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“You gonna tell me why you kicked Mary out? Was it a marital spat? A brain melt?”
“I’m handling it.”
“The way you handled Storm?”
Hector’s head snapped up. “What do you know about Storm?”
“Thesukatried to file a complaint about a certain Mexican that threw him out of a window, holding him by his ankles.” Kristoff gave him a speculative look. “What did you threaten him with? According to my guy at the station, he was equally pissed off as afraid.”
“I told him to make it his last yoga class with Mary or I would bend him into a downward dog position he’d never recover from.”
Kristoff looked down on him from the ring. “Showing him mercy instead of finishing him off was a mistake. It makes people take advantage of your good nature and go to the police.”
Hector sighed. “What did you do?”
“I just banished him. He should consider himself lucky. Damon wanted to feed him to Capone.”
“Capone?”
“His pet shark.”
He wasn’t even going to ask. “What do you want, Kristoff?”
“I want your wife and kid out of my house.”
That made two of them. “Then kick them out.”
“If it were that simple, I wouldn’t be here. Your woman insisted we’d celebrate Halloween. She batted her eyelashes at me and reminded me that it is my duty—she dared call it that—as an uncle and brother-in-law to honor this family tradition. I told her that since you were going to divorce her, she would technically no longer be my family. That was when she gave me that ‘kicked puppy’ look, and I ended up giving her free rein over redecorating the place. My house looks like a haunted castle now. Note to self, and you; never, ever give a woman free rein over anything. She will multiply and before you know it, they will take over the place.” His eyes narrowed. “Fix this.”
“My heart bleeds for your pain.”
“Word on the street is you don’t have one. I got a call from a certain Tess last night, insisting I get the fuck over to you. She seems to think that by making herself my problem, I’d be more inclined to ‘help you snap out of it.’ This Tess woman threatened to empty my bank accounts.”
“Can she do that?”
“Since she once put Gio on the no-fly list, I’d rather not find out.”
Hector didn’t like the look on Kristoff’s face. “What did you do? You’d better not have threatened her. Tess is harmless.”
“I tried to hire her, of course. She refused. Something about, even though she had a thing for Darth Vader, she wouldn’t succumb to the Dark Side by working for the Empire.”
“You don’t seem too disappointed by that.”
“She compared me to Vader. It’s an honor.”
No, it really wasn’t. “I can’t believe we’re talking fuckingStar Wars.”
“I have a swear jar in my house now. I’m losing money every time I open my mouth.”
“Don’t you have a mute button?” He was done with this shit. He wrapped a towel around his neck and started toward the showers.
“Your wife makes a killer lasagna,” Kristoff called after him. “The beef just melts in your mouth. Why would you dump a woman who can cook like that?”
Hector stopped in his tracks. She’d made Kristoffhisfavorite meal?
“It was delicious,” Kristoff continued. “She topped it off with panna cotta.”
No. Nothis dessert. Surely, she didn’t make the one with—