“Hello, Mr…”
“Lunetti,” he answers. “And your Nayma, right?”
He doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “Before you pull out all the brochures and what not, I should tell you, I’m not looking to adopt just any orphan. There’s a specific one. Talia Marino. Her father was a dear friend, and I hear you’re the social worker on her case.”
I crook my head, alarm bells going off. While I advised and helped smooth over many of the technical details for the main social worker in charge of overseeing Talia’s transfer of custody to Cami, my name isn’t listed anywhere on the little girl’s case file.
“Where did you hear that?” I ask him, keeping my voice neutral.
Mr. Lunetti considers me for a hard second, before answering, “Around.”
I love these small towns. Everybody’s so easy to pay off.
I slice my eyes toward the agency beyond the room’s still open door, wondering which of the workers this guy had gotten to, to know the specifics of Talia’s case—my boss? The social worker attached to Talia’s file? Really it could be anybody since we all have access to the case system.
“Are you related?” I ask, trying to act like this is business as usual.
“No, but I got a nice farmhouse outside of Durham. A couple of acres. Plus, two boys and a wife who’s dying to spoil a little girl. Better than that apartment they’re living in anyway.”
The alarm bells aren’t just ringing now. They’re blaring loud as fire trucks inside my head, because this guy knows where Cami and Talia live? “Forgive me, Mr. Lunetti, but I’m fairly sure Talia has already been claimed by a living relative.”
“Living…” He leans forwards, his expression avid. “So you’re thinking Talia’s father ain’t living no more? Maybe he more than just disappeared?”
“I’m not here to make any hypotheticals. I’m just telling you that Talia has been taken in by a relative and therefore is not available to adopt…or foster.”
Silence greets my announcement, tense and creepy.
Then Lunetti says, “Congrats on your marriage. Tell your husband he needs to pay me a visit.”
My skin prickles. Is that a threat? Secret code for something? My brain buffers, trying to figure out how to respond.
I don’t have to say anything though. With that weird invitation, Lunetti gets up and walks out of the room. Without so much as a word of goodbye.
I go to the conference room entrance and watch him leave. Staying right where I’m at until he’s all the way out the agency door.
Then I burst into action, rushing to my desk and grabbing my purse.
“Need Stone’s number!” I text Aunt Mari as I fly out the agency’s door, mumbling excuses about not feeling well and cutting out early.
Aunt Mari doesn’t answer, even when I call. But I know she has a bad habit of putting her phone on silent, when she’s teaching Garnet Spanish (aka watching telenovelas with her baby niece in her lap).
Why oh why was I too stubborn to just ask for Stone’s digits after the last time I really needed to get in contact with him? Cursing myself, I jump in my car and head straight to my old apartment.
Cami opens the door on the first knock and her face lights up when she sees me. “Oh, good, you’re here, too.”
“Too?” I ask.
She opens the door wider and I’m once again greeted with the sight of Stone in my kitchen. But this time instead of sitting at the table, he’s at the kitchen counter with Talia putting together an El Paso taco kit.
What the heck?
I stare at Stone and he stares right back at me, like I’m the thing that doesn’t belong in this homey scene. Not him.
“Yay! You came for Taco Tuesday!” Talia cheers beside him.
So many questions. But remembering why I came, instead of asking Stone why he’s here making tacos, with one of my old aprons covering his grey suit, I say, “Talia, can you go play in your room for a little bit? The adults need to talk.”
“Is everything alright?” Talia asks, her eyes becoming worried.
She directs her question not at me or Cami, but at Stone.
“If it ain’t, it’s gonna be,” he answers, voice grim, as he shifts his gaze from their tacos to me. “Now go give those dollies of yours some attention while the grown-ups talk.”
“What’s wrong?” Cami asks, as soon as her sister is out of earshot. She looks even better than she did at our wedding. There are no more dark circles under her eyes, and her hair lies in two neat French braids. She’s gained some much-needed weight, and her skin has cleared up after several months of steady access to hot water.
