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N ick knew that Celia worked dinner at The Trailhead. So did her sister Anne. The sisters traded off between lunch and breakfast, so neither of them worked more than two shifts. Once he knew Noah and Anne were back from their honeymoon, Nick watched the back door of The Trailhead for a week. Wasn’t tough to figure out how Anne and Celia divided the shifts.

Several days after Nick was certain that Murray had returned to Las Vegas, he walked into The Trailhead fifteen minutes before the restaurant was due to close. When he spotted Noah at the bar, talking to Hiram, he walked over to the two men.

He slid onto a bar stool and for a minute, the two men continued talking. They seemed to be in an intense conversation, but after saying something to Noah, Hiram must have sensed his presence. He turned to find Nick, and Hiram froze, his gaze fixed on Nick’s face.

Hiram jerked his head toward Noah and Noah swiveled on the bar stool. Saw him and frowned. “What the hell are you doing here, Doyle?”

“I need to talk to Celia,” he said. “Privately.”

Noah snorted. “Not happening, asshole.”

Nick tilted his head as he stared at Noah. “Don’t think that’s your call to make,” he said. “I came in here when I knew you’d be around as a courtesy. But Celia’s free to talk to whoever she wants to talk to.”

“Free to tell you to get the hell away from her, too,” Noah shot back.

“Yeah, she is. But that’s her call to make. Not yours.” Nick held Noah’s gaze for a long moment, and finally Noah shrugged. “I’ll ask her. But she’s gonna tell you to get lost.”

“I’ll ask her myself,” Nick replied. “She can agree or not. Her call. But you don’t get to tell her what to do.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “You ever try telling Celia what to do?”

“Hell, no,” Nick said immediately. “I couldn’t acknowledge her at all when she was working for my father. If I had, she would have taken an express trip to a shallow grave in the desert.”

Noah narrowed his eyes at Nick. “You telling me your old man would have killed Celia if she talked to you?”

Noah shrugged. “Most likely. I’m pretty sure he had his eye on a wife for me. The daughter of one of his rivals. To ensure that neither of them starts a war.”

Noah tilted his head. “And how was your old man going to force you into that marriage?” he asked.

Nick shrugged. “No idea. He never tried. But most people don’t say no to Bobby Doyle. If they do, they don’t live to talk about it.”

Noah shifted in his chair and swiveled around to face Nick. “Why do you live there with him if you hate him so much?”

Nick sighed. “I came home when my brother died.” He pressed his lips together. “Didn’t realize at the time that my father was the one who’d killed him. I knew Robert was an ass. A party boy. Flaunted his money -- my father’s money, really. Treated women badly. Had a hair-trigger temper and I’d heard from a couple of my father’s men that Robert had killed the son of another mobster. Over a woman, of course.”

He shrugged. “A month later, Robert was found dead in an alley behind a dive bar. There were security cameras in the alley and my father had pictures taken from those cameras. They recorded Fingers beating Robert to death. He wouldn’t have done that if my father hadn’t ordered it”

“So your old man killed your brother?” Noah said, raising an eyebrow. “He killed his own son?”

Nick nodded. “My father’s pictures made it look like a bar fight gone bad, but there was no doubt Fingers killed Robert.”

“Alice found a recording of my father telling Fingers to kill Robert. She put it with the file of photos my father had. I took that when I left.”

“Why would your father have killed his own kid?” Noah asked.

“To prevent a mob war. A lot more people would have been killed. The Mob boss whose son had died would have killed my father for sure. Killed a lot of his men. I’m sure my father agreed to deal with Robert himself in order to keep the peace.”

Noah stared at him, his expression appalled. “My God. That’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Noah shrugged one shoulder. “Robert had become a liability. The stuff he was doing cost my father a lot of money. Made him a pariah in the mob world. Can’t control your kid? That’s the worst problem you can have. Shows that you’re weak. And that’s the last thing my father would want to be.”

“So he killed his own kid.”

