Page 23 of Knot Playing Fair 2

“Here,” I said, pressing lightly on her shoulder. “Let’s sit down.” I waited until she sank back to the sofa, perching on the edge of the seat as though she could barely stay still. I sat down at the other end, half-facing her. “I agree we should press charges. Not because I expect to get anywhere with it, butbecause it might go some way toward restoring the restaurant’s reputation.”

She was still shaking her head slowly back and forth. “No, you don’t understand, Nat. This is way more than one disgruntled employee playing dangerous pranks.”

“How do you mean?” I asked. “What else do you know about this?”

Mia took a deep breath and let it hiss out through her teeth, visibly trying to rein in her emotions. Her brown eyes were huge and scared as she met my gaze and held it.

“I can’t offer any proof, as such,” she began. “It’s all circumstantial. But Joe has a tattoo. Agangtattoo, although I didn’t realize what it was when I hired him. And even if I had, just because someone made bad choices when they were younger shouldn’t mean they have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.”

She sounded oddly defensive, like this declaration was something personal, and she expected me to protest.

“Agreed,” I replied carefully. “And regardless, that seems like quite a stretch. Even if Joe was still in a gang, there’s no reason a bunch of street rats from the ‘hood would want to sabotage a random high-end restaurant in Soulard.”

Mia looked ill. “They might if they were operating a rival restaurant down the block and using it to launder their drug money.”

I blinked at her stupidly. “You mean...”

“The Bella Vita,” she said flatly. “The owner has a tattoo as well. So do several of the staff. A... friend of mine pointed it out when we went there for lunch once.”

I heard the way she stumbled over the word ‘friend.’ There was no way I could stop the dip and roll of my stomach in response. The best I could do was not to let it show. I tried to focus on the subject at hand.

“You said you didn’t have any proof, though?” I asked. “How sure are you that this place is laundering money? And... even if they are, why would they try to put us out of business? They can still launder all the money they want, whether there’s competition down the street or not.”

“I don’t think theycan, though,” Mia said. She clasped her hands in her lap, wringing them together anxiously. “Like I said, I went there. The food’s okay. Nothing to write home about. They’re getting people in the door by undercharging, since they don’t need to make a profit on their diners. But the way the whole thing works, they have to have a certain volume of business to make it seem plausible that their cash receipts are as high as they are. And if we’re taking most of the business in the area, they may not be getting that much volume.”

I tried to follow along with the logic. “So, you’re saying they’ve got a certain amount of drug cash that they have to run through the business, and they need to get enough customers through the doors to account for all of it without raising any red flags with the IRS?”

“Or with their bank,” she agreed. “And I know most people’s first thought wouldn’t be, ‘hey, let’s plant a mole and see if we can injure our competition’s employees, or maybe get the health department to shut the place down’—”

“Not really, no,” I said, taken aback.

“—but from what I’ve learned about this gang, I wouldn’t put it past them,” she finished.

My mind was spinning. Even so, something about that statement stuck in my head.

“Mia... why do you know all this?” The queasy dip and roll of my stomach intensified. “You said, ‘from what you’ve learned.’ This can’t just be because some people at the Bella Vita had tattoos, can it?”

She looked startled, and for a long moment, I got the distinct impression she was silently arguing with herself about how much to say. I didn’t like that look one little bit—and the worst part was, I knew I was one-hundred percent responsible for putting it there.

The heavy feeling in my chest deepened when she visibly drew a veil across her emotions, putting on a neutral façade.

She lifted her chin. “I told you before, the guys I’m staying with run a youth center in East St. Louis. Keeping kids away from the gangs is a big part of what they do, so they know a lot about what goes on.”

There was more to it than that, I was sure. I fought my own internal war over whether to push, knowing I didn’t really have the right. And yet...

“Those alphas aren’t dragging you into anything dangerous, are they?” I demanded.

Sure enough, her eyes sparked with the light of battle.

“They aren’tdragging meinto anything, Nat,” she snapped. “Unlikesomepeople, they don’t make decisions that affect me withoutasking mefirst.”

It was a good thing I was already sitting down, because the floor dropped out from beneath me. The instinct to snap back—to match her anger and then some—flared. It was an instinct that had been pounded into me throughout my childhood. Ever since I’d been a vulnerable toddler, in fact—watching uncomprehendingly as my adoptive father roared abuse at my adoptive mother, steamrolling her whenever he didn’t like what she had to say.

Familiar nausea followed close on its heels as I swallowed all of it down, shoving the ugly feelings into the pit beneath my heart. Ihatedthat those old impulses were still there, despite the fact that I would never,everallow myself to act on them. Despitemy decades-long efforts to pretend they didn’t exist... to push them down so far that they disappeared for good.

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I know I’ve given up any rights to interrogate you about your relationships with other people. I still worry, though.”

The martial posture of her shoulders slumped.

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