Page 38 of Return of the Spider

“Hey, what about me?” Maria said, feigning hurt.

“I am always about you.”

“Is that right?” She set down her spoon and embraced me, her belly bumping mine.

“Always,” I said. “I am here to protect my queen and give her what she needs.”

Maria squeezed me. “And I’m here for you in every way I can think of, Alex.”

“Mommy?” Damon said.

“Hold on, kiddo,” she said, peering up at me. “Long day for you?”

“Tough day,” I said.

“Tell me what you can while we eat.”

“Mommy? I finish!”

“Okay, baby. Peaches now,” she told Damon, breaking our embrace. In short order, Maria had diced peaches in Damon’s bowl, and our pasta was steaming on plates on the table. My boy loved peaches and wolfed them down, ignoring us.

I took a bite of the spaghetti with Maria’s mom’s incredible secret sauce and groaned with pleasure. “Whatisit? What is it that makes it so good?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“I’m your husband. Your soulmate. You won’t share the secret with me?”

Maria set down her fork and gazed at me with a dead-serious expression. “If I gave you the recipe, you could leave me.”

“What? I would never leave you.”

“But if you knew the secrets of the sauce, you could.”

“Are you telling me you think that’s all that’s keeping us together?”

“Not even close. The sauce is just part of the…”

“What?”

I could tell she was trying not to laugh, but then she did and flashed her eyes in that way that always melted me. “The sauce is part of the spell I weave over you.”

“You are mesmerizing,” I said. “And you do weave a spell over me.”

“Good,” she said. “So forget about how the sauce is made and how the spell is cast and just enjoy.”

CHAPTER

27

I loved every biteof that spaghetti and took several trips back to the stove for extra spoonfuls of the sauce while describing my day. I left out the goriest details of the Mansion crime scene but explained that we’d gotten deep insight into a Haitian gang from a guy who was rumored to be the leader of an opposing gang, although he claimed he wasn’t.

“LMC Fifty-One and Los Lobos Rojos?” Maria said. She lifted Damon out of his high chair and cleaned his face with a washcloth.

“You know them?”

“They get shot and stabbed a lot. End up in the ER and then the operating room. It’s my job to find them aftercare if they’re not heading to jail.”

“What do you know about Guillermo Costa?”