“Sometimes these things… they get too big.” He hesitates. “Sometimes agencies will take anything they can get just to show they have a win. You said they’ve been looking at Darin for a while?”
I nod once with a frown. “Yeah. They have.”
“That means resources have been funneled into this,” he says. “That means time and energy. They don’t want him to be innocent. They want to find anything they can to show that their whole investigation wasn’t a waste.”
“No way. That’s not how we operate.”
“Are you sure?” He comes over and sits in the chair next to mine. “Look, you said you’re new there, right?”
“Right.”
“So you might not know.”
I hesitate. “I know. They wouldn’t do that.”
He frowns. “Okay, say you’re right. Can you at least understand where I’m coming from?”
“I can,” I admit despite myself.
“Good. We need to lay down some ground rules.”
I hesitate. “Maybe that’s a good idea.”
“First rule. You don’t tell your superiors anything that we haven’t discussed first.”
“I don’t like that rule.”
“I know,” he says.
“How can I be sure you’re not just trying to throw me off Darin’s trail?”
He cocks his head. “Interesting. That didn’t even occur to me.”
“I gave you my devotion. So then where is yours?”
He smiles slightly and leans closer. “You want that, do you?” His voice is low and quiet. “Interesting.”
“Jacob—”
He reaches out and tilts my chin toward him. “I’ll give you what you want,” he says. “But you’re not ready for it. I don’t think you can handle my devotion, little Valerie.”
“Give me something then,” I say.
“I’ll give you this. I swear on my family’s name that I want to catch Darin if he’s guilty. But I refuse to pin something on him that he didn’t do.”
“Your family’s name?”
“That means more than I think you can understand.”
I bite my lip. “Okay. I can take that for now.”
“Fine then. First rule is, no speaking with your bosses before we discuss first.”
“But I still might tell them whatever I want.”
He nods. “So long as you give me a heads-up.”
“That seems fair.”
“Next rule is, you don’t go further than me.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t go out on your own. Don’t follow Darin or bug him or do something stupid.”
“It might be necessary. I mean, I’m not a spy, I don’t know how to do that stuff, but—”
“It’s dangerous,” he says. “If Darin is involved with organized crime, they’re dangerous. It’s not some game we’re playing with spreadsheets and numbers, Valerie. These are killers.”
I stare at him for a long moment. I can tell he’s not joking. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“So you’ll listen?”
“That’s… yeah, I’ll listen.”
“Good.” He leans forward and kisses me softly. “I promise I’ll share what I find out from now on.”
“Then you want to tell me what your mom said.”
He grins and leans back in his chair. “Like I said, it was all speculation. She knows some men that frequent the same places Mr. Ficino does, Darin’s father. Apparently, he likes to hang out with guys that look like gangsters.”
I snort a little. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Speculation. But you see why I didn’t want to tell you?”
I hesitate for a second then nod. “I get it. You didn’t want me to take that back to my boss like it meant something more than it does.”
“Exactly. I need to make sure that speculation is real. That those guys are actually gangsters and not just some Italian guys Mr. Ficino grew up with.”
“All right then. I get it.”
“My mother…” He trails off. “My mother is good at this sort of thing. She’s been playing these games for a long time.”
“Can we trust her?”
He laughs. “When it comes to protecting her family, that’s about the only thing she can be trusted with.”
“And she’s protecting you?”
“Not exactly. If Darin’s involved with the mob, she wants to know, and she wants it out of our lives. The Lofthouse family doesn’t do that.”
I laugh a little bit. “What does the Lofthouse family do?”
“It spends money on good causes and flexes its muscle.”
“Sexy.”
He grins. “You have no clue.”
“What was it like, growing up in that house? I mean, don’t you guys have a town named after you?”
He winces a little bit and runs a hand through his hair. “Yes, we do and it was… strange. I didn’t do all my growing up there, I was shipped off pretty young to boarding school, but it was strange when I was a kid. I had my siblings. We were really close.” He pauses for a long moment. “But that was it.”
“No other friends?”
“Not really. Anything we wanted was brought into Lofthouse Manor. Sometimes the staff brought their children and we’d play with them, but it was always made clear that we weren’t going to be friends with them. One doesn’t become friends with the staff, or at least that’s what my mother and father believe.”