Skullduggery {sapphic thriller}

CHAPTER EIGHT

I nearly spat gin everywhere. "Art Crimes," I repeated with a laugh. "You're joking."

Desirae began pulling the rest of her locs up, wrapping and tucking them around her bun. Her feet still kicked up over the back of the seat cushion, toes tapping at nothing in the air by my head. "What was it that you said you did some time for recently?" She made the question seem casual, but her voice hit that same pitch she'd used on Landon earlier.

The smile on my face dropped.

She knew.

"You're not joking..."

"I'm curious, Kirby, why you did it?"

"I should go—"

"Or better yet, why'd you take the blame when your spoiled mafia princess had all the resources in the world to get away with it?"

"I dunno, I'm a dumbass?" I stared down into the pink of my drink and swished the melted ice around, not liking where this line of questioning was going, but my feet wouldn't move. "What can I say, I'm a sucker for a gorgeous woman. Obviously, I haven't learned my lesson." I nudged her leg with my shoulder in defeat. "Did you already know who I was before tonight?"

"I had heard. But the Cassini's did a good job with burying the story and distancing Artemisia from it. Although, I don't believe the police ever recovered the stolen pastels?"

I wasn't about to give her an answer she could use, at least not against me.

"They're long gone at this point, likely hidden away in some creeper's basement dungeon. Besides, Degas was a misogynist who abused his models and took advantage of those little girls. He referred to them as animals because they were forced to fuck older men at the opera houses. A hundred-fifty years later and we're still celebrating people like him? Fuck that..." I hadn't meant to fall into a drunken rant, but Desirae didn't interrupt. Instead, she stared at me around her legs and quirked her eyebrow. "Anyways, the world is better off without those sketches."

She pulled her feet down from the back of the loveseat, grazing her bare knee against mine. "I don't disagree with you, but that's not for you to decide."

"Maybe not. But you asked why I did it. And I don't regret it." Or any of the others... I threw back the last of my drink then set the glass down on the table. "Whose wedding band is that?"

The question seemed to catch her off-guard, and kinda caught me off-guard too. I'd hoped to broach it a little more delicately, but it's not like she had shown me much mercy.

Her fingers went to the band, spinning it along the chain. "So you're telling me it wasn't a commissioned job? You never received any payout from the Cassini's for it?"

If she wasn't gonna answer, neither would I. "See, I thought maybe the ring was your own and you just wear it around your neck when you're working," I reached over and took her left hand in mine, examining it, "but it seems too big for your fingers. That, and there's no engagement ring paired with it. And you definitely seem like a woman who'd rock a nice rock." Turning her hand over, I traced circles over her palm. The tension in her hand began to soften as I felt her relax into me. "It's a newer alloy, likely not a parent or grandparent's heirloom." Her eyes slid up from our hands to find mine. "So I'm guessing you're widowed. Like me."

Pulling her hand back, Desirae sighed. "Why do you care, Kirby?"

"Just looking for connection, I guess."

Which was at least honest.

I'd spent the last several years in an overcrowded French prison, living—existing, with hundreds of women—and I had never been lonelier. But tonight with Desirae, I felt some kind of shared grief between us, and I knew she felt it too because why else would I be sitting here with her instead of a cell downtown. Even if she was using me to try to get information, I could feel there was more to it than just that.