Chapter Sixteen

Campbell

I HAVE TO call the Galicis’ bluff, and I have half an hour to do it.

He’s slow on the uptake, taking seven rings before answering my call. “I don’t know this number. Who the hell is this?”

“Not in a talking mood, Stefano?” I ask.

Surprise stuns him for a good five seconds; I file that bit of information away for later. “Campbell. I didn’t give you this line.”

He didn’t, but Enrico did. “You hired me because I’m resourceful in a timely manner. That applies both ways.”

Stefano won’t be happy with that, but I don’t care.

“What do you want?” he demands.

“I want to know if you sent anyone else after La Rosa. Because if the answer is yes, they’re getting in my way. And if the answer is no, we have a complicating factor that could stop this whole endeavor in its tracks.”

“Anyone else?” Stefano grunts. “This isn’t baseball. You don’t just start throwing people off the bench to get the job done.”

On that front, we agree. “So that’s a no?”

“It’s a no.”

“Then Miceli’s house is compromised, and that was my way in. I can’t handle him knowing there’s a third party that can show up at any time.” Not without knowing who the third party is anyway. “So if you want La Rosa gone, you have to lure him out for me.”

“That wasn’t our deal, killer,” Stefano snaps. “Get it done or Sofia—”

“Come and shoot me in the head, then,” I interrupt. “But good luck finding someone else before you run out of time.”

Even over the phone, his rage radiates, trying to burn me to cinders. “Lure him how?”

“La Rosa likes art, doesn’t he? A very specific style of painting, in fact.” With a very limited color palette, but there’s no accounting for taste. “Where does he source the pieces?”

“Private auctions, mostly,” Stefano says, “but he likes meeting artists when he can. Buying whole collections at once. It’s about legacy or some shit.”

Not their legacy, but La Rosa’s. He wants their entire body of work to chain it to his own, making sure whomever he paid can never escape his influence. Everything about his house was controlled down to the last degree, which will make him paranoid about change. Still, if he wants something, he won’t be able to resist chasing after it.

Which is exactly what I’m counting on.

“Tell La Rosa you found an artist he’s going to love. She’s selling off her work before going back overseas. Make it sound like a peace offering for your bad blood.”

I throw in the last part to prove to Stefano I know more than he’s told me, and the hiss between his teeth is a dead giveaway. “Who the fuck are you really, Campbell?”

“Just a mercenary.” In context, it’s true enough. “Get him for Friday night.”

“La Rosa doesn’t like being rushed,” Stefano protests. He’s arguing the details, though, so I have him on the hook for the rest. “It will make him suspicious.”

“You’re the one with a schedule to keep.” I’m curious if the tight timeline is about making back the missing heroin money, or if there’s some other family-side politics I’m unaware of, but right now, that doesn’t matter. “Get him to talk to my artist, and he’ll be out of the picture by midnight.”

“And if he won’t show?” Stefano demands.

I have a plan in case of an emergency, but he doesn’t need to know that. A man like him won’t bend if he senses another way out. “Then come and get vengeance for Mickey. It’s this or nothing, Stefano.”

He pulls away from the phone. I hear him talking with someone else for a few minutes, but it’s impossible to pick out anything useful beyond the dull noise of speech. An exhausted sigh announces Stefano’s return, which is the only tell I need. Winded and cornered is exactly where I want him, even if I won’t be able to take advantage quite yet.

“Where’s this artist going to be?” he asks.

Wherever I can rent a room the right size with the proper chain of entrances and exits. “I’ll text you the address. Just get him onboard. Promise La Rosa that it’s the whole collection for sale and exactly to his taste. I’m sure he’ll humor you.”

If only for the pleasure of ripping Stefano’s generosity to shreds if he happens to be wrong. The trick to setting bait for someone powerful is making sure it offers them the chance for spite and pleasure; they might have a weakness leaning either way, but both is far too compelling to deny.

“Don’t fuck this up,” Stefano snarls. “You get one shot.”