I hate that I’m about to pop the happy, comfortable bubble she’s managed to make here with her sister…and ah, apparently Stone, too. At least on Taco Tuesdays.
“Somebody came by the agency to see me. He said he was interested in foster-to-adopting Talia. But the thing is, he already knew everything about her, including where she lived.”
“What? How?” Cami asks, her eyes going wide at my news.
“I’m not sure,” I answer her. Then I turn to Stone to tell him, “He congratulated me on our wedding and said you should pay him a visit.”
Stone’s lips thin. “Did you get a last name? Where he lives?” Stone demands, before I can answer her.
“Um…Lunetti. And he said something about having a farm in Durham.”
“Shit. That’s the Lunetti Crime Family.” He frowns at Cami. “Looks like your father was accounting for some off-paper clients, too. Should’ve known he didn’t get that mansion, pushing tax cuts like H&R Block.”
“Are you saying, you think he… worked for the mob?” Cami asks Stone, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“There’s a Lunetti asking a bunch of questions about his disappearance, so I ain’t just thinking it,” Stone answers. He yanks off his apron. “Alright, it’s a wrap on Taco Tuesday. Tell your sister to pack her shit up. You’re moving in with us.”
Then either not aware, or just not caring about Cami’s completely devastated look, he says to me, “Get them home. I’ll take care of this.”
“But how?”
Stone doesn’t answer. Just pushes pasts me and leaves out the door, without a word of goodbye.
Exactly like Lunetti.
Chapter Seventeen
I trust Stone to keep us safe. Maybe I shouldn’t but I do. Probably because Stone is the guy Luca, the head of the Ferraro crime family, calls when he needed something protected…or killed.
In any case, it doesn’t feel like a lie when I tell Cami and Talia not to worry as I tuck them into the second downstairs bedroom that night. “Everything will be all right. No one’s going to hurt you.”
“I didn’t know Dad was a criminal.” Cami tells me when I pull up the covers on her side of the bed. “If I had known…”
That sentence trails off, and I sense, she doesn’t know how it should end.
“I’m glad you didn’t know,” I tell her. “I’m glad Stone is here to help. Please don’t worry, everything’s going to be alright.”
I think they believe me, but I can hear the sisters whispering worriedly as I leave their room.
God, It’s so unfair. I wish there was some magic wand I could wave over this whole messed up situation. One that would not only undo everything that’s happened to them, but also ward off any further dangers.
But life isn’t fair, and I don’t have that kind of wand, I remind myself, as I go next door to check on my widowed aunt. The excitement of moving in and cooking for two new people is no match for her Lunesta. She’s already asleep and snoring delicately, just like Garnet, who I find still fast asleep upstairs.
Everyone’s accounted for…except for the one man who’s the walking definition of taking care of himself. Which is why I shouldn’t worry about him. Or over analyze what happened when I went to tell Cami about the man who’s stopped by the agency.
It’s just, how did Stone go from Taco Tuesday to Liam Neeson a la
Taken at the drop of a dime?
Because he’s the mob version of Liam Neeson, that’s how, Not Nice Naima reminds me sternly. And he does not need your help.
No, obviously he doesn’t. In fact, I have a whole case load folder at work, filled with clients like Cami who truly do need my help. But…
As soon as I walk into the master suite, my eyes fall on Stone’s overnight bag.
The overnight bag sitting unzipped on the kind of suitcase stand I only thought they had in hotels before Stone moved in. The wide-open overnight bag I’ve never been alone with before when Stone is in town. The wide-open overnight bag I might never have another chance to investigate…
To snoop, Not Nice Naima reminds me. You’re not trying to investigate; you’re planning to snoop. Through a possible sociopath’s things.
Okay, Not Nice Naima has a point. He didn’t even cry at his twin brother’s funeral.
