Page 18 of The Woman at the Funeral

“Danny, you have no right to demand to do anything in this apartment,” Nico said, tone firm but getting strained. Like he, too, was losing patience.

“We have a right to collect Matt’s things.”

“You actually don’t. You know that, right? From a legal standpoint, everything that was Matt’s is now Blair’s. Not yours.”

“Don’t give a fuck what the law says. She has no right to his shit.”

“Oh, my God. Fine. You can look in the spare room. But don’t touch anything.”

Danny straightened, triumphant.

“It’s not worth the fight,” I added to Nico in a lower voice. “They’ll just come back when you’re not here.”

He followed me to the office and stood between me and Danny as I unlocked the door.

I hated having anyone inside.

I wanted to slap Danny when he snorted at the wall of framed floral watercolors I had painstakingly displayed. The artwork itself declined as my grandmother’s hands shook in her old age. Still, I cherished every single one of those cards. I could practically hear her humming as she painted at the kitchen table while I did my schoolwork in the next room.

“Are any of these his?” Danny asked, flipping through the canvases leaning against the wall.

“In what world would Danny have an art collection?” Nico asked.

“Yeah, he was never into that highbrow shit.” This was said with a glance toward me.

“Come on. Go help your mom with the boxes,” Nico said, clamping a hand on Danny’s shoulder and forcibly leading him out of my office. When Danny walked off, he turned back to me. “Why don’t you hang here? I will try to rush them on and get them out of here.”

I knew I shouldn’t accept his help. Or trust a man I didn’t even know.

But I did both.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nico

By the time I managed to get the Ferraro family out of Blair’s place, it felt too awkward to invite myself back up.

So I just left with them.

It was a move I’d been regretting the past four days. While I tried to busy myself with trying to find Matt’s killers to keep my mind off thoughts of Blair.

Especially off thoughts of her in those tiny silk shorts and the matching tank top that put a tantalizing amount of skin on display. And hinted at what was beneath. Especially when the air kicked on and she took a cool drink, making her nipples press out against the material.

“Fuck,” I grumbled, raking my hand down my face, my palm catching on three-day-old stubble.

Zeno did eventually get some hits on the taillight from the CCTV.

And it was just my luck that it was the most popular model from the most popular make in the United States.

It left us with, on the low end, about thirty thousand cars across the five boroughs. Add on more if we needed to factor in Staten and Long Island, upstate, or Jersey.

I had a list a mile long of names to go over.

I’d been crossing them off one by one for days.

With no end in sight.

But the letters were starting to swim.

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