Chasing Stars - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Chapter Fifty-Four

                Nash answered on the second ring in typical Nash fashion. "Yeah?"

"It's me."

"Hey! How are you? Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Just...sore."

"You're lucky."

"Your guys?"

He sighed heavily. "Yeah...listen, I've talked to Giovanni about you-"

"It doesn't matter, it's not your responsibility to keep Alessio and I safe." I interrupted him and busied myself with rubbing Donato's head. He was sleeping, his head on my lap, he hadn't left my side all day. From following me slowly down the stairs and to the kitchen and sitting at my feet when I ate, to laying outside the bathroom door when I went to tinkle. Maybe he missed me, maybe he was afraid I was going to break, maybe he was just hoping I'd feed him some more people food. Whatever the case, he was soft and fuzzy and loved me and that was good enough for me right now.

"I know that Kate but you don't understand the importance of family to these people-"

"I think I do." I should, Alessio had made sure to drill it into my head after all, but Nash was getting off topic. I wasn't trying to talk about how his people had tried to kill me again.

"You remember when I was shot?" I answered with silence. "How many of our guys were there? Not a single one made a move towards you. Because of me. You were there for me and in that moment that made you family. If Giovanni knew we were connected-"

"I'm not worried about all that right now! I'm worried about the guy you guys have in here. Are you sure he's still?"

"Positive."

"Please Nash, if ever you've had a reason to be honest with me, let it be now."

"The plans haven't changed at all, if he'd been killed we'd be pushing this attack back, putting someone else in and started all over. More than likely, they have two to three in and even if one was killed it wouldn't throw us for too much but I can't say for certain. If I saw pictures of everyone in the Genovese I could pick out who I recognized from the Bonnano but even if I gave you the names of every single guy we have they're probably under an alias."

I muttered a curse. "Alright...thanks Nash. There's sort of something else I needed to talk to you about..."

"This sounds promising." He joked over the line.

I thought back to my conversation with Alessio last night. He insisted that I had asked about a Nash last night, that I'd asked him not to kill Nash and apologized profusely for no reason. I insisted Nash was one of the cops who had first been at my car trying to talk me down, that he'd taken my statement, had offered to call Dad for me since he knew him personally. When Alessio wanted to know why I was so worried about this cop I simply asked him why I was so worried about my sunglasses at 10 o'clock at night. I was in shock. Nothing really made sense to me and nothing I said and did really made any sense to anyone else. He'd accepted this answer, but I had this nagging feeling that this wasn't the end of things. Realistically speaking, I had maybe bought Nash 24 hours based solely on the fact that Alessio was distracted with the rat business. That's if we were lucky, if we weren't lucky...well Alessio could be on his way to Nash's right this moment and I had just wasted crucial minutes discussing the rat rather than saving his life.