“If I find out—”

Joey smirked and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, save it, buddy. I already know. I like my life too much to risk it on something I don’t give a good shit about, you know? Those tapes don’t mean shit to anyone but you right now.”

If only that were true. But Gavin kept quiet.

“Well, it was a pleasure doing business, sir. You need something, you know where to find me.” Joey winked, lumbering over to Loretta with a sort of pelvic thrust that Gavin would have paid good money to unsee.

“Right.” He put the car into drive and pulled out of the parking lot, relief warring with disgust, watching in his rearview mirror as the girls crowded around Joey. The man was an absolute piece of shit, but there was nothing to be done about it. He couldn’t stop guys like that from doing bad. Hell, he couldn’t really stop Vito DeSalvo, but if he was going to be damned certain of one thing, it would be Sarabeth’s safety. And with that in mind, he pounded on the gas, bolting toward his house to finish his work before five o’clock.

Sarabeth was settled on the couch when he came crashing through the front door, tapes in hand.

“Are you—” she called, stepping through the hall to meet him at the door. Her hair was still slightly damp from her shower, and the urge to slip his fingers onto the the dark strands washed over him for a minute. Instead, he shook himself to the present, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

“How did you get those?” Her eyes widened, her mouth hanging open the slightest bit while the color drained from her face. “I thought you said you wouldn’t do it?” she whispered, her lashes downturned so that he could no longer meet her gaze.

“I said I wouldn’t do it. And I didn’t. The rest is irrelevant.” He opened the door to the basement, motioning for her to walk ahead of him. She complied without comment.

“I don’t really know what to say.”

“Nothing to say. Now that we have the tapes, you’re almost free of this. But before we turn these over, we need to make ourselves some insurance.”

She shuffled into his office and he followed suit, closing the door behind them before winding around to the computer and popping in the specialized cassette tray on his desktop. The tape whirred, making zipping sounds as the strands of film wound to the right spot. He opened his digital upload software and set the program in motion, burning everything playing on the screen onto a DVD.

Vito would get the copies. The real tapes would be kept with Gavin, a bartering chip to ensure Sarabeth’s—and everyone else’s—safety.

“I wonder what’s on there.” Sarabeth had been standing behind him, her arms crossed over her chest, watching him as he worked.

“Maybe he fell into the same trap that everyone else did. He was cheating on his wife with the dance instructor or the massage therapist and doesn’t want it coming back to him.”

“You think a mob boss is afraid of people finding out he cheats on his wife?”

He looked over his shoulder, and her mouth was tilted in a thoughtful slant. She narrowed her eyes, lost in thought. “That doesn’t seem right to me.”

Funny, because it hadn’t seemed right to him either. But the other possibility—that Vito had committed a crime on film, maybe even a violent one—was giving him twinges of conscience that he didn’t want to feel. What if there was a murder on those tapes? Could he really squash that information? And if Sarabeth saw something like that, would she even allow it?

Please, let it be anything but that.

He kept his tone matter-of-fact. “Would you want your spouse to find out you were cheating?” he asked.

“No, but what’s she going to do? She’s a mob wife. It’s almost expected in that sort of situation. I mean, have you ever seen anything associated with the Mafia that didn’t at least have one affair? Prostitute or otherwise? I don’t think I have. No…something else is going on here.” She leaned against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

Time to roll the dice and hope that they caught a break this time. “Let’s play the tapes, then. Find out what happened.”

He pulled a photo of Vito from the file Maddy had left with him the week before. He’d studied the picture until it was ingrained in his memory—a short, portly man with a handlebar mustache and tired eyes. In the mug shot Maddy had pulled, he looked as though he was starting to form jowls, but by the time he’d gotten to The Healing Place, Gavin imagined they would have been fully developed facial flaps.

He tapped open the recordings and sped through the tapes until he spotted the man in question. When he found him, he was in a room with a tall, curvaceous woman beside him. He was probably nearing his early sixties, but the woman beside him couldn’t have been more than thirty. She was a busty lady, with huge ringlets resting against her shoulders. The rest of her body was generally obscured by the distracting swell of her chest. In a chair kitty-corner from them, talking quietly with clipboard in hand, was a slight woman with a long blond ponytail trailing down her back. Sarabeth.

“Oh,” she murmured. “Yes, I remember them. Although they didn’t check in under the name DeSalvo. Her name was Sheree and he called himself Emilio, last name Direnzio.” Her face clouded, and she swallowed hard.

“Sorry, we can skip ahead, I only thought—”

“No, it’s okay. It’s better. It’ll help.” She cleared her throat. “He didn’t seem like the type to cheat on her. He adored her. I’d never seen a man fawn more over his wife.” Her cheeks colored, but she continued. “Except maybe Owen with Lindy. Although, I haven’t seen a lot of loving families, so, maybe my judgment isn’t the best on that score.” She laughed a hollow, humorless laugh, and his stomach turned. He wanted to throw his arms around her and pull her to him, but there was no time for comforting her. Not yet.

“We’ll skip ahead.” He fast-forwarded, surveying the dance studio in one instant, and the massage parlor in the next. Sometimes the scenes featured couples together; others featured more compromising positions for the people therein.

