It said a lot for the trust they had for each other that Carlo cast another furious glare at Lola but put his gun away. “She’s not fucking worth it anyway.”
“Oh, I’m worth it,” Lola said without hesitating. “But secondhand bastardi don’t get to fuck on the Upper East Side.”
Carlo actually jumped at her. Lola leaped away just as fast, as if he wasn’t the first man to do it. Nova caught Carlo’s shoulder and jerked him back so forcefully Carlo nearly landed on his ass.
“Let’s go!” Nova growled, this time squeezing his shoulder tightly. “Now!”
“Fine!” Carlo pushed past Nova and walked to the door before he stopped and turned back to Lola. “I fuck on the Upper East Side all the time, sweetheart, and I don’t have to pay a troia to do it!”
Lola took one sharp, hard gasp as if Carlo stabbed her, but she didn’t respond. She just turned on her heel and went back to the elevator like the confrontation never happened.
Once they got outside, Nova said to Carlo, “Give me your keys.”
It wasn’t a mystery why. Carlo was shaking. From head to toe, he was quaking with something that was difficult to name. Fury. Horror. Betrayal.
“Keys!” Nova shouted when Carlo wasn’t moving.
Carlo handed him the keys, and Nova headed back to the car. He didn’t ask them to follow, but they did anyway. Once they all got in, Nova turned on the car and asked, “Did you know she spoke Italiano?”
Carlo shook his head.
“What have you said in front of her?”
“I don’t know!” Carlo ran both hands through his hair. “I’m not you. I can’t remember every friggin’ conversation I had in front of her.”
“But you’ve been on the phone in front of her,” Nova went on. “Speaking Italiano?”
Carlo didn’t say anything, his labored breathing sounding over the New York traffic instead.
“Deficiente!” Nova turned around at a stoplight and pointed at Carina. “If you tell your nonno, princess—”
“I won’t!” Carina said quickly and turned to Carlo. “I won’t tell him, but I don’t understand. If Tino knows her, why didn’t he tell you? Does Tino know Zio Carmine is her father? Figlio di puttana, this means that bitch is my cousin! You fucked my cousin!”
“Carina!” Carlo threw up his hands. “Stai zitta!”
“You did not just tell me to shut up,” Carina growled at him.
“Where did you meet her?” Nova asked Carlo. “You said you met her at a coffeehouse. Where is it?”
Carlo frowned. “Why?”
“’Cause I think that’s what she was trying to say. That she’ll meet us there. She couldn’t talk in front of that doorman. She was giving you a hint, cretino. She kept talking about coffee.”
Carlo was quiet, and then he turned to look at Nova. “Does that mean she’s on our side? She’s not—”
“Oh my God,” Carina said from the backseat. “You still wanna fuck her.”
“She is really beautiful,” Brianna had to point out. “I think she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Yeah, she is,” Carlo said distantly, sounding very lost.
Thank God the coffeehouse was one of those all-night places, or they would’ve been kicked out before Lola showed up.
Brianna had no idea why this woman was getting coffee in Greenwich Village when she lived on the Upper East Side, and after four hours, the whole time fighting the fear of where Tino was and what was happening to him, she said, “This was a long way to go for coffee.”
“Yeah, no shit. Maybe she was fucking another zio,” Carina said drily.
“You’re out of zii,” Carlo snapped at her from across the table.
Carina arched an eyebrow at him. “That you know.”
“Did she tell you why she was here for coffee?” Nova asked. “You knew where she lived. You didn’t ask why she comes to the Village for coffee?”
“She said she was meeting a client—”
“Oh wow,” Carina cut in.
“She told me she was an interior designer.” Carlo held up his hands. “Why should I doubt that?”
“But she’s twenty-one. People go to school for interior design. If she said designer, not decorator, then she needs a degree for that,” Nova argued. “And you thought she could afford an Upper East Side apartment doing interior design? Is she a decorating savant?”
“Sicilian men should be neutered at birth,” Carina added.
“This really isn’t helping anything,” Brianna said, because the past several hours had basically reduced the Morettis to jabbing at one another as much as possible. “He fell in love with an exceptionally beautiful woman who lied to him. It’s not his fault.”
Carlo looked at Brianna across the table and then whispered, “Grazie.”
Brianna shrugged. “I know how it feels. I was blinded too. I stopped thinking when I was with Tino, and I know it wasn’t just the ecstasy. It’s like he learned how to make someone want him even when he wasn’t up to it. That night of the fight, all he wanted to do was hold me. He was tired. He was done giving, and it’s really horrible knowing why.”
She said out loud what all of them feared.
Nova leaned down against the table after that, resting his cheek on his arm and looking out the window.