Page 64 of Driftwood Daffodil 3

“It looks like you’re using the time you have in an effective manner. You’re all beefcake now.” His arms were full of bulging muscles, and his chest was twice as big as the last time I saw him, two months ago. “Do you bench press cars in your free time?”

It wasn’t the best start to a conversation, but it was the only thing I could think of.

Kato huffed out a sigh, “why are you here, Nova?”

“Can’t a sister visit her brother?”

“Not on a Friday.”

Damnit. So much for the days blending together. I came here for a reason, but I couldn’t exactly blurt out that Snake was lying, or risk telling him the truth. My brother would be pissed andgive me an angry talking to. This Kato was more likely to break out of prison and snap Gio’s neck. I had to ease into it.

“They added another visiting day.” I thought it was believable.

Kato did not.

“No they didn’t.”

“Yes they did.” I insisted.

It was harder for someone to argue your lie if you stuck with it.

“Okay,” he swung his eyes around the room. “Then why are we here?”

“The visiting room was full.” I was a bit proud of that explanation. I didn’t even have to think about it.

“This is the west wing, Nova. It’s been closed for ten years.”

I thought it was a little dusty in here. “They must’ve reopened it.”

He didn’t know. Things were reopened all the time. Like the pizza place that gave a bunch of people food poisoning. They had their grand reopening last week. They closed two days later, but they still reopened.

His brow pulled up in an arch that I recognized. It was the same ‘do you really expect me to believe that’ look I’d gotten many times over the years. Maybe my brother was still in there.

“Why would they reopen it?”

“I don’t know.” Did I look like prison personal to him? “For someone who is told where to go every day, you’re getting awfully hung up on a room.”

“They pulled me out of solitary for this.”

Yeah, that was grounds for suspicion, and also made me a little scared about the reach of Cesare Mancini. But it was also easy to turn around onto Kato.

“Why were you in solitary?” Who was the troublemaker now?

“Ask your boyfriend.”

That comment caught me off guard.

I snorted, tsked, huffed, sighed, snorted again, then gave Kato a look like he was dumb. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

It wasn’t my best performance, and it didn’t improve when my brother reached in the pocket of his grey jumpsuit and slapped something down on the table. That’s when my heart dropped into my stomach.

Sitting there in perfect HD color was a picture of Gio kissing me in the school parking lot. It was the same day that Atlee’s sister kissed me and I met Snake at Quackwater. I was definitely going to use that number he gave me now. Snake the douche was going to get an earful, but first I had to do damage control.

Waving my hand, I sat back and acted dismissive. “That’s not what it looks like.”

I didn’t know what I was going to tell him it was, but denial seemed like the first step.

“Really? Because it looks like you’re kissing Gio Mancini.”

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