Page 25 of Be With Me
I picked at a cuticle. Okay, that kind of tracked, but it still hurt. Fabi should have known she could trust me.
I gestured at Nina and Zo. “You told them.”
Fabi shook her head. “I didn’t.”
“Then how did they find out?”
Zo shrugged. “You know me, I like to poke around.”
“Poke around where exactly?”
“The FBI database,” Zo said so casually you’d think she was talking about checking the weather. “I hacked into it about two years ago.”
“Zo! Jesus Christ. That’s the kind of thing that gets people arrested,” I said.
She waved a hand. “I was careful.”
I wasn’t comforted by that.
“Naturally,” she continued, “the first thing I did was look up all my friends. Imagine my surprise when I found out Fabi Castellano wasn’t a real person. I got curious. And you know how I get when I get curious.”
“You dig,” Nina said.
Zo flipped over a coaster. “I sure do. Found her and her sis’s birth certificates eventually.”
Unbelievable. “Wow. Easy.”
She cocked a brow. “Oh, itwasn'teasy. Took forever to hack into the FBI in the first place. Don't downplay my brilliance.”
“God forbid,” I muttered. “So you knew all this time and told Nina, but not me?“
“It washersecret,” Zo said, nodding toward Fabi. “And Nina figured it out before me.”
“How?” I turned to Nina. She didn’t have Zo’s hacking skills. She must have pieced it together another way.
Nina fiddled with the small pendant she always wore around her neck. “I’m related to Cosimo Ferraro.”
My jaw hit the floor. “What?But your last name’s Liu. Your dad’s Chinese.”
“Yes, but my mom’s Italian-Albanian. And her sister is Vita Ferraro.”
The Ferraro matriarch was Nina’saunt? According to my father, Vita was an important player in the criminal organization.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Nina was even more by the book than me. She was the last person I’d ever imagine having extended family involved in organized crime.
I sank back into my seat, trying to wrap my head around all of this. “So Cosimo is your?—”
“He’s my cousin.”
And so was Romolo.
Oh God.
“You must’ve known all along, then,” I said. She was part of the same world as Fabi.
“No.” Nina shook her head. “I put it together during the winter break just before we graduated Valais Academy. My parents have nothing to do with the Ferraro business, but we still get together now and then. The subject of the Messeros came up at a big family dinner, and when someone said Rafaele Messero’s sisters went to a private school in Switzerland, I had a feeling. When I got back to school, I asked Fabi straight up, and?—”
“She turned red,” I guessed.
