Page 53 of The Woman at the Funeral

“Yeah. She said she thought he was such a fine, upstanding young man.”

Both women tittered at that.

“Well, that’s how men like him get away with their crimes, isn’t it?”

At the time, I thought maybe she was using “crimes” colloquially.

Something about how these three men were discussing security, though, had me stiffening, had me paying closer attention.

I mean, who the hell were these men I let into my home?

“You okay?” Nico asked, watching me with his head tipped to the side.

“What? Yeah. Fine. Sorry.”

I felt immediately guilty for thinking negatively about the man. I mean, he’d been nothing but good to me. So what if he had a gun? Millions of people had guns. It was a personal protection choice. It didn’t mean Nico was some kind of bad guy.

I mean, did bad guys make you an omelet and pancakes?

Still, even long after my cameras were set up and my apartment was empty, I couldn’t seem to get the ideas out of my mind.

Who the hell was Nico Costa, really?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nico

It had been three days since I’d slept on Blair’s couch, since I’d woken up to her right beside me, her heated, hungry gaze staring at my cock that was—once again—not behaving. Three days since I’d told her she could touch me… and then she did. Three days since I cursed Zeno’s terrible timing seven ways to Sunday.

I’d yet to come up with a good enough excuse to try to see her.

I’d been trying to come up with reasons that I should keep my distance. Though, I was coming up with fewer and fewer of those each time I spent any time with her.

There was the issue of the safe.

It had been gnawing at me since my brothers and I made our way out of her apartment once the cameras were all up and she knew how to use the app.

Why would someone try to take the damn thing?

Anyone who knew Matt knew he never had anything of worth.

Though, was that true?

Did either of us actually know Matt at all?

He’d been lying to both of us for years.

And if the money I’d given him for the ring and shit like that didn’t actually go to those things, where did it all go? What had he been up to?

Maybe if I figured out that, I could figure out who’d killed him, who might be harassing Blair. Then put an end to it, once and for all.

To do that, though, I felt like getting into the safe might be necessary. But how could I possibly broach that with Blair without making it weird, without her asking a million questions?

As if thinking about her conjured her up, I glanced over at the stairs of The Met to find her sitting there in one of her elegant black dresses, looking effortlessly sleek. Enough so that a group of teen girls kept looking over at her, then making comments to one another about how they wanted to have style like hers one day.

As great as she looked externally, though, I could see something troubled behind her eyes.

“Hey,” I called as soon as she spotted me.

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