Stone Walls (23 page)

The whole situation makes me feel sick to my stomach.

After wandering aimlessly, I return to my apartment, intent on combing through every file I have and everything I can find on the Internet regarding Smyth. Farley can go fuck himself.

When I open my door, I’m not the least bit surprised to see Rob sitting on my couch. “If you came here to bust my balls, I don’t want to hear it.”

“I came here because I agree with you.” He sits with paperwork and files surrounding him.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do.” He lifts Ella’s file. “This isn’t a coincidence.”

This guy is always in my corner. No matter what I bring into his life, no matter what chip I am trying to balance on my shoulder, he’s always got my back.

“Thanks, man.”

“I care about her, too. I saw Smyth’s reaction. We need to protect her.”

“I need to call her. I’ll be right back.”

I dial her number and close my bedroom door behind me.

“Hey,” she answers, the enthusiasm evident in her voice.

“Hey, baby. How was your day?”

“Good. How about you?”

“It sucked. I have work to do, I can’t see you tonight.”

“Okay,” she says with disappointment. “I assume Rob, too?”

“Yes. He’s with me. Where are you?” I ask, hoping she listened to my request and didn’t hit the gym.

“I’m home. Andrea’s here with me. I decided to tell her about us. This will be a good opportunity.” At my silence, she adds, “Is that okay with you?”

“Of course. I meant it when I said it’s up to you. Are you staying in?”

“Probably.”

“Okay, I’ll try to call you later. I gotta go.”

“Okay. Ben, please be careful,” she responds softly. Hearing her voice makes me ache to hold her. I can see her sitting on her couch, her hair up, her legs tucked beneath her. What I wouldn’t give to be there with her, my lips on her neck, my hands caressing her smooth skin.

When I return to Rob, I sit across from him staring at the files.

“We’ll hit Farley’s list of pushers tomorrow.”

I nod in agreement. “I don’t know where to start. McGill knows nothing. He’s a homicide detective from Po-dunk, U.S.A. What the hell does he know about organized crime?”

“Let’s start with what we know.” Rob grabs Smyth’s information. His brows furrow in concentration as he reads the fact sheet. “He lived in Cleveland for a while.”

“So did Volante and Politto.”

“When your dad was arrested, his one and only phone call was to Politto. Problem is Politto Sr. didn’t get his hands dirty. He never got involved with petty shit. He used his men. If your dad were being used as a mule, he wouldn’t have dealt directly with Politto. It would have been Smyth or Razzo, or even Politto Jr. who managed your dad.” 

“Maybe he meant Junior.” A headache forms at my temples. Rubbing them distractedly, I voice out loud, “We’re missing something.”

Rob powers up the laptop and gets on the phone. “April, it’s Rob. I need a favor, off the cuff.”

Whatever she says in return, he responds with, “Deal.”

April is a fact checker at our precinct. She’s been a fixture there for over twenty years. “Todd Smyth, spelled with a
y
. He’s in custody downtown. I need everything you can find on him dating back two years. Phone bills, bank statements, air travel, everything. Thank you.”

“Farley will be pissed.”

“He told you to back off Smyth. He never told me to.” He buries his head in another file and shrugs. “Loophole.”

I pick up Ella’s file and flip through it page by page. Sliding the laptop toward me, I Google Virginia Parker. There are thousands. I plug in Virginia Parker, Danbury, New Hampshire. One reference pops up. I then try Virginia Parker high school, nothing. Virginia Parker birth, nothing. I tried Ginnie. I tried V. Parker. Besides the one reference to her birth, nothing else turns up. She didn’t have any social media accounts. She was a very private person.

I decide to try Ella. She won some awards in high school. Some photos come up from her college days, but most are from friends’ Facebook or Twitter pages. She doesn’t have a Facebook account or any social media accounts. Neither do I, but I’m a cop. I’m not sure I know of a twenty-something-year-old that doesn’t have a ton of social media connections.

“What are you looking at?” Rob asks.

“I Googled Virginia Parker. Nothing. I Googled Ella, not much there either.”

“Her mother sheltered her. Ella’s grandparents were assholes, and her biological father was very abusive. When her mother got pregnant, she took off. She was always afraid he’d find her. She kept her privacy because of it.”

“Makes sense.”

An image of Ella and Andrea catches my eye. They are in cap and gowns, both smiling wide. When I click on the image, it takes me to Andrea’s Facebook page. The posts below the pictures date back to their graduation a few years ago. There are many posts from friends wishing them congratulations and well wishes, some suggestive comments, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I backshift to Ella’s image again, tracing her lips with my fingertip. That fire I sometimes see in her eyes, when she gets angry with me, is visible in the picture. She was always feisty. I wish I knew her then. Besides the fire, there’s peacefulness, a calm about her that I don’t see today. I want to see it again.

Work has been extremely busy. We’ve been working through lunches, after hours, and even on Sundays. Razzo wants a huge marketing campaign to coincide with the additional gym openings. The seven he has in the works won’t be ready for months, yet he already knows he wants ten more to open early next year, expanding north and south.

