Grave Work: Villainous Creatures MM Mafia Romance #1 by Lia Sharpe

Author:Lia Sharpe [Sharpe, Lia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lia Sharpe
Published: 2023-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13 (Dominic)

THE NEXT MOTEL ROOM is even more depressing after spending a couple of days at my family’s cabin.

Francis hasn’t spoken since the rest stop. He’s just silently, dutifully driving us in the general direction of Iowa, I guess, not that I really want to end up there. But he’s got to ditch me somewhere, after all.

The quiet is good, though, because it’s given me time to work up a few theories. Nothing that has stood up to peer review yet, but I’m not going to force Francis to talk until he’s ready.

One: Shane had Francis’ ultrasound because someone in the Urso estate had to have a heart.

Two: Francis’ informant friend is a liar.

Three: Shane is secretly Francis’ father.

I like number three the best. Nobody would keep around the ultrasound of someone else’s kid. And I don’t like the idea of Francis being betrayed by his friend. He deserves to have someone in his corner, whether it’s a friend who would risk their safety to root out the truth for him or his partner who’s actually his dad. Why not?

There’s something else tugging at my mind, plucking at a frayed thread in my memory. Sylvia. I know the name. The last name, Doe, is an obvious fabrication, but Sylvia is uncommon enough that it stands out to me. I squint down at the ultrasound still in my hands. It’s faint, faded from multiple generations of photocopies, but I can almost make out the rest of the typed information. Date of birth, address. Glen Hollow? And that’s familiar, too. Because James had been from the tiny town of Glen Hollow, too.

Glen Hollow. James Della Volpe.

I know why I recognize her name, now. I can see it, bright as a neon sign, glaring out at me from the green hanging folder that James had hidden in my things before he died. Nicky, don’t be mad, scrawled across the front.

I turn to Francis to share my theories with him, but I find him already watching me out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and he doesn’t look away.

“What?” I ask.

Then his eyes are back on the road, and he’s hitting his blinker and pulling into a roadside motel.

At least this room only smells faintly of the previous occupant’s cologne. We’ve encountered worse. The air conditioner rattles as we lug our things through the door and drop them on our beds.

If we don’t talk, this could be normal. This could be the kind of road trip I always wanted to take when I was a kid: full of junk food and cheap motels and nothing but open-ended freedom. He and I have a destination, though, and every time I remember that, the illusion breaks. It burns up, dissolves, like someone yanked the film out of a camera, exposing it to the light.

I rifle loudly through plastic shopping bags just to banish the thought.

In the next bed, Francis sits heavily on the mattress. His hands hang between his knees.

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