Page 7 of The Woman at the Funeral (Costa Family #11)

Nico

By the time I managed to get the Ferraro family out of Blair’s place, it felt too awkward to invite myself back up.

So I just left with them.

It was a move I’d been regretting the past four days. While I tried to busy myself with trying to find Matt’s killers to keep my mind off thoughts of Blair.

Especially off thoughts of her in those tiny silk shorts and the matching tank top that put a tantalizing amount of skin on display. And hinted at what was beneath. Especially when the air kicked on and she took a cool drink, making her nipples press out against the material.

“Fuck,” I grumbled, raking my hand down my face, my palm catching on three-day-old stubble.

Zeno did eventually get some hits on the taillight from the CCTV.

And it was just my luck that it was the most popular model from the most popular make in the United States.

It left us with, on the low end, about thirty thousand cars across the five boroughs. Add on more if we needed to factor in Staten and Long Island, upstate, or Jersey.

I had a list a mile long of names to go over.

I’d been crossing them off one by one for days.

With no end in sight.

But the letters were starting to swim.

So what did I do instead?

Something I had no fucking business doing.

Bringing up Blair’s social media account.

I knew it from back when Matt first met her. He’d mentioned her working at an “art store” and had “some blog called The Tenth Muse .”

It was clear from day one that Matt had no idea the kind of woman he had hooked. How educated and worldly she was. How passionate she was about her vocation.

It’d been clear to me from the first time I checked out her blog and socials.

The special angles of the artwork—both classics and amazing pieces she found on the walls of coffee shops or from street sellers—and the long, gorgeous captions that made you look at even the most mundane things—like brushstrokes—as poetic and meaningful.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’d been keeping an eye on her accounts ever since. So much so that I could pinpoint the moment when it was clear she’d given up on her marriage. A solid three months before she’d finally kicked Matt out.

It was a picture of the L’Absinthe painting by Degas. It featured a couple sitting together but seeming worlds apart. The man’s attention was focused outward away from the woman—distracted, disinterested. The woman was staring downward, focused inward, her expression sad.

Blair’s caption?

What loneliness looks like in brushstroke form.

Not long after, there was Nighthawks by Hopper. A picture of a diner at night. It was stark, embodying the concept of urban isolation.

A study in stillness. Highlighting the way solitude can cling to the corners of everyday life.

After that, it was The Seated Woman with Bent Knee by Schiele.

A portrait of unraveling. Nothing softened.

Then, reaching her resolve and determination phase, it was Christina’s World by Wyeth, featuring a woman in a dress in a field, seeming about to crawl her way home.

It’s not helplessness. It’s persistence with the volume turned down.

I couldn’t help but wonder as I scrolled down and down if all of her posts represented deeper meaning in her life.

There’d been one post since Matt’s death. It was The Funeral of Shelley featuring a funeral pyre and those left watching the flames.

Some grief is as tender as it is permanent .

The comments were filled with sympathy. It seemed that even though Blair had gone to great lengths never to display much about her personal life (she rarely even had her own face in her posts), her followers had somehow found out about the death of her husband.

I tried to talk myself out of it, but I found myself scrolling down until I got to one of the rare snaps that featured Blair herself.

It was a candid picture of her at her former gallery.

She was in a simple black dress that was the subtle kind of sexy.

It was form-fitting without being skintight.

It was neither short nor cut low in the front.

Still, she was exuding confidence and passion as she smiled at something someone out of the frame said, her delicate hand curled around a champagne flute as she stood in front of a massive painting.

I imagined it was someone else who worked there who’d taken it. Matt’s own family—who swore he did no wrong— wouldn’t even let him take the pictures because they came out shaky and from unflattering angles.

This picture was taken by someone who had an eye for beauty and wanted to capture it.

“Christ,” I sighed, exiting the app.

I needed to get a grip.

Stop thinking of my dead friend’s widow.

Reaching for my phone, I shot off a text to my brother, knowing the only way I could stop thinking about Blair was to get myself distracted.

And Leondro had just rolled back into town.

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting at the pizza place we used to frequent as teens, staring out the plate-glass windows at the city, our reflections looking back at us.

Just like with Gavino, Cesare, and Zeno, Leondro had the same family resemblance: dark hair, strong jaw, broody brows. Unlike Cesare and Zeno, he wasn’t covered in ink. And he had a sturdier frame than the rest of us, thanks to more time spent in the gym.

“What’s her name?” Leo asked, voice pure gravel.

“What? Who?” Fuck. That was too quick. Too defensive.

I’d have gotten away with it if it was one of my other brothers.

But Leo was the second-oldest of all of us.

Which meant he, like I had, shouldered the weight of our four younger siblings’ care and emotions, growing up without a mom and with an overworked father.

He did his best. And he did better, in my opinion, than anyone else could have in his situation. But Leo and I needed to pitch in.

So we were more attuned to hidden feelings.

Leo’s lips curved up, making his dimple press in, looking like a slash down one side of his face. He got asked all the time if it was a scar instead of a dimple. Depending on his mood, it could give him a bit of a villainous look.