We hired two more assistants to help with the Razzo account and still we’re swamped.

So when I suggested we work for a few hours at my apartment to wait for the guys, Andrea had no complaints. We brought in Thai, and we’re leisurely eating our meal, taking a break from the mountain of tasks we still need to accomplish.

There were at least a dozen times in the past hour where I wanted to tell her about Ben and me. Every time I opened my mouth, I quickly chickened out. I need to get this over with. The more time that passes, the more shit she’ll give me.

“Have you heard from Rob?” I ask as we watch a recorded episode of
American Idol.

“Yeah, they’re at Ben’s right now.” She points to the TV and asks, “Do you think JLo got her lips done?”

“I have no clue.” I shake my head at her randomness.

“They’re so perfect. Look at them. Top and bottom are the same exact size, perfect shape. Maybe I should get my lips done for the wedding.”

Here comes one of her tangents. “Andrea,” I call her and she looks my way. When she turns back to JLo, I turn off the TV.

“What are you doing?”

“I need to tell you something.”

She narrows her eyes suspiciously, but otherwise says nothing.

I hate when she looks at me like that.

“Something happened.”

“With?”

Why is this so hard to say? She’s going to go ballistic, off the moon nuts when she finds out. Maybe by saying it out loud, I’m afraid it’s now all too real. If it doesn’t work out, there is suddenly a lot at stake. All those concerns I had if I got together with Ben and it didn’t work out are still valid concerns.

“I’m aging, Ella.”

“Okay,” I say with a heavy sigh. “Well, last weekend when you and Rob went to your place, I decided not to go out for happy hour. I came here instead and got all cozy for my relaxing night in. I had on my pink tank top, the one with the lacey straps, and my matching plaid pajama bottoms. The minute I got home I changed, and washed my face and put my hair up, real schlub mode. You would have made fun of me. I went through the motions of finding what I would be watching all night. You know how I have to line my shows up just right, so there is no gap in time. I found
Peggy Sue Got Married
. I love that movie, but I missed half of it. It was playing again the next day. Remember I told you I was watching it when you called me on Saturday? So, anyway, after I got here on Friday night, I was making soup for dinner, but I never ended up eating it…”

“Oh my God!” Her outburst causes me to jump. “What the hell are you talking about? What happened? Spit it out already.” She folds her arms, waiting for me to make some sense.

“As I was heating up my soup, someone knocked on my door.”

“Who?”

“Ben.”

Her eyes practically pop right out of their sockets. “Ben?”

“He came by to check on me. He brought a pizza.”

“You had sex!”

“No! Not Friday night.” When her eyes bulge further, I add, “I mean no. We didn’t. We ate and talked.”

“Holy shit. You had sex with him!” She turns me so I have nowhere to look but her cartoon-like face. “Spill. Every fucking detail.”

“Every?”

“Every!”

Two hours later, our work still sits on the table untouched. The look on her face is priceless. I can tell she liked certain parts of my dissertation by the way her hand squeezed my knee at that point in the story. I kept the most intimate parts to myself. I did share how sweet and caring he was. How he put all my needs first.

“So does this mean you’re a couple?”

“He referred to me as his girlfriend when he spoke to his brother. I was right there when he said it. He took the call and told him he was interrupting us. So, yes, I guess it does.”

“I knew this would happen. You two were ticking time bombs. It was just a matter of time. The sexual tension between you is the most intense that I’ve ever seen. I told you. Perfect match, fate has plans, and you have no choice. I was so right.”

“Andrea, we aren’t getting married. We’re seeing each other.” As I get up to get us more wine, there’s a knock on the door. “You expecting Rob?”

“No, he said they had hours of work still.”

My nerves kick in as they always do from that flash of fear that comes from being a victim. Remembering Ben’s words, I ask, “Who is it?”

“Us.” Ben’s deep voice penetrates through the wood door.

I unbolt, unlock and unchain my door. “Good girl,” he says immediately pulling me into his arms. He stops and remembers Andrea behind me. “Does she know?” he whispers without releasing me.

“Yes. But if she didn’t, she would now.”

Rob walks around us to his fiancée. “Hey, babe.”

“What are you guys doing here?”

Ben walks me backward into the apartment, closing the door behind us. “Our brains are fried. We needed a distraction.” He looks around at the piles of papers and asks, “What have you been doing?”

“We were working until your
girlfriend
was telling me a story,” she spits out with a huge attitude.

Ben smiles wide at her. “Barbie, of all people, I’d think you’d be happy.”

“I am! I just don’t like being the last to find out.”

He hangs an arm over my shoulder. “Technically, you’re the first.”

“No, Ben, you’re wrong. Jonathan was the first.”

He looks down at me and kisses my nose. “You told her everything, huh?”

I shrug. “It’s Andrea.”

“True.”