“Yeah. I’m sure he didn’t like it -- Robert was his favorite child. I hadn’t lived with my father since I was fourteen years old. My mother and I moved to Chicago. I went to high school there, then went to college on the east coast.” He shrugged. “Mom and I would go home for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. I saw my father and Robert for a few days every time.” He sighed. “I was happy in Chicago, then in Philadelphia when I went to college there. I didn’t miss Las Vegas at all.”

Noah studied him for a long time. Finally said, “Pretty crappy life for a kid.”

Nick shook his head. “ My life? Hell, no. I loved living in Wilmette. Loved the high school I went to. It was one of the best in the Chicago area, and I did well. Got into Penn. Played on their basketball team. I had a great life growing up.”

“So why didn’t you stay out there?”

Nick clenched his teeth. Looked away from Noah. “My mom died. Breast cancer. Then the following year, Robert died. I had a job where I could work remotely, so when I came home for his funeral, I basically stayed. Worked from Las Vegas. I missed Philadelphia, but I figured my father was sad. Grieving. What father wouldn’t be when his son was dead?” Nick rolled his eyes. “Then Alice told me the truth. By that time, I was settled in. I had Alice. She was like a second mother to me.” He shrugged again. “So I stayed.”

“Until you left,” Noah said.

Nick nodded slowly. “Yeah. Until I walked away.”

Noah turned around and saw Anne and Celia sitting at the bar, talking to Hiram. So he slid off the bar stool and stood up. “I’ll tell Celia you have some things to say to her.” He glanced at the sisters again. “What do you want to drink?”

Nick shrugged. “A glass of red wine. The house red.”

Noah smiled. “Anne’ll love to hear that. She’s the one who told Hiram what house wine to buy.”

“Then I’m sure it’ll be good.”

Noah stared at him for a long moment. Sighed. “I don’t want to like you, Doyle,” he finally said. “Or respect you, and I’m dangerously close to both. So I’m going back to the bar. I’ll send Celia over.”

Nick watched as Noah walked to the bar and slid onto the stool next to Anne’s. He took her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, and Nick’s heart ached. He wished he had the right to kiss Celia like that. But he was Bobby Doyle’s son, and Bobby had ordered Celia killed. Not exactly the recipe for a love affair.

As Noah leaned around his wife to talk to Celia, Nick watched as Celia frowned. Shook her head vigorously. But Noah put his hand on her arm. Said something to her, and she hunched her shoulders. Celia finally sighed and slid off the bar stool, turned around and marched over to the table where Nick waited.

“I told you I don’t want to talk to you,” Celia said, her gaze drilling into him. “You think you can soften Noah up so he’ll carry your water?” She shook her head. “Not happening.”

Nick took a deep breath. Noah had warned him that Celia wouldn’t be interested in talking. “I understand that, Celia,” he said. “I won’t take a lot of your time, but I have a few things I need to say to you.”

Celia narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re going to try to convince me to talk to the FBI, save your breath. If you’re gonna try to convince me to forgive you for talking to them and telling them about me, walk away now. Or I will kick your ass.”

“And I would let you do that, because my mother raised me to never hurt a woman. Never lay a finger on a woman in anger.”

“Were you raised to betray a woman, knowing she’d be killed?” Her eyes shot fire at him. “If you were, I assume that was your father’s lesson.”

Nick studied her for a long moment. “No, I wasn’t raised that way,” he finally said. “I was raised by my mother, who was a wonderful woman.”

“You think that wonderful woman would want her son to betray a woman, ensuring that she dies a horrible death?”

“No, she would not. And that’s what I need to tell you.”

Celia finally slid into the booth across from him, but she folded her arms over her chest. He couldn’t read her expression, but it was definitely not friendly. Or welcoming.

So he took a deep breath to steady himself. Blew it out.

When Nick leaned over the table toward her, he was disappointed but not surprised when Celia eased away from him.

“I’m not going to tell the FBI anything about you, Celia. Your name will never leave my mouth. I won’t tell them about the woman who was taken out to the desert, shot and left for dead. Won’t tell them that, thanks to a miracle, she survived. I’ll tell them what I know about my brother’s death. I’ll show them the pictures. Play them the tape.” He swallowed and his stomach turned when he thought about it. “The tape is awful. Graphic and brutal. Completely wrenching to watch. And I’ll play them the tape of my father ordering Fingers to take Robert out and kill him. That should be enough to get him locked up for life.”

