Lethal Love novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: The Cutting Table

Gennaro took his hand off the back of Oakley's neck.

He nodded down the hall to me, polite as a deacon.

"Evening," he said.

Then he went down the back stairs, whistling.

Oakley turned and saw me.

Her face did something I'd never seen it do in twelve years.

It went scared.

Then it went back.

"The bathroom's the other way," she said. "Obviously."

"Who was that?"

"A friend of my father's. Not that it's your business."

She walked past me and snapped her fingers at the models. "Are we done? I have a dinner."

On the train home I wrote to Dom.

"I need to see you. Tonight. The shop."

He wrote back.

"Ten."

At ten the black car stopped outside, and he knocked on the glass very softly.

Gran was asleep upstairs with the radio.

I let him in and locked the door behind him.

He stood in the middle of the shop with his coat on and looked at everything.

"It smells like your messages," he said.

"Like what?"

"Steam and thread."

"Sit down."

He didn't.

I stood on the other side of the cutting table and told him.

The studio, the back stairs, the gold cross, the hand on the back of her neck, the way she went stiff.

He listened without moving.

"You saw a man kiss a girl on the cheek," he said.

"I saw your cousin kiss Oakley Halsted on the cheek."

"She said he was her father's friend."

"Then he's her father's friend."

"Dom."

"He carried my brother's coffin."

His voice didn't rise. It got quieter. "He sat with Matty every night the year our father died. He taught him to shave."

"I'm not saying he didn't love him."

"Then what are you saying?"

"I'm saying she was scared of him. She went stiff, Dom, like a cat."

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