Page 73 of Stolen Kisses
I thought it was best to stop right there and not tell her I was going into Antonella territory.
I went back on the bed and took her hands into mine, bringing her hands up to my lips to kiss. “I’m going to be careful Maria. I am. Sweet Maria, Christina was your best friend. She looked up to you and loved you, just as much as me. Someone killed her and we don’t know who did it. You can’t tell me not to do this. You can’t. Just try to, say the words.”
She looked at me and I knew she couldn’t say the words.
Of everyone who loved Christina, we both deserved answers. We’d seen the nightmare and no one could tell me it was wrong to find answers.
Answers and justice.
Chapter 21
Maria
* * *
10 years ago …
Calm and cool…
Calm and cool…
I could do this. I could definitely do this. I could walk into this party and act like I was invited. Anything for my best friend who’d suddenly decided to take it upon herself to go crazy.
Would have been nice if she’d gone the other kind of crazy and did something like sell everything and move to Vegas, or get a tattoo on her face, or get a fucking nipple piercing.
Any of those things could have been fine and manageable. Better than what she was doing now.
Dating a host of men that looked like trouble. My God, did they ever look like trouble.
In my quest to find out who Mr. Mystery Man was I’d sunken to a new low. The other night I’d followed her to a party at a fancy penthouse in the city. She’d gone there with one guy who’d looked like a capo from one of the crime families and when she got there she linked up with another guy who looked even more like the rough stuff. She’d linked up with him and started kissing him.
Men with deep pockets.I always told her to go for guys like that but damn those two looked like trouble on a different level.
Two years had passed and she’d never told me who this mystery man was. Never said anything. We lived together and she kept the man a secret. I thought it was one of those guys and that it was an on and off thing from the way she’d behaved.
It was off for a long time and she’d dated other people. Guys she introduced me to. That was how I kind of knew that she wasn’t all that serious about them, or there was something she definitely wanted to hide in respect to Mr. Mystery Man.
I thought maybe she’d moved on until two months ago when she started acting strange again. I decided she must have had some reason to hide him from me. Keeping a secret from me, of all the people in the world. I’d decided that maybe he was married.
So, I snooped even more and saw a text from a private number. It said
Crowthorne Society Friday at eight. Dress up.
Just the first part of that message had my stomach twisted in knots
Crowthorne as in Antonella’s Crowthorne. Even I knew that.
Me a simple barmaid/waitress.
Me a nobody. In my twenty-one years I’d come to know a hell of a lot and I knew my limits when it came to certain guys. I knew there were the bad boys, who of course were criminals, but that didn’t mean they were bad people.
Then there were the other kind.
I wanted to be with a guy who could spoil me, treat me right, and give me a good life, but I wasn’t about to jump into hell and knock boots with real demons.
I’d heard the Antonella’s were an assassin family. Want someone dead and they were your people. I didn’t mean any old person either.
I was talking about notable people. People like public figures and important people national and international. Not the regular hits you may hear of being organized among the other crime families.
