Mercenary (Gangsters of New York #3) - Bella Di Corte Page 0,120

another piece. “A little more, which is plenty, but nothing too specific. Like. Do you get angry in traffic? Do you like music? What’s your favorite thing to do? Do you read? Take naps? Are you a world traveler?”

“No to the first,” I said. “It is what it is. I do enjoy music. The opera, too. I do read, but not as much as I should. And no, I don’t take naps. Not in New York anyway. I sleep hard at night.” I took a pull of my beer. “I’ve been a few places, but my life limits me. Answer those things for me.”

“Okay,” she said, setting her fork and knife down, getting more comfortable in her seat. She rubbed her hands together.

I almost grinned. She became more animated, like she couldn’t wait to tell me.

“I hate traffic,” she said. “Though I don’t usually get angry. Unless someone cuts me off. Then I can get testy.”

“Which happens every second in New York.” This time I grinned.

She stared at me for a minute, like she was dazed, and then she shook her head. “Where was I? Oh. I love music. I love to cook. I do read—lately, law books. Naps are a hard no for me. At this point in my life. I wake up not sure what century I’m in and then I get irritable. Then I can’t sleep at night, which irritates me even more, unless…” She waved a hand.

“It ruins my entire day, usually. And I am now. A world traveler.” She dug in her purse and pulled out her passport, showing it to me. She had some stamps. “One of my favorite places to visit is Greece.” She took her passport from me after I’d looked it over and stuck it back in her purse. Almost protectively. She got back to work on her steak. “I love to eat, too.”

“I can tell.” I pushed my plate closer to hers. “You want mine?”

She threw back her head and laughed. “No! I’ll finish this one, but not much else.” She patted her stomach. “Good portions.”

I decided then that she had character. She was charming. Someone a man like me didn’t meet every day. She had to get that from her mamma. I assumed all the bad things came from him, which was why I was who I was. It came from both sides.

“Tell me about your life,” I said.

She finished her bite, set her fork down easily, and then took another drink of water. She set her cup down so quietly that it didn’t even make a sound. She wiped her mouth. She cleared her throat. “It was hard.” Her eyes focused on a piece of lemon floating in her glass. She used her nail to trace the shape of it.

“I’m not going to sugar-coat the truth. We have that in common. I had no parents, but I did have two people who loved me. Two people who took me in and treated me like a daughter and a granddaughter. But it didn’t last long. My adoptive grandfather died, and then my adoptive mother not long after. I became a system kid after that. Some homes were good. Some were terrible.” She looked at me. “I’m going to leave it at that.”

“We were close,” I said. “In distance.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Both on Staten Island, but worlds apart somehow.”

“I agree. To a certain extent.”

“I get it. We had a bridge because of who that man was,” she said. “He connected us, and not only to each other, but to this life.”

She was smart. Perceptive.

“However.” She sighed, and then she looked at me, really looked at me. “I have no regrets. I’m where I’m supposed to be. This is my place in the world. I’ve been seen. I know who I belong to.”

“You were just a kid,” I said. “He took advantage—”

“You don’t know anything,” she said, “about anything. You don’t know him. I do.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking another long pull of my beer. “I don’t know him. No one knows him. He’s a ghost.”

She smiled, but it wasn’t as friendly as before. “Vittorio Scarpone is a ghost. That family took his life.”

I could hear the bitterness on her tongue, the anger, and it simmered in her eyes. His pain was worth more to her than her own.

She took the last bite of her steak, finished the potatoes she had, and then drank the water until the last drop. She surprised me by taking my hand. “You have a beautiful family,