No tears, but tacos, that’s a different story. I remember how normal he looked in the kitchen of my old apartment. Like a father. A real father, making something easy with his girls. And then there was the way Talia had looked to him when she got scared. Like she trusted him completely.
I think there’s something honestly wrong with you. Something I’m not seeing. What are you hiding from me?
Don’t…Not Nice Naima warns me. Don’t case file him.
Her warning makes me recall the argument I had with Amber when she thought things were moving too fast between me and Rock.
“You’re turning him into a case file. Getting all caught up in his sad backstory. Throwing yourself body and soul into making sure he’s rehabilitated, just like you did with me.”
I’d been so offended, but she’d been one-hundred percent right. I should have listened to her. Then and now…
Do not case file him. Do not case file him, both Amber and Not Nice Naima warn inside my head, as I force myself to turn my back on Stone’s bag and head toward the bathroom to begin my nightly routine.
Thatta girl, they congratulate me—
Right before I break and make a beeline to the overnight bag.
With a wildly beating heart and the voices in my head screaming at me about what an idiot I am for case filing a frickin’ enforcer, I unzip it…and take a peek.
“Holy macaroni!” I whisper.
The voices and everything else in the world go quiet when I see what’s inside his bag.
Chapter Eighteen
Stone comes in much later that night. Quietly.
Not because he doesn’t want to wake me. I’m pretty sure that’s just his natural setting. Lethal—it’s the only way he knows how to move.
He pauses in the doorway when he sees me, though. Probably because I’m sitting on his settee…with his overnight bag in my lap.
If I was hoping to see him actually looked surprised for once, I’m disappointed. His face stays completely expressionless, like always. But at least now I know why.
His emotionless eyes flicker down to the bag. Back up to me. Then he says, “Hey, Naima.”
“Hey,” I answer.
Casual, like he didn’t just come back from probably killing somebody, and I’m not sitting here with his secret in my lap.
Tension pounds thick as a rap bassline between us.
So much silence passes. Suddenly, I miss Queens. Miss the city and all its noise.
“How did things go with Lunetti?” I ask.
“A little more difficult than expected. But I’m taking care of it.”
“By taking care of it, you mean what exactly?”
“All a sudden after months and months you want to hear about my day-to-day?”
No, I didn’t. The few stories Rock had told me often left me with a sick feeling in my stomach. But for Talia’s and Cami’s sake I have to ask, “Are the girls in danger?”
“Not on my watch. I let the Lunetti family know they were under my protection.”
“And they just accepted that?”
Stone rolls his neck to one side, then the other. Like this scene is giving him a crimp in his neck. “You need wifeing?” he asks.
“No,” I answer quietly. Meaning it. I have never been less turned on in my life.
“Alright. Well, then, I’m hittin’ the shower—”
He stops talking when I take the bag and turn it over, sending all the pill bottles inside of it spilling out.
“I’m okay with you being, like, the worse communicator in the history of the entire world,” I tell him. “But I’m not okay with this.”
He stares at me for a hard, lethal second. “You shouldn’t be going through my things.”
“And you shouldn’t be taking meds that weren’t prescribed to you. I mean, there’s like six different kinds of anti-depressants in here.” I pick up one with a dark blue label. “And I’m pretty sure this one is an anti-psychotic…”
He yanks the bag and the pill bottle out of my hands. “You shouldn’t be looking through my stuff.”
“I should have guessed,” I say as I watch him pick up the bottles and start throwing them back into the leather bag. “Not crying at your brother’s funeral. The way your frustration tolerance dips at night. That cold fog that surrounds you like a wall. All the pieces are falling into place.”
“Not another fucking word, Naima,” he growls, snatching up the last three bottles in one beefy hand.
“Of course you don’t want me to say anything else. The meds that were totally not prescribed to you are wearing off. If I keep on talking, something dangerous might happen. Like you starting to actually feel something.”
His face hardens, and his whole body goes stiff, as if he’s trying to hold himself back from doing just that. “You shouldn’t be looking through my shit.”
