“What’s wrong with this house?”
“Didn’t you get the inheritance when daddy died?”
“None of your fucking business.”
“Such a dirty mouth on you. Might have to punish you for it.”
“Get out, Jack. Get out right now.”
He grabs the knife from me so fast I don’t even know what’s happening until he’s setting it down on the coffee table. “Sit down,” he says and there’s so much ice in his voice I swear the temperature in the room drops by half. “And shut up.”
I open my mouth, but I see the look in his eyes. If I don’t sit down, I don’t know what he’ll do to me. I don’t want to find out.
I sit on the couch, and he takes the chair opposite me. “You don’t want me in your life,” he starts. “Fine. I get that after I walked out on you. What you don’t know is that I walked out to save you a lot of pain.”
“How noble of you. Should I be grateful?”
“Don’t come the moral high ground with me. You have a kid. My kid. You didn’t think to tell me? Didn’t think I had a right to know?”
“I don’t want you to influence her. She won’t be a mafia child.”
He looks wounded, but then he nods. “I’m not who you think I am,” he says in a low voice.
“Who are you then? Because what I see is a car thief who’s moved up to B and E. How did you even get in here?”
“Window’s insecure in the kitchen. One flick of my knife and up went the latch. You need to be more careful. If I can get in, so could someone worse.”
That forces a snort of laughter out of my mouth. “Worse than you? I’d like to see that.”
“Wait around a few days. You will.”
“You’re trying to frighten me. Why?”
“Because this is serious.” He reaches beside his chair and lifts the box of my dad’s stuff onto the coffee table. “The key was in here,” he says, lifting out a broken figurine of the Madonna.
“You broke that?” I reach out and snatch it off him. “My father owned that all his life. It belonged to his grandmother.”
“No, it didn’t.”
“How the fuck would you know?”
“Paint’s only a couple of months old. Pristine condition and it had the safe deposit key inside it. Think, Clarissa. What’s inside this safe?”
“I don’t know, all right?”
“You must have some idea. Someone wants you dead for this.”
I lean back on the couch, trying to put the broken pieces of the figurine together. “I don’t know, okay. I have had nothing to do with my family for years.”
“He wanted you to have this. There must have been a reason.”
I sit forward again. “Did you kill the groom at that wedding?”
“You sure you want the answer?”
“Oh, God. You did, didn’t you? You’re a fucking hitman.”
“I kill people for money, yes.”