Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(87)

He slid his arms around her, cradled her belly, nuzzling her neck.

Lily noticed Bruno’s sidewise stare. “What?” she whispered.

“Just wondering how you’d react,” he said. “To Val, I mean. Most straight women drop their teeth when he walks into a room.”

The off-the-charts weirdness of that statement rocked her back.

“Are you kidding me?” she hissed. “You think I have enough functioning neurons left in my head to ogle strange guys? Now?”

He shrugged. “You don’t need a lot of neurons to ogle,” he said. “I’m not overloaded with extra neurons, and I ogle all the time.”

She poked him in the ribs. “Stop it! I can’t believe you even have the energy to be a pinheaded, insecure * at a time like this!”

“Me, neither,” added Liv, the voluptuous brunette who was married to Sean. She cuddled a baby to an opening in her loose denim shirt and peered sternly over the tops of her horn-rimmed glasses at Sean, who was slumped beside her, exhausted, his hand clamped around his son’s chubby leg. “I’ll add that to a long list of unbelievable things. Like, how you told me you were going down to the Gorge to do Kev’s other brother some innocuous favor that involved a lot of driving. And now, I find out about gun battles and dead bodies exploding.”

“Hey! It was an innocuous favor! I was planning to pick them up and drive them here!” Sean looked wounded. “What did I know about the gun battles and the exploding bodies? You’re wronging me!”

“Hah. So innocuous you had Miles load his Jeep with eight different firearms, artillery rounds, stun grenades, blasting caps, Tovex, and tear gas?”

“You can’t blame me for being prepared!” Sean protested. “I can’t help it. It’s on account of my upbringing.”

Tam flapped her hand at them. “Have this argument later, in bed. So, a recap. This started six weeks ago, when your father began to—”

“No,” Lily broke in. “It started eighteen years ago, when my father went from being a successful research physician to being a drunk and a heroin addict, in a matter of days. Something bad happened to him. I never knew what. He was finally starting to tell me, and they killed him for it. All I know is that it involved Bruno’s mother, who died a violent death at about the same time. I find that a very odd coincidence.”

Tam spoke up after a moment’s reflective pause. “And let’s not forget Aaro’s fabulous self-destructing sex toy, who also had one of these exploding phones in her purse. Another odd coincidence.”

Aaro shot her a dark glance but was clearly too drained to radiate true malevolence. Zia Rosa, who sat beside him, clucked her tongue and patted his thigh. “You know what your problem is, Alex, honey?”

He looked trapped. “Don’t tell me. Please.”

“Your problem is, you ain’t picked out some nice lady. Look at all these people here. They’re happy, see? They all got somebody. You don’t got nobody. If you had a nice girl to go home to, you wouldn’t have got caught with your pants of that nasty puttanella, eh?”

“Zia, now’s not the time for the family-values lecture,” Bruno said.

Zia Rosa waved him down. “Shhh. Like my old nonna back in Brancaleone used to say,” she intoned. “Attent’ a le fosse.”

Lily leaned over to Bruno. “What does that mean?”

Bruno sighed and translated. “Beware of the holes.”

Aaro buried his face in his hands. “Tell me about it,” he muttered.

Zia Rosa patted Aaro’s thigh again, palpating his quadriceps muscle appreciatively. “The time’s come, I guess,” she announced, her voice heavy. “We oughta have a talk with those Ranieri cousins.”

“Ranieri cousins?” Lily said. “Which cousins are those?”

“They’re second cousins, actually. We got the same bis-nonni. One of the big crime families in Jersey. Don Gaetano’s papa was a Mafia don back in Calabria. Tony, Bruno’s great uncle, he was don Gaetano’s right-hand man, back in the day. But Tony didn’t like the life. He ran off.”

Lily waited for more. Zia Rosa just looked at her expectantly.

“Well, um . . . what do these other Ranieris in Jersey have to do with me?” she asked. “I don’t know them.”

Zia Rosa shrugged. “They sure as hell knew Magda.”





Bruno shot up off the couch. “What the f*ck are you saying? It was Rudy who worked for the Ranieris! Not Mamma!”

“Don’t you use them dirty parolaccie with me, stronzetto,” Zia Rosa scolded. “Be respectful. I’m guessin’ it’s time to send Tony’s letter. Them dirty sonzabitches broke the bargain. And they are goin’ down.”

Her words dropped into a pool of absolute silence. The room suddenly felt like it got smaller as everyone shifted forward in their seats, craning their necks to stare at the older woman.

“What bargain, Zia?” Bruno’s voice was tight.

She shrugged. “The letter Tony sent to Michael Ranieri, years ago. Tony chopped the fingers offa them mobster thugs who come after you, remember? He wrapped the letter around ’em and sent ’em to Michael.”

Bruno felt his voice coming from far away. “I remember mobster thugs. I didn’t know anything about chopped fingers. Or a letter.”