Celia stared at him, and he couldn’t read her expression. Did she believe him? Did she think he was shining her on? Was she buying anything he said?

He couldn’t read her at all. He wondered if that was because of the six months she’d spent living in his father’s house, where she had to be careful with everything she said and did. That must have been exhausting.

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could swallow them. “Why did you do it?” he asked her. “Why did you agree to work for my father? You had to know who he was. What he did.”

She studied him for a long moment. The seconds ticked away, and he wasn’t sure she’d answer. But finally she said, “Why do you think I worked for him?”

Nick shrugged. “No idea. Seems like a woman who could prepare food as amazing as yours could get a job anywhere.”

She leaned against the back of the booth and her gaze roamed his face. Finally she said, “Nothing complicated about it. Your father was paying me a butt-load of money to cook for him. More money than I could have made anywhere else. The best restaurants in Las Vegas wouldn’t have paid me as much as your father paid me.”

“And that was important to you?” Nick said, disappointed with Celia and knowing he had no right to judge her.

Celia narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t you dare judge me, Nick Doyle. Being Bobby Doyle’s son? That destroys any moral high ground you think you have.” She leaned a hair closer to him. “What do you do for a living, Nick?”

“I don’t work for my father,” he said immediately.

“Didn’t ask you that,” she shot back.

He studied her for a long minute, and she held his gaze. “I work for a hedge fund,” he finally said. “Make trades. Invest money for people. I get a cut of everything they make. And that’s a lot of money.”

“And you still think you have the right to criticize me for trying to make as much money as I can?”

At least the people he worked for weren’t mobsters. But he was smart enough not to say that. “You’re right. I don’t,” he said after a long moment. “I’m just curious why it was important to you.”

She stared at him for what seemed like hours but was probably less than a minute. Finally she said, “The reason I took the job with your father was that he gave me a huge bonus for leaving the Amalfi family and cooking for him. He also doubled my salary. I liked working for the Amalfis. They were decent people, they treated me very well, and I didn’t want to leave them. But I’ve been saving my money since I started cooking in Vegas. Anne and I want to open a haute cuisine restaurant someday. That’s what we trained for. And the money your father paid me went a long way to giving us enough to open a restaurant.”

“So you sold your talents to the highest bidder.”

“Damn right I did.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Isn’t that what you do? You make trades and invest money for people who can afford you. You’re selling yourself to the highest bidder too, Nick. So don’t go all ‘I’m righteous and you’re not’ on me.”

He raised his hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Celia. In fact, I’m impressed as hell that you worked your way into a job that lets you dream about your future. Plan your future.”

“Thanks, Nick. Glad to see you’re not a hypocrite.” But her eyes rolled when she said it, and it wasn’t hard to hear the scorn in her voice.

“I’d still like to hear about how you got away from Fingers and Murray,” he said. “You still willing to tell me about it?”

“You still willing to promise you won’t mention anything about me to the FBI?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. I realized I was being a total ass. Thinking only of myself. My need to make my father pay for everything he’s done. A couple of people straightened me out. So you’re safe. So is the rest of your family. And if you don’t believe me, Noah can sit in on my FBI interview to make sure I don’t say anything about you. Okay?”

She stared at him for a long moment. “You know if I agree, I’m putting my life in your hands. If you break your word, Noah and Hiram won’t have to kill you. I’ll do it myself.”

He held her gaze and finally nodded slowly. “I absolutely believe that you would. And I meant every word. I won’t mention you or what happened to you to the FBI or anyone else. I promise you I won’t.”

“I don’t know why I believe you, Nick. You’ve been very clear that you were going to tell the FBI everything you knew about me. Now you’re telling me you won’t. I want to believe you. I really do. But you were pretty adamant about spilling your guts to the FBI.”

She leaned closer to him, and her eyes glittered. Nick was very certain she meant every word she was saying. “I want you to understand, Nick. If you betray me, I promise that your body will never be found.” She leaned closer and drilled her gaze into him. “I’d take care of that before I went on the run again.”