It made me wonder how many others they’d disposed of. How many families were out there, broken, searching for a loved one who would never come home? The mob didn’t just “disappear” fellow mobsters and gangsters who pissed them off. They targeted shop owners who didn’t want to pay for the mob’s forced protection. They went after government officials and community organizers who tried to stand up to them. Or they got rid of innocent witnesses to their crimes.
And Nico was the guy who made sure no one ever found them.
The opulence surrounding us had been built on the bones of victims. My father was a monster, but at least he’d never profited from his crimes. He committed them because he was sick, because he’d grown up in a violently abusive household, and had suffered several frontal lobe injuries that altered his brain function. I wasn’t excusing his actions, but there was a reason he was the way he was.
It made me wonder what Nico’s excuse was. Aly’s mom told her they had a strict but stable upbringing. Their parents didn’t hit them. Nico had simply fallen in with a bad crowd. But I wondered if it was more than that. I’d been in therapy so long and researched antisocial personality disorders so much that it was second nature to question charming people like Nico. Was he just naturally magnetic, or did he have sociopathic traits?
“Babe?” Aly asked. “You good?”
I blinked and came back to myself. Everyone was heading into dinner, leaving us a moment to ourselves. “Yeah, sorry. I zoned out for a second there.”
She scrunched her nose and dropped her voice. “Sorry about that. I know it must have been awkward.”
I stepped close enough to rub my hand up her arm. “Don’t apologize. You did good. I’m proud of you for holding your ground and not pretending that this is something it isn’t.”
She beamed at me. “Thank you.”
The urge to tell her I loved her was almost too strong to resist, but this was neither the time nor the place. I’d almost blurted it out yesterday over breakfast and the day before that when I caught Aly singing off-key Mariah Carey in the shower, but as much as a large part of me thought she was right there with me, a smaller part second-guessed it, keeping the words in check. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I was worthy of love; I just couldn’t believe I’d gotten so lucky that she was the one who loved me.
Dinner went a little better than cocktail hour. We were too busy stuffing our faces for much conversation, and Aly and Nico were seated far enough apart that they would have had to raise their voices to continue bickering. What brief discussion we had focused on safer topics like how good the food was, how shitty the weather had been, and Moira’s plans to gut their master bathroom and have a custom spa built in its place.
I sat back in my chair afterward, unable to eat another bite, feeling warm and sleepy and sated. No wonder they waited until dinner was over for serious conversation. It would be hard to get worked up when all I could think about was how nice a quick post-meal nap would be.
Aly set her napkin beside her plate and turned to where Nico lorded over us from the head of the table. “Now?”
He sighed. “Yes, fine.”
Moira placed a hand over his. “Coffee?”
His expression softened when he looked at her, and I started questioning myself about the sociopath thing when I saw the warm affection in his eyes. “Yes, please.” He turned toward us. “Would you like any?”
Remembering what Junior said about Nico’s barista-related vanity, I nodded. “I’ll never say no to one of those macchiatos.”
He grinned. “Moira’s even better at making them than I am.” His gaze slid to his wife. “And she’s got a great ass.”
Their sons let out a collective groan and started excusing themselves from the table, taking their plates with them to the kitchen.
Moira, however, looked thrilled. “He can be taught,” she said, leaning in to kiss her husband’s cheek.
Fifteen minutes later, Aly and I joined Nico and Junior in Nico’s office with our coffees. It was the one space in the house I felt like I could relax. The walls were paneled in dark wood. Soft lighting filtered down from a black chandelier. Beneath our feet, a well-worn Persian rug covered most of the slate-gray tile floor. Nico’s desk took up the center of the room, but the two leather chairs facing it looked as comfortable as the dark couch against the far wall, and I decided I’d be happy sitting wherever Aly chose. Leather meant that even if I accidentally slopped a little coffee over the side of my mug, it could easily get wiped up.
Aly decided on the couch, and I settled down beside her as Nico and Junior turned the chairs to face us.
Once he was seated, Nico took a sip of his espresso before lifting his gaze to Aly. “They didn’t find any trace of you or our guys in the house.”
Relief hit me so hard that I had to set my cup on my knee to keep from spilling it.
Aly reached out and gripped my shoulder, and I knew she must have been just as emotional as I was from how hard she squeezed me. “What about the van?”
Junior grinned. “The power company confirmed it was just a routine maintenance call, and the records they sent to the cops back that up.”
“What about all the footprints everyone must have left behind?” Aly pressed.
“What footprints?” Junior said. “The guys swept the snow as they were leaving.”
I forced my fingers to relax around my mug. “So that just left ours?”
Nico nodded. “Remember how we had you wear shoes a size too small?”
“Yes,” I said. “I assumed it was so there wouldn’t be a match to my real size.” I’d pulled a similar deception the first night I broke into Aly’s.
Nico nodded. “The size you wore was also Brad’s.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
My mind worked on overdrive as I thought back to all the other instructions I’d received that night, how they’d wanted me to hack into Brad’s machine but make it look like it was him who’d logged on, and the order to unencrypt anything that the cops might struggle with, like his secret hard drive.
Aly released my shoulder and sat forward. “Are you saying the cops think it was Brad inside the study that night?”
Nico nodded. “And an accomplice. That’s why the police bulletin says to be on the lookout for two men. Lucky for us, you have big feet for a woman.”
Aly grimaced. “Thanks for the underhanded compliment?”
Nico waved her off. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
I frowned. “What about Brad’s phone? Did the cops find it?”
“Ah, that,” Nico said, pausing to drain the rest of his espresso. “Yes, they found it. Brad did some rudimentary searching for Aly on it shortly after being released from the hospital, but she wasn’t the only one he looked for. Most of his digging revolved around another nurse named Erica Willet.”
Aly let out a shaky breath.
I gripped her knee. “Was that your co-worker who fit his profile?”
Her expression was troubled as she turned to me. “Yeah.”
I rubbed a thumb over her stocking-covered skin, wanting to soothe her. If not for our audience, I would have dragged her right into my lap. The need to have her in my arms when she was upset was only getting stronger by the day – more proof of how hard I had fallen.
She turned back to Nico. “Are the cops going to question me?”
He shook his head. “Unlikely. With no other trace of you found, there’s no reason. If anything, they might want to speak to you about your run-in with him to get a feel for what kind of headspace he was in that night, but I don’t think it’ll be for weeks yet, if it even happens. They’re too busy chasing down other leads and looking into missing women reports. Something like twenty hookers have disappeared in the city over the past four years.”