He makes a gentle fist in my hair.
“Look at me,” he orders. I blink at him. “Slap my face.”
“What?” I’m falling through his pupils.
“I want you to slap me.”
I do—and it’s so hard, his cheek reflects my palm’s shape in bright pink. Luca reels back. He laughs, a hoarse puff of sound, and presses his hand over the mark. Then he turns around and keeps on running.
7
Elise
Two Weeks Later
“Finis!” I clap the folder shut.
Dani’s brown eyes blink a few times. “I…” She makes a pretty “o” with her mouth. “That’s— I just…” She shakes her head slowly, pulling the tie from her silky black hair as she does, so it cascades over her shoulders.
“My thoughts exactly.” I rise from her white couch, toss the folder into her lap, and grab my wine glass from her living room table, sauntering toward her kitchen for a refill.
A couple seconds later, I hear her boots click on the floor behind me. She sets her empty glass on the granite counter beside mine as I work the cork off our half-drained bottle of Gaja Barbaresco.
“For starters, let me just say I feel like a terrible news analyst—because I just realized I didn’t understand much about what D.A.s actually do.”
I turn to her with my mouth open for dramatic effect. “A horrible analyst! What about horrible friend?” I jab my finger at her silky, powder blue blouse, and Dani blinks a few times like a gorgeous doll.
“Mmhmm. Sleeping on the friend job ’cause you’re so wrapped up in screwing what’s-his-face.”
She gives me a guilty grin. “His face is gorgeous and his name is Raul. He’ll be working as a guest producer for the next six weeks, so there’ll be plenty of time for…whatever events might unfold.”
Despite my angst, I can’t help snorting as I picture Dani’s long legs doing just that.
“You’re awful,” I tell her, pouring.
“You’re breaking disclosure laws over weeknight wine. Not that you don’t have a damn-it-all good reason to.” She throws an arm over my shoulder as we walk back into the living area. It’s two stories of tranquility, with a second-floor balcony overlooking the TV/fireplace area and every square foot done in pale tones and fluffy textures. When Dani unveiled the space to Ree and me after her interior designer spruced it up last year, Ree blinked a few times, sputtered, and said it looked like a lovely bird’s nest.
I sink back into the velvet-soft couch, pull a fleece over my legs, and watch as Dani nudges her shoes off and props her heels on the edge of her glass coffee table. She tosses back about a quarter of her wine and scrunches her nose.
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t imagine finding all this out after he approached you in Central Park. Clearly, he’s just…corrupt.”
“Umm, maybe a little. You know, he’s like…a mob boss?”
We both laugh at that until we’re howling. When we catch our breath, Dani wipes the laugh tears from her eyes and gives me a more sober look. “So you’re fucked. And not the sexy kind. Is that what I’m hearing?”
I nod. “Yeah, I guess. It all blindsided me. Both the thing with him on New Year’s Day, and then the other stuff after I took office. To think these precincts had been hoarding all this evidence for almost two years, waiting for the next D.A.—”
“And that D.A. is you.” Dani polishes off her glass. “I know, girl. It’s fucked. So what are you going to do?”
“Well, like I said, I had to form a task force. You can’t ignore something like this. Nor would I want to,” I add quickly. “You just heard my little fun-time summary of stuff from this folder, but some of the files we got from the precincts are pretty damning. Lots of drug stuff. And see, what I think is going on is that the head of the Armenian mob, this guy named Aren—”
“Armenians like the ones you had to get protected from?”
“Yep. Anyway, their fearless leader—” I roll my eyes “—is this guy named Aren. Apparently he has a relationship with an analyst at the FBI, and he’s told her he’s getting out of human trafficking because the Italians are taking that over. The details are sketchy.”
“And like whoaaa disturbing!” Dani seems drunk off her ass and looks just like she did in high school right now. “Human trafficking. That’s some fucked-up shiz.”
“Well, the three people in our office who know the most about the Arnoldi family don’t think