Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(51)

Sylvia tucked elegant feet beneath her and fitted a cigarette into a shiny black holder. “Would you like one?” she asked, holding out a silver case. Astrid waved it away and crossed her legs, waiting for her to strike a match and light it. “This is a most unexpected visit. What brings you here today? Did Bo send you?”

Astrid shook her head. “He doesn’t know I’m here.” And he won’t be happy when he finds out. I had a favor to ask, but while we’re on the subject . . . How long have you known Bo?”

“Let’s see,” she said, blowing out a cone of smoke. “Three years, I think? Yes, I think we moved in here that winter. It took me several months to get to know him because he rarely stays here. He says his room at your family’s home is as big as a bread box, but I guess a fancy bread box is better than a run-down palace.”

“He always said he stayed with us for the home cooking,” Astrid said.

“The boy loves to eat,” Sylvia agreed, smiling. “Not an ounce of fat on him now, but wait until he’s fifty.” She puffed up her cheeks and mimed rubbing a rounded belly.

Astrid chuckled.

“With his luck, he’ll probably still be devastatingly handsome and that will just make me mad.”

Sylvia thought he was devastatingly handsome? Well, of course she did. Isn’t that what Astrid had come out here to discover? Since the wound had already been opened, she dug a little deeper. “Were you and Bo . . . ?”

One dark brow lifted. “Were we . . . ?”

Fine. Astrid said it. “Lovers.”

Sylvia held her gaze for a long moment. “He hasn’t told you anything, I assume,” she finally said, flicking ash into a silver ashtray surrounded by bottles of fingernail polish. Sylvia’s nails, much like Astrid’s, were perfectly manicured, the middle of each painted ruby red beneath curved white crescent tips.

“He says you’re friends,” Astrid said.

“We are,” Sylvia confirmed. “He’s terrific fun, and I’d do just about anything for him.”

“You haven’t answered my question.” She hadn’t meant to sound so accusatory, but there it was. She leveled her gaze at Sylvia and held it.

Sylvia bristled. “What do you want to hear? Yes, we were lovers. Is that what you came to find out? We had sex right here on this sofa. Many times.”

A sharp pang knifed through Astrid’s chest. Her ribs cracked open and she bled like Bo had, all over the sofa, until she was nothing but a hollow shell of bones and skin and a dried-up heart. Nothing but two empty eye sockets staring blankly at Sylvia, but not seeing.

“I knew it,” Astrid whispered. A woman always knows.

“It was a long time ago,” Sylvia admitted in a softer voice. “I adored him. But he was almost never around, and when he was, it was only for an hour here, an hour there. He was too busy working, always gone to Canada or running all over the city in the dead of night.”

The perils of bootlegging. Astrid had spent most of the last ten years of her life getting used to this. First her father, then Winter. Now Bo.

Sylvia puffed her cigarette and stared out the window. “I began to feel like I was just a last-minute diversion. That maybe I wasn’t exciting enough to keep him. It was never sentimental between us, but I wanted more than he was willing to give, so I resorted to risky tactics.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was Amy who suggested a way to grab his attention. She was always more adventurous than me. And at the time, I was willing to try anything to keep him—even sharing him.”

Astrid stilled. “I’m not sure I follow.”

“Don’t you?” Sylvia said, pulling her knees to her chest, allowing the implication to hang between them like a threat.

“At the same time?” Astrid asked in a small voice.

She only heard bits of the next few sentences. Three of us. Drunk. One night. Her mind scribbled out the rest while her already-pained chest withstood the battering blows of conjured salacious images.

Sylvia. Amy. Bo.

Bo. Amy. Sylvia.

It sounded like something in a stag film. Astrid felt light-headed and queasy. And curious . . . but mostly queasy. Her hands were trembling.

“When?” was all Astrid could get out. God help her, she had to know.

Sylvia shrugged. “Summer of ’26.”

Astrid let out a shaky breath. Two and a half years ago.

“That’s when I lost him for good,” Sylvia was saying. “For someone who helps to run a criminal empire, he is strangely honorable. He said he couldn’t see me, that it wasn’t right. That we could remain friends, but nothing more. And when I pressed him, he said—” She laughed bitterly and screwed up her mouth. “Imagine thinking that the man you’re crazy about has fallen for another woman. Now, imagine finding out that he wasn’t even seeing that other woman, only looking at her from afar.”

“There was someone else?” How many girls had Bo been with? Had he slept with half the city? He never told her any of this, and they used to share everything; apparently he’d been leaving out the juiciest details.

“Yes, there was someone else.” Sylvia lifted her hand in frustration. “He refused me for the fantasy of you. You! A little girl still in school. You were, what? Sixteen? How insulting is that?”