No point in dignifying that with a response. “Contact me at this number when he says yes.”

I hang up. He’s welcome to stew and spit on his own time.

A notification awaits on my screen. I expect a message from Justine, but it’s Enrico, short and to the point: got yr allergy info—call.

He picks up immediately, overriding my greeting with a breathless, “You’re not going to believe this.”

His enthusiasm is a double-edged sword—useful, but the leadup wastes time. “Get to the point, Enrico.”

“Shellfish,” he says with a laugh. “La Rosa’s secret weakness is goddamn crabs.”

It’s understandable that Enrico would find that funny, but La Rosa’s paranoia has a basis in true fear. Severe shellfish allergies can make the smell alone cause a breakout of hives, even through a mask. The lightest exposure drifts through the air and sinks past the skin, meaning utmost avoidance is the only escape. Filtering his house isn’t just about keeping the paintings intact; La Rosa is making sure someone can’t cut his lungs out from under him.

“Crabs, lobsters, clams, scallops,” I say, although that isn’t the complete list. “Explains his private hoard of epinephrine. That kind of allergy has one of the highest rates of lethal anaphylactic shock.”

“Seriously?” Enrico’s humor fades. “So how are you going to get him?”

An injection has to be carefully prepared, but it’s bound to be the most effective—and I can control the time of release. “I’ll send you a list of what I need.”

The most important part is getting La Rosa at the right time and the right place. This is New York; I could hire plenty of pretty, talented actresses off the street to be my stalking horse, and buy a rack of paintings from the street vendors in SoHo. But every stranger I bring into my orbit is another risk, another potential witness.

I only have one choice. Maybe that’s been true from the start.

“Okay,” Enrico says, drawing my attention back to the call. “Did you give that other gift yet? I had to go hunting in some really weird black markets.”

If he’s allergic to anything, it’s minding his business. “I don’t kiss and tell. But you’re good at your word when it comes to getting anything in an hour.”

“Aww, come on,” Enrico protests. “I just want to know why you needed a—”

The lock on the front door of the apartment twists open.

“Get to work.” I hang up before he can keep pushing.

Justine steps inside in a breathless rush, closes the door behind her, and sets the deadbolt. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since we’ve seen each other, but her presence is an instant relief, pulling the twisted machinery of my heart back into alignment. The damage is too old to be repaired, but when I look at her, there’s no question I’m on the right path forward.

“Hey.” She kisses me first and abandons her shoes second, taking advantage of the slight difference in height. “It’s so good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too.” I trace my fingers up Justine’s back, steadying myself along every deep notch of her spine. “Is your father okay?”

“He’s not happy I’m getting into his business, but my mother asked me to and—” Justine squeezes her eyes shut, drawing in a deep breath. “I told her about what Richard did to me. I guess both of us have been keeping secrets.”

Talk about a double tap. “Are you okay?”

Her hands frame my shoulders, nails biting through the crisp linen of my shirt. Deep brown eyes rise, meeting mine. The intensity of their color is disarming, rings of darkness drawing into insoluble black. “No. I don’t think I am.”

My palm presses in between Justine’s shoulders to keep her steady. “Do you want to sit?”

“The problem is not knowing what I want,” she admits, then shakes her head. “Besides you, I guess. That’s the easy part, but…”

“It complicates everything else,” I finish for her.

Justine nods, bringing her body flush with my own. She hides her face against my chest, arms sliding down to embrace me as tightly as she can. Her next words are muffled. “Is it terrible that I want to forget about everything for a few hours? I know we don’t have time, but I just—”

“We have time.” Even if Enrico’s delivery is punctual, I can’t do anything with my supplies until the scene is set. “I’m not killing La Rosa until Friday.”

Her head snaps up. “You figured out how to do it?”

“That’s what I was getting around to.” I cup her jaw, tracing my thumb over the soft curve of her cheek. “Come into the bedroom with me.”

