Chapter 3

By Saturday, I’d heard enough excuses from Nico to last me the month.

On a whim, I decided to spend the weekend at my house in Westchester. I hadn’t been there in weeks. By noon I’d packed a bag and told the men at the club they could settle their own arguments until Monday.

I called Nico. “Where are you? I need you to come pick me up.”

For a few seconds, all I heard was his breathing.

“Ms. Bellandi, I found a flat this morning,” he said at last. “I’m at the tire shop now. The guy says he can’t get the right tire in until tomorrow.”

He paused just long enough for me to wonder why he hadn’t called me when he found it.

“Where are you headed?” he asked. “I can get a car sent over.”

“Forget it. I’ll call one myself.”

The driver dropped me at the gate, which somebody had left wide open. I could see my black Cadillac parked beside the front steps.

I checked the plate. Then I walked around the car and looked at all four tires.

The front door was ajar. Nico knew the gate code, and the spare house key was on the ring I’d given him for the car. I’d asked him to use it once to let in a repairman.

I pushed the door open.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of stale cigarettes. Then I saw the rug.

Someone had tracked mud from one end of the rug to the other. Empty liquor bottles crowded the coffee table, along with orange peels and a pile of sunflower seed shells. Someone had stubbed out a cigarette on the arm of my sofa. Two more had burned holes in the cushion beside it.

I’d spent six months getting that room the way I wanted it. The rug alone had taken three trips to a dealer in Manhattan. At the club, I could hardly get through a cup of coffee without somebody knocking to tell me who owed us money. Up here I could sit by the window until the light went and hear nothing but the wind in the trees.

I set my bag down. I’d been holding the handle so tight it had left a mark across my palm.

Cara was on the couch facing the door, surrounded by people I’d never seen before. Nobody had noticed me come in.

“You hit the jackpot,” a woman beside her said. “A guy who runs the Bellandis’ Brooklyn operation and still goes out for sweet potatoes because you said you felt like having one.”

“Roasted sweet potatoes,” somebody corrected. “She told him which place to go to, and he was out the door before she finished her drink.”

“When you marry him, remember who knew you when you were making lattes.”

Cara smiled into her glass. Then she looked up and saw me.

She set down her glass, walked straight up to me, and slapped me before I could get a word out.

My head jerked sideways. I put a hand to my cheek. The sting took a second to catch up with the sound.

“You shameless bitch,” she said. “You followed my boyfriend all the way up here?”

Nobody on the couch moved.

“Cara,” one of them said. “Who is she?”

“The freeloader I told you about.” Cara pointed at me without taking her eyes off my face. “Hitching rides with him every morning wasn’t enough. Now she thinks she can walk right into his house.”

I lowered my hand. “Who told you this was Nico’s house?”

She laughed. “Nico did. Who else?”

She said it with such certainty that I let her keep talking.

“You found out he runs things for the Bellandis in Brooklyn and decided you wanted a piece of it. First you need a ride every morning. Then there’s always some reason you’ve got to talk to him alone. Now you show up at his weekend place hoping to get him to yourself.”

Behind her, somebody quietly put a glass down on the table.

“He told me you keep his books,” Cara went on. “He drives you to the club because you work for him and he feels sorry for you. That’s all it is. Get that through your head.”

I’d wondered why she was so sure about the car. Nico had spent two months driving me before he ever brought her along. He knew which crews paid tribute at the club and who came to see me when their envelopes were short. He’d heard me take enough calls from the back seat to talk about it like it was his business.

He’d taken enough of my life to make his story sound true. The Cadillac was his. The house was his. The men at the club answered to him.

And I was the woman he paid to keep his books.