Two Besties, Two Babies, Two Dangerous Daddies novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: The Woman Who Sold the Watch

Lexie looked at the key in my palm.

Then she looked at the shoebox, where I'd just put the woman's buy form on top of the cash.

"You have her address," she said.

"The law says I have to."

"I love the law."

"Since when?"

"Since about four seconds ago."

Ciro drove us to Margate that night and parked a block down.

"I'm coming up," he said.

"You're his nephew," I said. "She'll throw us out."

"Then I'm waiting right here."

"In the car."

"In the car." He looked at me. "Ten minutes, then I'm knocking."

"Fifteen."

"Twelve."

"Deal."

The woman lived on the beach block in a condo with a doorman and a lobby full of fake orchids.

She opened her door in a silk robe with a glass of white wine.

She looked at me. Then at Lexie. Then at my stomach.

"The girl from the shop," she said. "Did I get the price wrong?"

"No," I said. "But you left something in the box."

I held up the key.

She went white under her tan.

"He put that in my watch box?" she said. "In my box?"

"Taped under the lining."

She laughed, short and ugly, and stepped back to let us in.

The condo had a view of the whole ocean and pictures of nobody on the walls.

"Eleven years," she said. She didn't sit. "He bought me this place the first year. He bought me the watch in March."

"Why are you done with him?" Lexie said.

"He's moving to Las Vegas in the fall. He told me last week. He said I was a Jersey girl and I'd never fit."

She drank half the wine.

"He said it like he was doing me a favor."

"Where does the money go?" I said.

She looked at me for a long time.

Then she looked at my stomach again.

"Is that the Vaccaro baby? The one he keeps talking about?"

"She's my baby."

Something in the woman's face cracked a little.

"Every month he flies to Las Vegas with a suitcase," she said. "He's buying a piece of some tower. The rest goes in a box at the bank on Atlantic Avenue."

"Whose name?"

"Mine." She laughed again. "Nothing's in his name. Not the condo. Not the box. Nothing. That way if anybody comes looking, it's all the girlfriend."

"Will you open it?" I said. "Tomorrow. With us."

She looked at the key.

"Nine o'clock," she said. "I want to see his face when he finds out I did."

Ciro was standing outside his car when we came out.

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