Confusion flutters through Justine’s expression, but she lets out a soft hum of agreement. She follows me past the threshold, where a white box the full width of the bed sits, unlabeled and otherwise nondescript.

“I’m going to break a promise.” Fitting my fingers under the lid, I open the box, revealing the dark treasure inside. “So I think I owe you something in return, if you might forgive me.”

Justine gasps as I pull the coat from its cradle of pale linen. Pitch-black fur unfurls down past my knees, but on her, it will drop just shy of the ankle. Every inch of it is soft yet sturdy sable, save for the collar, which is lined with a deep and smoky umber. The seller insisted it’s made of sea mink, which I have no way of verifying, but if even a single pelt belongs to something extinct, it more than justifies the price.

“Campbell,” her voice softens with astonishment, “is that real?”

“Yes.” I wouldn’t waste her time offering anything else. “But it’s also vintage. The sin that made this is older than both of us.”

Her laugh exposes that concern to the air. “Maybe it’s hypocritical of me to worry about the ethics of fur.”

Actually, I expected she would. There’s a childish assumption in the idea that every moral line moves at once, that an individual is simply good or evil, and the latter have no boundaries in the subject. If that were true, every soldier would be a serial killer—and in practice, only some of us are. “Plenty of people deserve to die. Most animals don’t. Go over to the mirror, and I’ll help you put this on.”

She does, facing her reflection as I step around to drape the coat over her shoulders. Justine shivers at the cool silk lining meeting bare skin as the fur encompasses her throat, light as a caress. Her arms slip through with ease, and the sleeves halt right above the hinge of each wrist, exactly as they should. I slide my hands under the collar, drawing my fingers up and around Justine’s neck, displacing her hair so it spills openly down her back.

“There we are.” She’s an absolute vision, drawing in every mote of light around her and devouring it whole. “What do you think?”

I step to the side so Justine can see, but her answer is so quiet I nearly lose the words.

“It’s gorgeous. But…why?”

“In a practical sense, Chicago and New York are cold cities during winter, and it looks perfect on you, which I knew it would.” Those are the simple answers, as if stacking one truth on top of another will give me a foundation for the rest. “But I also wanted to give you something on the edge of the impossible, so you’ll always know how far I’ll go for you—and where I can’t follow.”

Justine deserves honesty, no matter what it costs me in the end. All of my cards on the table, every last chip surrendered to the gamble.

“I’m never going to give you children. You and I are never going to settle in a white picket house and retire peacefully in thirty years. Part of my life—and yours—will be a lie until the day we both die. A lie I’ll do horrific things to defend. Everyone can become a target, Justine, except for you. Nothing I could buy would be worth even a single breath in your lungs.”

Her eyes widen as I step back in front of the mirror, breaking her reflection with my own.

“I need you to help me kill Miceli La Rosa.” Accurate in a sense, the letter of the law rather than the spirit. “But more than that, I want you to help me, Justine, and that’s the line I swore to never cross. To never put you in danger. To keep you safe.”

She goes impossibly still for several beats of my heart, an ebon statue possessed by golden contemplation. “Help you how?”

“By posing as an artist who he’ll come to meet. Someone who can make a painting in La Rosa’s favorite style, fitting the bait right to his mouth. Distracting him, deceiving him until I get close enough to make my move. He’ll die because of what you do—not an accident, not self-defense. Pure premeditation.”

If Justine is going to refuse, if this is going to end, it will be now.

I sink to my knees, half in penitence and half in surrender, ready to beg her to draw blood. At her feet, I confess, “The only future I can see is the two of us in the dark together. And it’s cruel for me to hide that from you even a second longer.”

Her hand rises so slowly I’m not sure if she’s going to slap me or turn away. Instead, Justine frames my jaw, the polished edge of her nails pressing above my pulse and right below my eye. “And what will you give me in return, Campbell?”

“Anything,” I whisper, but it comes out like please, “anything else you ask.”