“Go ahead on outside. You can’t miss her.”
“Her?”
Sonya smiled. “Whoops. Just go before I say anything else.”
I smiled and then turned and left the room, walking out into the hallway.
Just ahead, I spotted her. Louisa Barone, the beautiful, strange daughter of Arturo. I walked over to her. “You got me in trouble,” I said.
“I know.” She shrugged. “You’re fine.”
“I guess so.” I stopped in front of her. She was wearing tapered sweatpants and a loose white T-shirt, and her hair was piled up on her head in a messy knot. She looked absolutely ravishing, and I felt a little jealous.
“Why’d you call me out here, Louisa?” I asked her. “Want to drag me somewhere I shouldn’t be again?”
“No,” she said. “Someone wants to meet you. I was told I have to make introductions.”
She didn’t seem happy about it.
“Who?”
“Come on.” She turned and started walking. I hurried to catch up.
“Where are we going?”
She didn’t respond or look at me.
Louisa was an odd bird. I didn’t know what to make of her. One second she was kind and outgoing, and the next she seemed totally withdrawn and uninterested in me. She was clearly just doing what someone had asked her to do, and I wondered who had the power to order around Louisa Barone.
There were rumors about Louisa, things I had overheard the men whispering about. Apparently she was a mad woman, totally crazy, and Arturo kept her locked up in her room. That was clearly not true, though she was a little weird. She also supposedly was hideously deformed.
I was beginning to learn not to trust most of what I heard second-hand.
Of everyone in the Barone family, Louisa was the most enigmatic. Lucas worked for the family, and so he was out in the world all the time. But there were rare sightings of Louisa outside of the compound, and none that I’d heard of in the last few years. I liked her, but I was wary of her.
We quickly moved down the hallway and finally stopped outside a door. She knocked once and waited.
The door slowly opened. A very pretty woman was standing there, maybe around my age or a bit older. She had long hair, sparkling eyes, and an easy smile that instantly made me feel at ease.
“Hi, Lou,” she said.
“Natalie, this is Kaley. Kaley, this is Natalie Barone.”
And then it clicked. This was Lucas’s new wife. I had heard of her but had never met her. Supposedly she had nothing to do with the mob and was a pretty normal person, although she lived in the mansion.
“Thank you, Lou,” Natalie said, and then she smiled at me. “Sorry about her. Lou can be weird.”
“Can I go?” she asked, annoyed.
“Yes. Thank you for leaving your room.”
“Sure.” Louisa turned and walked quickly away.
I stood there, self-conscious. “Uh, she’s interesting.”
“Lou doesn’t get out much.” Natalie opened the door farther. “Come in, please. Call me Nat.”
“Okay, Nat.” I stepped into her room.
It looked very similar to mine, though she had redecorated it. Where my rooms were austere and fancy, Nat had changed her little living room to feel like a normal person’s house. The expensive furniture had all been replaced by modest but comfortable things.
And sitting on the couch were two little boys.
“Kaley, these are my boys. This is Stokes, and this is Cooper.”
They were busy staring at the television, which was playing some brightly-colored kid’s show, the sort of thing that looked like someone on drugs had made it.
“They’re so handsome. Hi, boys,” I said.
Stokes was older and looked exactly like his father. Cooper was younger and looked more like his mother. They were both very handsome boys and seemed very well behaved.
“You caught them at a good time,” Nat said. They’ll be hypnotized for a bit. Come on, sit with me.”
We walked over to a table across the room. I sat down. “Can I get you anything?” Nat asked me.
“No, thank you.”
She sat down and smiled at me. “So. I hear you have a son.”
“Alexei. Three months.”
“Ah, that’s a good time. He started sleeping through the night yet?”
“Most nights. We still have bad ones, though.”
She nodded. “You will, but it’ll keep getting better. These two idiots keep me up sometimes, too.”
I laughed lightly. “They seem good though.”
“Come by sometime when that show isn’t on.” She shrugged. “Anyway, tell me about yourself.”
I felt a little nervous. What did this woman want with me? She was close to one of the most powerful men in the whole mob, and I wasn’t sure what I could say and couldn’t.