I was the only mafia guy in the place. Cora stood close to me, our black outfits blending in with the fancy ballgowns draped off older women, wives of senators and mayors and business moguls. Cora was by far the most beautiful woman in the room, and I caught more than one man staring in her direction. I couldn’t decide if I was jealous or excited—and maybe a bit of both.
We found the bar and got drinks. She sipped a white wine and scanned the space as I clutched my whiskey in my hand.
“What’s the plan for tonight?” she asked. “I assume there’s a reason Hedeon wants us to be here.”
I moved closer to her. “What, this can’t just be a fun thing for us?”
“I didn’t think you mafia guys did fun.”
“We don’t. Not normally.”
She arched an eyebrow at me. “What makes you different then?”
“Oh, maybe it’s my pretty wife.”
She laughed and shook her head. I grinned at her and realized I couldn’t take my eyes away. I should’ve been looking at the crowd and sizing it up. She was right, Hedeon had sent me with a mission, but I realized that I didn’t much care about it at all.
Maybe it was that dress, or maybe it was just her, but I couldn’t stop thinking about taking her back to our house and undressing her nice and slow.
I kept seeing her back as she bent forward to pull the dress on and the glimpse of her breast, the curve of her spine.
“Seriously, what are we doing here?”
“All business. You need to loosen up a bit.”
She ignored that. “I recognize some of the people here from that night you took me to dinner.”
I sipped my whiskey and accepted that she wasn’t going to drop this. “Hedeon wants us to talk to the police chief.”
She snorted and gave me a look. “Excuse me?”
“There are rumors about the shooting. They might want to prosecute.”
Her face drained of color. “Prosecute?”
“Don’t worry, they’re not coming for us. But allegedly they have a fall guy they want to blame it on, one of Hedeon’s men that was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They got a local to give them a positive ID on him, even if he wasn’t anywhere near the scene.”
“They’re going to send an innocent man to jail?”
I tilted my head. “He’s not exactly innocent.”
She waved that off. “Innocent of this.”
“True enough. Well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is Philadelphia, my darling. It’s not rich enough or big enough to get away from rampant corruption and politics.”
“Politics. Worse than corruption.” She made a face.
I laughed softly and slipped my hand onto her lower back. She looked at me with a fire in her eyes and I knew she wanted to tell me to keep my fucking hands to myself—but she wouldn’t though, not in public, not with so many people crowded nearby. I moved closer to her and leaned down to whisper into her ear.
“Don’t be so serious. We can have fun tonight, you know?”
“Yeah? What’s your idea of fun?”
I let my fingers curl inward, half an inch from her ass. “Plenty of things come to mind.”
She gave me a look and I knew I was pushing it, but I didn’t care. She looked too good in that dress, and I’d been ignoring her too much these last couple of weeks. Hunting down Jarvis was a full-time job, and I knew I had to find him before he found me again—that was the only way I could keep Cora safe. I kept telling myself that each day I went out on the hunt and left her back home to fend for herself. I wasted two weeks like that, trying to protect her by ignoring her, and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“How about we stick to the task at hand.” She reached back and pulled my fingers from her lower back, but laced them through her own and squeezed.
I smiled at her and nodded at the crowd. “Be my guest. Do you know which guy is the police chief?”
She hesitated. “Black guy with the hat?”
“Close. Chief Richards is a black gentleman, that’s true, but he’s not wearing a hat.” I squinted and noticed the man she was looking at. “I’m pretty sure that’s a judge.”
“Maybe he can get us out of this crap,” she grumbled.
I laughed and squeezed her palm before tugging her along after me. She stumbled a bit in her high heels, but kept pace admirably as I weaved my way through the crowd.
There were tables set up on the dance floor with various items lined up along them. There was an oil painting, some movie props, some tickets to the theater, and a few other random objects, and each item had a sheet in front of it. It was a silent auction for a charity, and based on the numbers I saw written down, I guessed it was a charity everyone really cared about.