The guys help themselves to beers before getting comfortable in the living room. Ben lifts me off the couch and settles me on his lap. Rob takes the remote from Andrea and starts flipping through sports channels. It’s all so normal. This is awesome, the four of us together…and I don’t mean hanging together, but really together. Couples. We are two couples.

Ben looks so good in his NYPD Athletics T-shirt and worn denim. The stubble that coats his face is sexy as hell. As he and Rob discuss the Yankee game, he lightly traces the scar on my neck with a fingertip. It’s become a habit of sorts. When he sees me watching him, he plants a soft kiss below my ear.

“Are you guys hungry? We have left over Thai.”

“Yes,” they both respond.

“Ben has no food at his place.”

I laugh, remembering the slim pickings I saw when I opened his fridge. “I’ll get it for you,” I offer.

Ben jumps up and follows. “I’ll help.”

We aren’t in the kitchen two seconds when he pushes me up against the fridge and kisses me like he hasn’t seen me in months. He presses his lower half into mine. I couldn’t care less that Andrea and Rob are in the other room. I actually consider having sex with him right here, right now. His presence makes it impossible to think clearly.

“Get rid of them,” he says against my neck, reading my thoughts.

I laugh at his demand. “I can’t. Behave.” He groans when I push him away to get to the leftovers. As I pile food onto plates before heating them up in the microwave, he leans on the counter watching my every move. The look in his eyes is pure heat, but beneath he looks worn out.

As the food heats, I step toward him. “You look tired.”

He frowns. “Long day.” With hands on my ass, he pulls me forward until his crotch presses against my belly. “Mind if I stay with you tonight?”

His question throws me off. I didn’t expect him to ask that. “Of course I don’t mind. What about them?” I thumb toward our best friends, which are suspiciously quiet in the other room. Either they are eavesdropping or they are going at it on my couch.

“I’ll handle them.”

The microwave beeps. He kisses me once more before moving around me to retrieve the heated plates. I quickly grab utensils, following him out. As predicted, Andrea and Rob are making out on my couch.

Ewww.

The second he places the dishes on the coffee table, he announces. “Eat up, Ken. Then you and Barbie can go stay at my place tonight.”

Rob looks at him blankly, yet says, “Okay.”

Minutes later, they are out the door, with Andrea’s overnight bag in tow. Great arrangement. I can barely contain my excitement as I watch him wash the dishes for me. This man is too good to be true.

“So what d’ya want to do?” he teases when we get comfortable on my couch. Just as his ass hits the cushion, he moves closer to nibble on my neck.

“Checkers?”

I can feel him smile against my skin. “Fine. I move first, and I jump you.” He flips us so I’m beneath him.

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“My game, my rules.”

He presses into me, and I can feel the rough seam of his jeans, the pressure of each button, but most importantly, his hard bulge pushing against me in a perfect way. The thin knit fabric of my yoga pants does nothing to provide a barrier. He watches my reaction, forcing a blush to tinge my cheeks.

“Right on cue,” he says, proud of his accomplishment. He just loves to embarrass me, loves to watch me by scrutinizing every facial expression, every pant, and every squirm that I make. To be watched so closely is something I’m not used to. It’s intimidating to be so exposed. It’s also extremely erotic.

My response is to pull his face to mine and kiss him in a way that makes his bulge grow harder and harder. He plunges his tongue into my mouth, and I suck on it forcibly causing him to moan. He breaks the kiss first to travel his lips down to the swell of my breasts. Through my T-shirt, he bites down on my hardened nipple. I’m next to moan. The combination of his dry humping me and suckling on my breast is building me too soon. I’m dangerously close to coming apart beneath him.

Pathetic. I’m a pathetic mess at his hand.

I grasp the fabric of his T-shirt, frantically trying to lift it over his head. He moves away to help me and immediately follows my lead by removing mine. He waits a few seconds to admire my lace bra, and then reaches behind to unclasp and peel it away from my body. I barely feel the cool air on my breasts, when he attaches his mouth to the same nipple he was biting a few minutes ago.

He’s very talented. He can remove my pants and panties, never breaking stride. Once again, I’m completely exposed, and he is still in his jeans. Wanting to even the playing field, I try unbuttoning his waistband. He shakes his head, denying me.

With a firm hand, he moves one leg, so my foot rests on the floor, and the other to rest on the back of the sofa. I’m spread, completely spread for his pleasure. 

He winks once and dives between my legs without fanfare. The sudden pull from the suction on my clit has me arching my back in ecstasy.

“Ben,” I call out, but I have no idea why. Ben what? Please keep going and never remove your mouth from my pussy? That’s what my brain quips as he devours me without stopping to take a breath.

It’s not long before I pulse beneath his mouth and ride a very delicious orgasm. He stands while his eyes remain pinned to mine. His jeans and briefs end up on the floor in one swift motion. He extends a hand to help me stand. When I do, he sits and forces me to straddle him. By staring into my eyes, by holding my hips, I know exactly what he wants from me. His erection rests at my entrance, but he doesn’t move otherwise.