Page 44 of The Killer Cupcake
Kathy spun on her heel, heart hammering against Debbie's letter.
"Janey misses you terribly, Kathy." Carmine's voice cut through the damp morning air with the precision of a blade, calm but carrying easily across the empty street. "She sends her sincere apologies."
Kathy quickened her pace, her heels clicking against the wet stones. She dashed inside the postman’s store and caught her breath. She then went to the counter and mailed her letter to Debbie. When she came out of the door, Carmine had driven the car further down the street to greet her.
"Don't make an old cripple chase you through these streets!" he called after her, and she caught the thread of genuine strain beneath his commanding tone. "These damaged legs won't cooperate with such athletics."
She stopped despite every instinct screaming for flight. The raw wound of Janey's calculated betrayal throbbed like an infected tooth, demanding something she couldn't name. Answers? Justice? Some acknowledgment of the devastation that betrayal brought?
Carmine opened the passenger door without another word—an invitation.
Kathy crossed the treacherous cobblestones to the car. She slid onto the cold leather seat.
The door closed. Carmine eased himself behind the wheel, intimately acquainted with pain, his cane clattering into the foot well. The powerful engine purred to life beneath them.
"I'm only here," Kathy said without looking at him, her gaze fixed on the fog-shrouded street ahead as the sedan pulled smoothly into the sparse morning traffic, “because you know something about Willa. I can feel it.”
Carmine guided the car through the winding streets with practiced ease, his reflection in the rearview mirror as grim as a funeral director's. "I know everything,ma chère. That's precisely why I came." He adjusted the mirror with one leather-gloved hand. "Let's discuss it properly—over a cup of coffee and biscuits."
“Fine. As long as Janey doesn’t join us,” she mumbled.
Carmine chuckled. “You have no idea how much my Janey loves you. But no, she won’t be present. Just a talk, and I’ll deliver you to the gym.”
CHAPTER 19
THE COFFE DISAPPOINTS. THE TRUTH IS BETTER THAN A LIE
Carmine tapped his silver spoon against the delicate porcelain saucer, the sound sharp as a funeral bell in the café's intimate atmosphere.
"The coffee disappoints?" He nodded toward her untouched cup, steam curling up.
Kathy's lip pressed into a thin line.
"Why are you stalling, Carmine? Every time I ask about Willa, you pivot and weave like one of the street hustlers." Her voice carried the cutting edge of barely controlled desperation. "You promised me answers over this 'mysterious coffee' you kept insisting on. So either tell me how to get my Willa back from those vultures—or admit this is just another one of Janey's twisted mind games."
Carmine's slender, dark eyebrow arched with what appeared to be genuine surprise.
“You truly hold anger for Janey? After everything she’s done for you?” he asked.
Kathy's laugh scraped raw against her throat.
"That shocks you? Because we share Elliott Wynn’s blood? Think all the women in our family are cursed with just his blood. Janey’s mother, my grandmother, was made from iron and steeland taught us being sweet wasn’t a weakness but our greatest protection.” She leaned forward across the small table, the café's genteel chatter fading to meaningless static around them. "Janey is?—"
"Say it," Carmine commanded quietly, his ice-pale eyes narrowing to predatory slits. The gentleman's mask slipped for just an instant, and Kathy glimpsed the killer Carmelo had warned her lived beneath the cultured surface.
"Evil." The word tore from her throat. “But not me, and not my Mama. Janey is a devil.”
Carmine didn't flinch, didn't blink. Only the subtle tightening of his jaw betrayed the cold fury coiling like a serpent in his chest. This was not what Carmelo would become, Kathy realized with chilling clarity—a man who loved a woman's darkness so completely he became its willing guardian. She and Carmelo may not be perfect, but they weren’t Janey and Carmine.
A shadow fell across their table like a cloud passing over the sun.
Kathy turned to find Pinkie standing there, wringing her gloved hands with barely contained anxiety, her usually bright eyes red-rimmed and haunted.
"This was a setup from the beginning," Kathy seethed. She surged upward to flee.
But Pinkie caught her wrist, not restraining, but anchoring her with gentleness.
"Please, Kathy." Tears gathered and threatened to spill. “Just five minutes. Woman to woman, heart to heart.I'mbegging you."
