“Never,” Josh said. “But it’s not the same.”
“It is, though,” I argued.
“It’s not. This is something I’ve worried about since I was a child.”
My blood ran cold. Who had thoughts like that as a kid? “What do you mean?”
“Uh-uh,” he said. “We’re not doing this now. If there was ever a worst time to have the Josh’s Tragic Backstory conversation, it’s right after I killed someone.”
“No fair. I spilled my guts to you about mine.”
He let out an exasperated sound. “Aly, my backstory is the stuff of people’s nightmares.”
I glanced over at him, starting to worry. “Have you ever killed before?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Have you ever hurt anyone?”
“Not outside a martial arts studio, and even then, only accidentally, and never seriously.”
“Are you a criminal?”
“I’m a hacker, so technically, yes. I’ve broken countless laws, but the worst thing I’ve ever done was break into your house and stalk you.”
I lifted a brow at him and then sent a pointed look over my shoulder toward the trunk. “Really? That’s the worst thing?”
He shot me a grin. “I said what I said. Weren’t you just telling me we did the world a favor by killing Brad?”
I smiled. Yeah, I had, and it was nice to see some of Josh’s sass returning. “Then that’s all I need to know. I trust my gut that you’re not a bad person. Anything you have to tell me can wait until you’re ready. No rush.”
He leaned over the center console and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “You are the best girlfriend a guy could ask for.”
My eyebrows flew up so fast it felt like they were trying to jump off my forehead. “Uh, what was that?”
“Too soon?” he said. “I mean, I know we haven’t had the official conversation yet, but we share a child, and I feel like disposing of a body is a boyfriend-girlfriend activity and not something you do with a casual hookup.”
I schooled my face. “Are you saying that the couple who commits homicide together, stays together?”
He snorted. “Too wordy. I prefer the couple who slays together, stays together.”
I choked out a laugh. Yup. Straight to hell. The both of us.
“Where are we going, by the way?” he asked. “I feel like you were about to tell me right before the last time I had you pull over so I could dry heave some more.”
My humor evaporated. I’d been working up the courage for this conversation for the past half hour and still hadn’t figured out a good way to explain my plan B. “How much did you look into my family?”
“I stopped with your parents,” Josh said. “Digging any deeper felt too intrusive.”
I looked over at him. “Really? That’s where you drew the line?”
One big shoulder lifted in a shrug. “What? It had to be somewhere. Would you prefer that I’d dug deeper?”
“I honestly would have because it would save me from having to tell you some uncomfortable things about my family.”
I turned back toward the road. We were entering the suburbs, and I couldn’t keep looking at him whenever I felt like it – which was approximately every 1.2 seconds. He was too good-looking, and it was a goddamn distraction.
His hand landed on my thigh, and I must have been beyond redemption because even such a comforting, innocuous touch made me want to squirm in my seat. If he’d just inch it a little higher…
“Aly, nothing you could say about your family would ever drive me away.”
“Okay then. My uncle Nico is in the mob.”
Josh turned toward his door. “Pull over. We’re breaking up.” He jiggled the handle like he was trying to open it. “Let me out.”
I slapped at him. “Stop that. I’m serious.”
He swiveled back to me. “I thought you didn’t have any other family. There’s no mention of them anywhere on your social media profiles or other digital records.”
Was it weird that confessions like that didn’t even phase me anymore?
“That’s because I’ve been ignoring their existence,” I said. “Nico is my mom’s younger brother. He fell in with a bad crowd when he was a teenager, and the family pretty much disowned him. My grandparents fled here from Sicily because of the mob, and to have a son join their ranks was anathema after everything they’d been through. The last time I saw Uncle Nico was at my mom’s funeral. I thought that was the final time I’d ever hear from him, but he reached out a few months ago and coerced me into getting my youngest cousin, Greg, a janitorial job at the hospital.”
“Random,” Josh said.
I shook my head. “I wish. Let’s just say that there’s a coroner’s assistant whose last name ends in a vowel, and I’m pretty sure the real reason Greg got hired has something to do with how certain bodies get handled. I’ve only seen Greg a handful of times at work, and we’ve come to an unspoken understanding about pretending we don’t know each other, which, I mean, isn’t hard because we only met at Mom’s funeral. And no, I don’t want to get to know him now. He’s following in his dad’s footsteps like all my other cousins, and my job is too important for me to risk losing it over whatever shady mob shit he’s involved in.”
“So why are we involving them now?” Josh asked.
I sighed. “Because before my dad died, he told me that if I ever got into serious trouble, I should go to my uncle. Nico might be a soulless bastard, but family still matters to him, and apparently, he never stopped trying to reconcile with my mom and grandparents before they passed.”
“When you put it like that, I almost feel bad for the guy,” Josh said.
“You really shouldn’t. He’s not a good person. Maybe not as bad as Brad, but close. Unfortunately, I think he’s a necessary evil right now. From what Dad told me, Nico’s not high up in the organization, but because of what he does for them, he’s our best bet at getting out of our current situation without getting caught.”
“What does he do?” Josh asked.
I grimaced. “He’s a cleaner.”
“Money laundering?”
I shook my head. “More like sanitizing crime scenes.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re sure this is how you want to handle our current trunk situation?” he asked.
I glanced over at him. “I guess that depends. How do you feel about slicing off Brad’s fingerprints, ripping all the teeth from his mouth, hacking him into pieces, setting those pieces on fire, and then dumping them all into a river or lake?”
Josh blanched. “Like I might be sick again.”
I nodded. “Same. Death, I’m okay with; dismemberment, I’m not so sure. And because we’re amateurs, the risk of getting caught somewhere along the way is too high for me to stomach. I’d much rather let the professionals handle it.”
“Consider me team mob then,” Josh said.
“It’s going to come at a cost,” I warned him.
He gripped my shoulder, and the urge to turn and nuzzle my cheek into his hand was too strong to resist.
He stroked his thumb up my neck. “Do you know what the cost will be? Are we talking money or, like, favors?”
“Probably favors. Just because I’m family doesn’t mean I’m exempt from blackmail and coercion. I’ll probably have to convince the hospital to hire another mobster or something.” I sent him an apologetic look. “I can only imagine what they’ll ask someone with your hacking skills to do.”
He squeezed my shoulder. “If it means staying out of jail and the media, I’ll do whatever they want.”
I frowned as I took a left turn. He was concerned about the media? The thought of winding up on the news hadn’t even occurred to me. I was still too worried about getting caught driving with a dead guy in the car to think much past that, but maybe I should have. Brad did come from a lot of money, after all. Rich white boys were always considered newsworthy by the media. It made me even more convinced that going to Nico was the right choice, despite whatever fallout might come from it.