“Lord knows you never get out much. So it’s gotta be someone you’re crossing paths with for some other reason.”

“There’s no one.”

“I know you’ve been with Zen lately. And at Lorenzo’s. But as far as I know, there are no women there. And you’ve been dealing with those pain-in-the-ass Ferraros…”

“Hey.”

“Oh, come on. I grew up next to them too. They’re fucking insufferable.”

“They just lost Matt.”

“Which I’m going to assume is only amplifying the problem. Especially with… wait,” he said, brows raising. “Is it her?”

“Who?” I asked, picking up my slice and taking a bite but tasting nothing.

“It is, isn’t it?” Leo asked, watching my profile.

“Drop it,” I demanded.

“You have a thing for the widow.”

“Her name is Blair. And I don’t have a thing for anyone.”

Leo sat with that as he took a bite, chewed, and wiped his greasy fingers on the napkin.

“I was there, you know.”

“Where?”

“The wedding. I was there. And maybe at the time, I thought nothing of it.”

“Leo, let’s move on.”

“But you couldn’t look away from her. At the time, I figured, eh, she was beautiful. We were all looking at her. Looking back, though, you weren’t just looking. You were pining.”

“Pining?” I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it? I found myself wondering a lot the past couple of years, why you kept bailing that guy out. You wouldn’t have bailed out one of us as many times as you did for Matt. But maybe you weren’t trying to help him out. Maybe you were trying to help out Blair.”

“Matt was my best friend.”

“Was he?” Leo asked, brows drawing low. “Just because he was your oldest friend doesn’t mean he was your best friend. He used you as a bank and gave you nothing in return.”

That was, honestly, fair.

But I didn’t feel ready to fully face that reality yet.

“Out of curiosity, who paid for the funeral arrangements? I know it wasn’t his family.”

“I did,” I admitted. “I’m sure Blair was going to. But Ronny took it over.”

“What about the wedding?”

“Blair had no family but wanted to pay to get things how she wanted them.”

“She didn’t, though, did she?”

“Matt said it felt emasculating to have her pay.”

“But it wasn’t emasculating to have you pay? Out of curiosity, her ring…” The answer was clear on my face. “Jesus, Nico. Don’t get me wrong, I love that you’re a solid man, that you’re generous and give people the benefit of the doubt, but holy shit.”

“We both know I had the money.”

“And we both know that’s not the point.”

“I don’t want to talk about Matt like this, man. He’s dead.”

“Yeah, he is. And it seems like you’re feeling guilty about that for some reason.”

“Dunno if I will stop feeling that way until we know who gunned him down. He was coming from my place that night.”

“That late?”

“He was crashing with me.”

“His wife finally wised up?” He held up his hands at the look I shot him. “Yeah, yeah. I know. I’m a dick. But at least I’m honest. We both know a woman like that didn’t belong with a user like Matt. I mean, she has to be making bank, right?”

“Between her three business models now, yeah. On the low end, four hundred k. But it could go up to a million a year.”

“And he didn’t bleed her dry?”

“I think she was probably smart enough not to give him access to everything.”

“Smart and gorgeous. Sounds like your type.”

“Smart and gorgeous is everyone’s type.”

“Have you seen her since the service?”

“I went over the day that Ronny and her whole crew were descending on their place. To go through Matt’s belongings.”

“And pocket a few of Blair’s?”

Not while I was watching. But I wouldn’t have put it past Danny and the aunts to have walked off with something they shouldn’t have before I started watching over them.

I didn’t want to think that way about Ronny.

She’d been the only maternal figure in my life.

And while the woman certainly had her flaws, I wanted to believe she was better than stealing from her son’s widow.

“How did she deal with them?”

“Honestly, she just let them steamroll her.”

“She probably figured it was easier than fighting them. Besides, can you imagine what she put up from them throughout her marriage?”

I wish I didn’t know some of the things I did about that, actually.

I’d never seen any of it firsthand, but Matt would tell me about some of the things his mother or aunts said about Blair. Things, it seemed, they said in front of his wife. And he said nothing about it. In fact, he even seemed to side with his family on a lot of it. As fucked up as that was.

“At least she’s free of them now.”

“We’ll see,” I said, remembering her barely contained frustration and the slice of pain she displayed when they’d been in her house, touching her stuff, talking shit about her pajamas.

Fuck, those pajamas.

“True. Next time Danny gets dragged in, they’re gonna be at her door looking for bail.”

“Maybe not. She was talking about moving. I gave her the name of my real estate agent.”

“Of course you did.”

“No reason for the smirk. I jotted down a name and number, that’s it.”

“Sure. You’re not imagining a place for the two of you to move into or anything. Extra bedrooms for all those kids you know you want.”

“She’s Matt’s widow.”

“And from the sound of things, the marriage was already over before he died.”

“It’s still wrong.”

Leo pushed out his chair and collected his trash.

“I think the only person who thinks that is you.”

With that, he tossed his garbage and headed out the front door. Leaving me alone, once again, with my conflicted thoughts.

And no escape from the way Blair overtook them all.