“Only that he was the East Coast’s biggest, baddest mafia dude, and I was not to have any contact with you while you were involved with him. Obviously, I won’t be telling him you’re back at work.”
“You don’t have to lie to your husband for me.”
“It’s not for you, dimwit, it’s for me. I like this job. Besides, what the man doesn’t know won’t kill him.” She squeezes my hands. “But if he happens to come in when you’re working, even if it’s a year from now, let’s just pretend it’s your first night back.”
I say mournfully, “Oh, the tangled webs we weave.”
Carla scoffs. “Stop it already. Marriage is an institution built on white lies and denial. If husbands and wives started telling each other the truth all the time, the whole system would implode. Tell me what happened since your graduation dinner.”
I take a deep breath, exhale, and close my eyes. Then I tell her everything since that night, not leaving anything out.
At the end of it, I’m emotionally wrung dry, but relieved to get it all off my chest. Look at me, doing the girlie sharing thing. Ellie would be so proud.
But then something odd occurs to me.
The night of my graduation dinner, I had no idea Liam owned the restaurant where we dined. I had no idea he’d be kidnapping me from the kitchen, either. Carla and Dave left before Diego and I did, and I haven’t spoken to her since. So…
“How did you know I was living with Liam?”
Carla shoots a surreptitious glance over her shoulder and lowers her voice. “Diego told me.”
I frown, trying to recall what I told Diego about my situation with Liam on our phone call.
“So you’re his girlfriend now or something?”
“Look, I just called to let you know I’m fine and to check in.”
That call was the night after the dinner. I didn’t tell Diego anything about my living situation. I haven’t spoken to him since.
Even more strange: when I walked in tonight, Carla said, “I can’t believe you were living with a mobster.”
Were, past tense.
“How long ago did Diego tell you that?”
Carla thinks for a moment. “I dunno. A few days, I guess?”
My heart starts to pound faster. I sit up straighter in my chair. “How many days, exactly? It’s important.”
“Um…” She looks at the ceiling, frowning, then pronounces, “Five. I remember because it was the same day I started my period and Diego was whipping himself again over that night he made you take out the trash.”
Five days ago, I was still living with Liam.
Five days ago, he rushed out of the kitchen after getting a phone call…and when he came back, he wasn’t himself.
Five days ago was the last time I saw him.
Diego knew before I did that Liam and I were going to break up.
My heart pounding, I shoot to my feet. I run out of the break room and into the kitchen, skidding to a stop next to the grill.
“You talked to him, didn’t you?”
In the middle of scraping the grill with a wire brush, Diego freezes. He hesitates, then says innocently, “Who?”
Heat crawls up my neck. I have to grit my teeth to keep from screaming. “Don’t play games with me. You know who. What did you say? What did he say? Tell me right now, or I’ll…I’ll call the police!”
It was a totally off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment threat. Nonsensical to boot, because I have no reason to call the police on Diego, other than him criminally infuriating me. But his reaction is so unexpected and violent, I’m stunned.
He whirls on me and angrily shouts, “You can’t prove I planted that bomb! There’s no evidence!”
I stand there with my mouth hanging open and watch as Diego slowly realizes I didn’t know anything about a bomb…until now.
He throws the wire brush onto the grill, turns his back to me, and says flatly, “Fuck.”
My face draining of blood, I whisper in horror, “You tried to blow people up?”
He props his hands on his hips and exhales heavily, still with his back turned. “Not people. Him.”
My hands go to my throat. I don’t have conscious control over them, they just fly up to my throat and stay there, shaking. I stumble back a few steps. I want to turn and run away, but I can’t seem to get my legs to agree, so I stand there, helplessly quaking like a leaf.
“Why?”
He’s silent for a moment, then he turns around and faces me. His expression is hard. Suddenly, he looks years older than he is. Older and tired, and not at all like someone I know.
“Don’t ask me stupid questions, Tru. You know why. And I don’t regret it. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t succeed.”
Diego tried to kill Liam.
My heart won’t be able to take much more of this shit.
Feeling faint, I pass a hand over my face. My throat is a desert. I stagger over to the iced tea and lemonade cooler on the counter in the corner, grab a glass from the stacks beside it, and pour myself a tea. I drink deeply, then turn around and lean against the counter for support.
Carla emerges from the break room. She looks at Diego and me standing opposite each other in tense silence, then hustles past into the dining room, leaving us alone again.
Before I can say anything, Diego beats me to it.
“He asked me to look after you.”
Thud, thud, thud goes my heart, before stopping altogether. I whisper, “What?”
“He said he was going away for good and asked me to watch out for you.”
Going away for good? What does that mean?
My question is answered when Carla runs back into the kitchen, looking gobsmacked. “Um, Tru? You better come out here. You’re going to want to see this.”
“See what? What’s wrong?”
She points toward the dining room to where a television hangs in one corner near the ceiling, blaring a breaking news report.
“Liam Black has been arrested.”
The glass of tea slips from my hand and shatters on the floor like a bomb.
30
Tru
The reporter is pretty, blonde, and freakishly cheerful, with a smile like an ad for dental veneers and a manic glint in her blue eyes.
“Tonight’s top story takes us into the seedy underworld of organized crime. Liam Black, one of Boston’s most notorious alleged mobsters, has been taken into custody by federal agents. We learned this evening in a bombshell announcement from the FBI that a long criminal investigation of Mr. Black recently produced enough evidence to secure a warrant for his arrest. The charges include racketeering, extortion, and murder, and could come with a sentence of life in prison if he’s convicted on all counts.”
A picture of Liam in handcuffs being led into a government building by a squad of six armed officers in uniform appears on the screen.
He looks calm. Head held high, shoulders squared, taller and more powerful than everyone around him, despite the cuffs.
A little cry of horror slips past my lips. I think I’m going to be sick.
“He said he was going away for good and asked me to watch out for you.”
He knew.
Somehow, Liam knew he was going to be arrested.