“And you shouldn’t be taking unprescribed anti-depressants. I mean, have you ever actually seen a therapist? Even once in your entire life?”
“I don’t need to,” he answers. “These pills are enough to keep me right.”
“Right? That’s what you call how you act?” I shoot back, jumping to my feet. “As my North Carolina co-workers would say, ‘You is a lie.’ How you act, how you treat people. It isn’t right. It isn’t normal. I mean you refuse to communicate with me. You’re totally shut down.”
“You know what, I’m tired from spending all night solving your fucking problems. I’m done with this conversation.”
“Do you think I wouldn’t like to be done with this conversation, too? Be done with you? The answer to both those questions is yes! But I can’t be done with you, because as it turns out, you’re on something—like, a whole lot of somethings—that makes you think it’s okay to barge into my life and completely take it over.”
“Our life,” he growls. “The moment you got pregnant with my brother’s baby it became our life.”
“No, no it didn’t,” I yell right back. “And if you weren’t on a boat load of drugs, you’d see that. You say you’re doing this for Rock, but you’ve never even bothered to touch the daughter you claim to want to adopt so badly. I mean, what would he say if he knew you were doing all these drugs?”
“Who do you think gave them to me!” Stone suddenly roars. “He was the fucking nerd. Who do you think doctored all those prescriptions for me when we were in junior high? Because I couldn’t control my temper and nearly killed a kid after he fouled me in a game of basketball? My fucking brother. That was his way of trying to make me halfway normal.”
I gasp, covering my hand with my mouth.
I never would have guessed, but when I think about it, I can’t say I’m surprised. Rock valued normal. I remember how he assured me I ticked all his boxes. Not because I was funny or cute, but because I was a normal person with a normal job. And wasn’t that why he dumped me? Because I couldn’t just be perfectly standard, without a shade of gray?
“I’m…” I clamp my lips, then let them go to say, “I’m sorry, Stone. Rock shouldn’t have done that. Maybe he was trying to help, but self-diagnosis i
s dangerous. If you really think you need something to help you handle your emotions, you should see a psychiatrist for an appropriate prescription and seek out therapy. There are several people who take adult clients at the place we’re sending Talia. Maybe they could help you, too…”
I break off when Stone angrily zips up his bag. “I’ll sleep in the empty bedroom. Don’t ever go through my shit again.”
He raises a finger, puts it right in my face.
Old Naima would’ve back down. Would’ve cowered.
But new Naima stands her ground. Holds the monster’s gaze and ask, “Do you need husbanding? Would you like me to suck your dick?”
He doesn’t answer. And did I complain about him being an emotionless cypher before? My bad, he’s vibrating with rage now. I can practically feel it rolling off of him in waves.
But that still doesn’t stop me from pointing out, “You think these drugs are keeping you stable, but they’re ruining your life. You’re overdosing. That’s most likely why you can’t get it up. Can’t hold normal conversations. You need to see a real doctor before you kill yourself. Before Garnet loses both of her dads. And deny it all you want, but you and I both know she deserves so much better than that.”
He lowers his finger from my face. Balls his hand into a fist…then turns and leaves.
Slamming the door so hard behind him, I wonder if they heard it downstairs.
Chapter Nineteen
I wake up the next morning feeling hungover, even though I haven’t had a thing to drink. Oh my God, is this what a real domestic argument feels like? Thank God, my parents only had completely ridiculous, totally unnecessary ones. I can’t imagine growing up like that.
The reason for my yelling hangover comes back loud and clear. Stone, the pills, the overnight bag he took to bed last night instead of me.
God, what a mess…
It’s a workday but all I want to do is pull the covers back over my head and pretend that real life doesn’t exist for a little while longer.
But then Garnet’s voice suddenly crackles from the baby monitor I keep beside my bed. Not exactly a cry, but something else. More like a noise of surprise.
STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer: 50 Loving States, North Carolina Page 9
