“Of course you can, Sweet.” Micah pats my knee reassuringly. “Of course you can . . . Still, I found it all a bit odd. There are a lot of rich men in New York. Men who are known for being more generous and more gullible than the Gables. So why them?”

It’s not a question, not really, and I don’t answer, just keep my eyes on my fists, which are now clenched in my lap. Outside I hear the distant wail of a siren, a sound that everyone in this neighborhood associates with an approaching danger rather than an impending rescue.

“Anyway, I started doing some research,” Micah continues, “and, well, here’s a funny coincidence, but it would seem that the Gables knew the man your mother killed.”

“My mother didn’t kill anyone,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

Micah throws up his hands as if to ward off my anger. “I meant no offense. Nonetheless,” he says casually, “when I looked over the news reports about the case I found myself hoping that she did.”

My eyes shoot up and meet his. “Why?”

“He deserved it. Your mum was a good woman. If that Nick Foley wanted her, he should have treated her better. He should have put the two of you up in a nice place; he had the money for it. He shouldn’t have had her cleaning up after his wife. Scrubbing the missus’s toilets, removing her hair from the floor of the shower he shared with her, washing her perfume from his sheets. That’s just bad taste, Sweet.”

“He didn’t deserve to die,” I whisper.

“Didn’t he? He was extraordinarily disrespectful. He humiliated her, degraded her. He treated her more like an indentured servant than an employee. Like she was his property to fuck and discard as he pleased without ever thinking about the needs of her and her daughter. Are you honestly suggesting that shit doesn’t piss you off? Let me tell you something: if your mum didn’t kill that bastard, then whoever did pull the trigger did her a favor.”

“A favor? Whoever pulled that trigger let my mother take the fall for his crime!”

“Or her crime,” Micah says slowly. “Even if it wasn’t your mother, the killer could have been a woman. The missus maybe? Or another scorned lover? No reason to assume your mother was his one and only mistress. I seriously doubt she was.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to hear this. But Javier’s hand is still on his gun and the limo keeps moving.

“But you don’t think it’s a woman,” Micah says calmly. “You think the Gable family was involved.”

For a moment the world gets very, very quiet. I can’t even hear my companions breathing as the car bounces over the potholed streets.