“Wait, stop.” She grasped his shoulder, and he paused the screen, the video stopping to reveal a woman with a mess of blond curls in the gym, a muscled young instructor grasping her wrist and helping her pull a weight toward her chest. Then, he took the weight from her gently and settled it on the floor by her feet. He swung her around to face him and kissed her once, lightly, before her arms circled around him to pull him deeper into the embrace. The tape continued on, and it became clear exactly why Vito DeSalvo thought these tapes would be bad for business.

He wasn’t a cheater at all.

His wife was.

“Ohhhh…” Sarabeth murmured. “That’s Marcel with her. I guess that explains why he killed him. And maybe Nico for masterminding the whole thing. Still, that’s a long way to go over jealousy. And it doesn’t explain Liza…”

“I think he was probably more worried about his street cred than jealousy. Who goes to the cuckold in a business like theirs? To guys like that, it’s all about power. The strongest thrive and the weak get picked off. If he can’t even keep his woman in line, sure as shit there will be a line of guys waiting to take his spot ruling an empire. It’s emasculating.”

As they watched, though, it got a whole lot worse.

“Tell me what you like, gorgeous,” Marcel murmured, tugging the shirt over Sheree’s head.

“Baby, just the fact that I didn’t walk in to find you wearing one of my dresses and heels puts you head and shoulders above my husband.” She let out a cruel, humorless laugh, and that last bit of uncertainty lodged in Gavin’s gullet faded away.

Now that was worth killing for if you were a man like Vito. Once his wife had found out about the scam and knew the tapes had been taken, she must have confessed to having both the affair and the conversation that would seal his fate in a community of tough guys. They would surely balk at taking orders from a man who dressed like a woman behind closed doors, and his whole world would come crumbling down around him. “But why you? This is obviously the first you’re seeing of this.”

She frowned and then shrugged. “Maybe he was concerned that Sheree talked to me about his proclivities during therapy sessions?”

“Maybe so.” He nodded slowly. “Or maybe he’d decided to wipe out anyone with a possible involvement with the scam. With none of the employees left alive but the servants, there would be no call to review the tapes because there would be no one alive to prosecute. Ergo, the tapes would stay in evidence undisturbed for all time.”

“But if we give him the tapes, then any proof of the infidelity or his cross-dressing is gone and there’s no reason for more violence.” The relief in her voice was palpable, but a frown still furrowed her brow.

“This is good news, Sarabeth.”

“I know. And he’s a terrible person. But the tiniest part of me feels sorry for him. When I tell you he loved that woman, I mean he would have burned the earth to the ground to keep her happy. And seeing her doing that”—she nodded toward the now-silent screen—“and hearing her betray him like that. It must’ve made him a little crazy. Crazier than usual, I mean. All you had to do was watch the way he looked at her…” She shook her head, and Gavin let her words sink in.

He was starting to think he knew what that felt like. Caring about someone so much it hurt. He allowed his thoughts to take root for a brief, sobering few seconds before he was distracted by the look of anguish on her face as she watched the couple on the screen.

She bit her bottom lip and moved to settle into the armchair across from the desk. “It just seems like nobody got out of that place unscathed.”

The hurt in her voice left his heart aching for her.

The screen went black, and they sat in silence for the next hour while all of the video transferred onto his computer and the video burned onto disks. He slipped the disks into cases, then dropped them into a small black bag in the bottom drawer of his desk and nodded at Sarabeth.

“You ready for all this to be over?” he asked softly.

Her eyes had been closed when he’d spoken, and it took her a minute to open them.

“Yeah.” Her voice was distant…tinny. “It’ll be nice to have things back to normal.” She sighed and rested on the back cushion of her chair, then sat up, looking him in the eye with a new fierceness. “Can I go with you?”

“Not a chance, Doc.”

She gave him a curt nod and didn’t argue, clearly expecting his answer.

“Maddy will be here to stay with you in case…” In case something went horribly wrong, at least she wouldn’t be alone. He left the latter unsaid.

“Be careful out there, will you?”

Her green eyes beseeched him, and he forced a reassuring smile as he crossed the room.

A mushy, drawn-out good-bye here would only clue her in to the fact that he wasn’t 100 percent certain how it was all going to turn out. Instead, he held the door open as he looked over his shoulder. “I’m an old pro, don’t you worry. I’ll see you real soon.”

“Hurry back!”

He closed the door behind him and started up the stairs, the concern in her voice spreading warmth through his body that followed him all the way outside into the chilled afternoon air.

By the time he pulled onto Beachwood Street, he still had half an hour to spare. A pay phone was there, cast in shadows. To his surprise, as soon as he stepped out of the car, it rang. Which probably meant they had eyes on him. That was no surprise. He picked up the receiver cautiously and spoke.

“Hello.”

“The warehouse on the corner of Barnum and Second,” a low voice murmured. The phone disconnected, and a dial tone sounded in his ear. He set the receiver down again and strode back to his car. He’d held out a slim hope that the meeting would happen outside on the street. This second, private location was less than ideal. Still, there was no way Vito had gone through the trouble of killing three people and trying for the fourth only to murder the person who had exactly what he wanted. At least not right away.