Flawless Ruin

“Is that some kind of joke?” he asks.

I blink. “No, I really love it, I—”

He cuts me off, his voice perfectly even—but chilling all the same. “You’d be wise not to go asking questions where you don’t belong. You know what curiosity did to the cat, Juliet.”

He opens the door and heads outside, climbing into a sleek black car that’s just pulled up outside. The girlfriend shoots me a confused look, then hurries after him.

“Whoa.” I turn. David is standing there, looking thrown. “How does Nero Barretti know your name?”

“Nero who?” I ask.

“The guy you were just talking to,” he says, shooting an anxious glance to the street. “Also known as heir to the biggest crime family in the city. At least, that’s what the rumors say. That guy is bad news. You really didn’t know who he was?”

I shake my head, but the name snags on something in my memory.

Nero Barretti.

When that threatening guy came to my apartment, he’d had a message for Caleb: Tell him Nero Barretti isn’t a man you keep waiting.

That was Nero Barretti?

He’s a mobster. Dangerous. And he knows my name. He knows where I live.

And Caleb is mixed up in some kind of business with him.

I look out of the rain-splattered window to the street. The window of the car is rolled down—and Nero is staring straight at me, his expression unreadable. The car glides away.

A chill goes down my back that has nothing to do with the cold rain.

What the hell has Caleb been hiding?