Page 23 of Corrupted

Bianca swore under her breath in Spanish.

I expected her to curse out her son, but instead she said, "That girl will be the death of us all. I said to her, if she doesn't behave, no man would want her and you know what she did? She laughed and said no man could handle her anyway." She threw her hands up in the air. "It would take an army to control her."

"Just like her mother," Gianni said, unflinching.

She said a few more words in Spanish. None of them sounded flattering.

Gianni grinned and replied in Spanish. Whatever he said had her cheeks turning red.

She waved a finger at him. "You, you're trouble. No sensible woman would let you near her daughter." She turned the waving finger on me. "Are you with this man?"

"Yes," I replied. "I'm with all of them."

"Madre dio!" she exclaimed. "Loco."

Now that I understood. Sometimes I agreed that I might be crazy. "Do you know where your daughter is, by any chance?"

Bianca grunted with annoyance. "Probably off with that boy. I told her, Angelina-Maria Marguerite-Rosa Ramirez-Jones, you stay away from that boy! Did she do what I said? Of course not? I should have told her to go with him. She would have done the opposite, like she always does."

Bianca crossed her arms and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

"If I recall correctly," Reuben said slowly, "your father was trying to negotiate a marriage for you and you ran off with Anthony Jones instead."

Bianca sniffed. "That's right. Tony had more brains in his little finger than the man my father was trying to sell me to. He was bad. No bueno. We would have killed each other. No, let me correct myself. I would have killed him. Before I let him put his greasy fingers on me." She shuddered.

"So you think women should be free to choose who they're with," I stated.

As I expected, she saw right through what I was trying to imply. "Unless they are a no good, two-bit troublemaker like Enzo."

I grabbed Damon's wrist before he could respond too strongly.

"Where is he?" he asked, his voice barely contained. "When did you see him last?"

"This morning," she replied. "Climbing out the window of Angie's bedroom. As if I wouldn't notice." She scoffed.

"Carlos said he was shot last night," Reuben said.

"He might have been shot, but it wasn't last night," she said. "I chased him away and Angelina left maybe an hour later. Wherever they are, they're together."

"If Carlos tries to kill him, he might accidentally hurt her," I pointed out. "If you can tell us where you think they might be, we can stop that from happening."

I wasn't sure if Carlos wanted Enzo dead, but if Bianca thought that, she might help us. At this point, it was all we had to go on.

Bianca looked reluctant, but sighed. "I can give you an address. If they aren't there, then that's all I have." She grabbed a notepad from a side table beside an ancient couch and scribbled with a blunt pencil.

She tore off the paper and handed it to Reuben. "If you weren't with her, I'd insist you take me out. I've been lonely since Tony passed away."

Reuben carefully folded the page and tucked it into his pocket. "Thank you."

I suspected he was thanking her for the address, not the flirtation. I couldn't remember having seen him with another woman other than Daze and some of the staff, but he wasn't the flirtatious type. That was Gianni's wheelhouse.

"You could always ask Carlos to find you someone," Gianni said. "I bet a woman like you would go for a shit ton."

She gave him the stink eye. "If you don't get out of my house, I'm going to put a curse on you."

He grinned. "You wouldn't do that. You secretly like me. I can tell."

"So secret I don't even know," she said dryly. "Did you hit your head too many times?"

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