Black Jack (Advantage Play #5) - Kelsie Rae Page 0,36
mess with him.
“So, Bianca,” Wallace starts. “When you arrived, you said that you knew Jack worked with me at the Bureau. Tell me, how did you handle that?”
“When I found out he’d been lying to me?” I return. “I was pissed. Obviously.”
Melanie smiles. “Obviously.”
“Is it still a sore subject?” Wallace prods.
My gaze darts over to Jack. He looks as cool as a cucumber, but there’s a tightness in his jaw, and his movements feel forced as he grabs his fork with white knuckles.
I lick my lips and place my hand on top of his before running my thumb along those same white knuckles while telling myself it’s all for Wallace’s benefit. Not because I hate to see him nervous and that I can feel his anxiety as if it’s my own. Because that would be insane.
Although, for someone who’s supposedly in the company of his own kind, he sure as hell seems nervous. But what do I know? I don’t belong anywhere.
“Bianca, will you pass the bread?” Melanie interrupts before giving her husband a scathing glare.
I knew I liked her.
Wallace ignores it, grabs the basket, then sets it down within reach of Melanie. “I’m just curious, that’s all. It must be strange to be from two different worlds when you believed you were two peas in a pod. Isn’t that right, Bianca?”
“Jack and I have never been two peas in a pod, Mr. Embry.”
“Please, call me Wallace,” he interrupts.
I smile. “Wallace. As I’m sure you already know, I’ve been surrounded by made men my entire life. But even while undercover, Jack managed to stand out to me. He was different. He was kind. Why do you think I fell in love with him in the first place?”
Wallace cocks his head to the side. Then he reaches for his chipped black mug and takes a long gulp. After setting it down, his gaze drops down to my hand lying on top of Jack’s before he asks, “So you admit you’re connected to the Italian mafia?”
“Of course,” I reply. “I assume that’s why you invited us into your home, isn’t it? We can’t choose our family, Wallace, but we can choose whether or not we cultivate that relationship. As soon as I was old enough to understand their shady dealings, I began to distance myself from them.”
“Yet you’ve been seen attending multiple parties, coming to and leaving your brother’s apartment––”
“I said I was distancing myself from them, Wallace. I didn’t say I’d disowned them.”
“And why not?”
I laugh. “You can’t disown them. Not if you want to survive. You don’t get out of the mafia. Not formally. Not if you want to keep your head. As for my brother’s apartment, I was in a bad place financially and lived with my brother for a short time so I could get my head above water. That’s when I met Jack.”
“So, you admit to seeing mafia dealings firsthand.”
Another laugh bursts out of me, but it’s more bitter than before. “Women aren’t included in mafia dealings, Wallace. Did a new family friend show up and introduce himself to me one night while I was home? Yes. Did he have new soldier plastered across his forehead? No. We were just friends, and then that friendship turned into something more.”
“And then you found out his true identity,” he surmises, his dinner forgotten.
“Yes.”
“And you felt betrayed.”
I hold his stare. “Like I said, sometimes we can’t help where we come from.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He felt betrayed by his own kind, Wallace, as I’m sure you can understand.”
“Bianca,” Jack murmurs.
“I’m right, Jack,” I tell him. “And Wallace knows it. You were being framed for a crime you didn’t commit. We were lucky my brother knew who was setting you up and offered to help you clear your name.”
“He did what?” Wallace interrupts.
Apparently, this is new information, but if we want to gain Wallace’s trust, then he needs a bit more of the truth. Not the whole thing or he’ll choke on it. Just enough to make him feel like we can be trusted. Like Jack can be trusted.
“You know my brother is a bad man, Wallace,” I tell him, as if we’re talking about the weather instead of the inside business of the mob. “But he does love his family in his own messed up kind of way. He’s dealt in some very shady business with your inside man. But when he found out that same inside man was framing the guy I’d fallen for…well, that simply wouldn’t do.”
As I