillac.
Vito Cantone got out of the car. “You’re on private property,” he said. “I got a call that there was a break-in.”
“My photo shoot is tomorrow,” I said. “I made arrangements for the delivery department of Tradava to bring the samples out and I wanted to see if it had already been done.”
“You don’t have to lie,” Vito said. “I know the real reason you’re here.”
If there was a real reason to be there, then Nick had kept that to himself. Where was Nick, anyway? Seconds ago he’d been directly on the other side of the wall. If Vito didn’t see him, then he’d gone somewhere. I didn’t believe for a second Nick would leave me in danger, but where was he?
“I’m not here alone,” I said.
“I know. Mr. Taylor looks at you the way I looked at mi bambina a long time ago, and I don’t blame him. He has the luxury of showing the world how he feels. I didn’t have that.”
“Why not? Is your world so filled with lying and backstabbing and violence that you isolated your family from it?”
“In a way, yes.” He looked to the side of the building.
Nick came out from the shadows and walked between Vito and me. “I won’t let you hurt her,” he said. “Not like you hurt Angela. She was your mistress until you tired of her.”
“You have it all wrong,” Vito said. “I could never have hurt Angela.” He paused and seemed to consider what he was about to say. “She was my only daughter.”
26
Thursday, 9:15 p.m.
“Your daughter?” Nick asked, surprised.
“Your daughter?” I asked at the same time. The words were the same but the questions were different. Nick and I exchanged looks. “You’re Angela’s father?” I asked.
Vito held both of his arms out, open wide, palms facing up. “Please. The police are on their way—my factory is wired with a silent alarm that sounds at my house and at their station. Your friend Detective Loncar will be here shortly. It’s been a secret for too long and it’s time for me to tell the truth. Let’s go inside where we can talk.”
It was an odd group that ended up sitting on folding chairs inside Vito’s empty factory. Loncar showed up a few minutes after Vito had. If he was surprised by our presence, he kept it to himself.
We appeared not to be the first group of people who met inside the factory for reasons other than a walk through. A table was set up in the corner, surrounded by chairs. I wondered briefly if the business conducted at this table had included a plan to vandalize Nick’s showroom or blow up my car, or if it was just the location of Vito’s weekly poker game. My imagination was running in directions I didn’t want to acknowledge, and the stones it was flipping left dangerous theories exposed in its wake.
“Allow me to cut to the chase. Angela di Sotto was my daughter. I used to think only two people knew that to be a truth: me and Angela. I don’t believe that anymore,” Vito said.
“Why did you keep it a secret?” I asked. Loncar looked at me. Nick kept watching Vito. “She might not be dead if people knew she was your daughter.”
“I thought I was protecting her,” Vito said. “Understand, I didn’t know. For a long time. Her mother and I had an understanding. I gave her as much as I could, considering the circumstances.”
“Her mother was Lucky Vincenzo’s mistress,” Nick said.
“Lucky and I had certain things in common,” Vito said.
Nick slammed his closed fist down on the table. “When he died, Angela’s mom could have gotten them both out of this life. You took advantage of her,” Nick said angrily. “Angela’s mother was a working girl who fell in love with my dad after my mom died. She made him happy. But you guys made her feel like she was property. My dad got caught in the middle of that. The money Lucky infused into my dad’s company—now my company—it tore them apart. She left him saddled with debt to you. I thought those debts were cleared a long time ago but you won’t let me go.”
Loncar spoke. “Mr. Taylor, you best let Mr. Cantone speak.”
Nick balled his fists up in anger. “There’s nothing he can say to change what happened.”
“Mr. Taylor,” Vito said, “Angela told me you gave her a job. She told me she led your family to believe you and she were related. That was wrong of her, but I understood why she did it. Her mother was trapped in a life she didn’t want, and when she left New York, pregnant and alone, she did that so her baby would never have to feel like she belonged to someone else. Angela was guilty of using you and your dad for one purpose: stability. If she could have chosen which of the two of us was her real father, I have no doubt she would have chosen your father. I can’t say I blame her.”
Sitting in the dark corner of the factory illuminated only by the light from a pool of cell phones in the center of the table, I found it difficult to concentrate on Vito’s story. From the very first time Nick and I had ended up here at this factory site, Vito had come across as a bad guy. Even Detective Loncar had known about his criminal past, and here we were, sitting around a card table like we were old friends.
“Why did you tell me to use your factory?” I suddenly asked. “You said you wouldn’t charge me, even after I told you Tradava would pay. You said I—we—should consider it an engagement present. What could you gain from that?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Vito said.
“But then why?”
“My Angela didn’t want anybody to know I was her father, and after all these years, after having built up a network of loyalties”—he glanced at Loncar—“and a profitable business, to find out my own daughter was embarrassed by me opened my eyes. I’m not a young man, Ms. Kidd. I’m not immortal or invincible. When my time comes, I will have to face the life I lived. But I come from a life where we find ways to thank people for helping us. When Angela told me Nick had proposed to you, I wanted to find a way to do something for the two of you.”
“Angela told you?” I asked. “You said you didn’t kn
ow. I thought we told you the morning we were here.”
Vito smiled. “In my business, it pays to have a poker face. Nick, you gave my girl a job, not because someone twisted your arm or made you think you couldn’t say no. You knew she wasn’t related to you. But you looked at what she’d accomplished in her life and you made a decision based on that. You gave the girl a life outside of this world, not because you were afraid of me or what I stood for. I thank you for that.”
“Vito, with all due respect,” I said, “why are you cooperating with the police?”
Loncar and Nick’s heads whipped toward me so fast I was afraid their eyeballs would fly out.
Vito’s face twisted into anger. “Somebody killed my daughter. If this is about me, then I have a leak in my organization. If it’s not, then I have lost my child for a reason I can’t begin to comprehend. Angela didn’t condone my life. She didn’t want to be a part of it. I told Detective Loncar that I would cooperate with him in this matter so the killer could be brought to justice, because that’s what Angela would have wanted.” He stood up and rebuttoned his camel hair top coat. “But we’re wasting valuable time. If you don’t find who did this in the next day, I will take my own steps toward justice.” He stormed out of the factory.
The three of us remained silent until the car engine started and the sound of tires on gravel carried away from us. I looked back and forth between Loncar and Nick’s faces.
“What? We were all thinking it,” I said.
Loncar turned to Nick. “Everything Mr. Cantone told you here is true. He has been nothing but cooperative with the department since Ms. Kidd discovered Ms. di Sotto’s body at your showroom. Mr. Cantone would like you to think he’s the victim. Let me assure you, Vito Cantone is not a good man. The victim here is Angela di Sotto. Mr. Taylor, you’ve also been a victim. But unless I find something to tie Mr. Cantone to the crimes connected to this case, he will walk away from this.”
“Why are we here?” I asked. “I mean, I know Nick brought me here, but you and Vito? What’s that about? You never let me sit in on your investigations.”
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