“Sure. Of course. I get that,” the detective said, and Ryan forced himself to keep blinders on, to see John solely as the detective and not as the brother of the woman he’d taken on a limo ride up and down the Strip last night. “Did they ever meet on James Street?”

Ryan furrowed his brow. “James Street? Not that I know of. But that’s a pretty long street. Cuts through a lot of town.”

John laughed lightly. “Yeah. I know. That’s the problem.”

“Why are you asking?”

“Just trying to put some things together.”

“Man, I wish I could help, but I sure as hell wasn’t privy to the details of her affair,” he said, though that wasn’t entirely true. His mom had told him how much Luke had helped her to come out on the other side of the trouble she was in. But all that data fell under the don’t breathe a word category. She’d warned him before she left for prison to guard those secrets, and he did—to keep her out of more trouble and to protect her honor, even from behind bars. He hadn’t breathed a goddamn word. He’d buried that secret far inside him, like an artifact in a sandstorm.

“Listen, I would really appreciate it if you could give me a call if you remember anything about their relationship.”

He shoved a hand through his hair and nodded. “Of course.”

The call ended and he banged his head on the steering wheel.

What the fuck was he supposed to say to Sophie? Your brother called me today to ask about my mom’s lover from eighteen years ago?

The last thing he wanted her to know about was his shit storm of a past. He’d never met a woman he’d wanted to tell. He had no clue how he’d even begin that conversation. He wished, he really fucking wished, that he could just be the man he was now. Not the guy whose family story had been dragged through the headlines in all its salaciousness years ago.

He only wanted the woman, not for the past to spill over into his present with her.

Chapter Twelve

The puck screamed across the ice, streaking right through the goalie’s skates and smacking into the back of the net.

Ryan raised his arms and cheered. His teammates echoed his excitement, skating over and clapping him on the back for putting them ahead with five minutes to go in the game. The line skated off the ice and headed to the bench as another set of his teammates jumped onto the rink for the face-off.

Breathing hard, his muscles working overtime from the intensity of the game, Ryan grabbed his water bottle and gulped down some liquid for his parched throat. He momentarily parked himself on the bench with the line change, his buddy Marshall joining him.

“Good job,” Marshall grunted with a pat on the knee.

“Gotta keep up with you,” Ryan said, since Marshall had scored the first goal for the recreational league team they played on. They’d been playing together for years—since all the way back in varsity, when they went to the same high school together here in Vegas. Marshall was as close to the inner circle as anyone could be.

“Hey, need to ask you a question,” Ryan said, lowering his voice as he tugged off his bulky gloves. Their other teammates were fixated on the game, cheering on their guys. Marshall motioned for Ryan to continue. “You told me a few weeks ago about Stefano being questioned by some of your attorneys for other crimes.” Marshall had tipped him off before the investigation had reopened, but had been away on a family vacation for two weeks so this was the first time Ryan had been able to catch up on the details.

“Right,” his friend said as he tightened his skates. “Some of my colleagues are working on that.”

“Do know anything more about it? Because a detective brought me in for questioning a week ago. He talked to Shan, Colin, and Michael as well.” Ryan used his sister’s given name, since that was how Marshall had always known her. “My grandmother, too. He asked a lot of the same questions that the guy who investigated the first time around did, but some different ones as well. He really seemed to want to know who my mom was friends with and if there was anyone new in her life at the time,” he said, speaking as casually as if they were catching up on the latest sports scores. It was damn nice, in a strange way, not to have to dig in and serve up his messy family story to someone. Hell, Ryan couldn’t even remember ever having had to tell Marshall at all—he simply knew because they’d grown up together.

Marshall gestured with his clunky gloved fingers for him come closer. Ryan scooted over as the other man lowered his voice to a thread. “Listen, you didn’t hear this from me,” he said, beginning with his usual caveat when he shared something he wasn’t supposed to share. Ryan never violated that trust. “Stefano’s girlfriend came to us a few months ago. She told us she had some information.”

Ryan’s eyes widened. The cops had tried to talk to the shooter’s girlfriend at the time of the murder, since she’d lived with Stefano, but she’d skipped town then. No one had found her, and Colin had told Ryan at the time that there were rumors that Stefano had had her killed.

Ryan never believed those rumors. Didn’t seem plausible. Skipping town when you found out the guy you loved was going to prison? That was much more believable. Still, her absence had been one of those unsolved mysteries.

“She left town then. But no one could find her,” Ryan said. “Where’d she go?”

“Woman’s shelter in Idaho, of all places. Turned out she was pregnant. Stayed there ’til the kid was born. Wanted to lie low and keep away from the cops. She has a seventeen-year-old son now. Stefano’s kid.”

“Holy shit.” His jaw dropped. “So that’s why she left?”

“Yeah, and that’s why he took the job from your mom. Needed money for the kid. She said she didn’t know at the time that he was doing those kinds of jobs,” Marshall said, with narrowed eyes, suggesting he didn’t believe that line. “Anyway, once he was behind bars and the investigation was obviously over, she went back to her family in Reno with the baby. But it turns out some of his friends have been keeping an eye on her and the kid. It was a promise these guys made to always look out for each other. So with Stefano in the big house, his buddies looked after the girlfriend, helped out her and the kid, all as a favor to Jerry. But here’s the thing. Those friends were in the Sinners.”

“Are they still?”

Marshall shrugged. “My guys don’t know yet. All we know is Stefano asked them to keep his kid out of the way of the Sinners. He wanted his son to have a shot at a new kind of life, different from his. So his friends protected the kid for a long time, but apparently they haven’t done such a good job lately, and he’s been getting into trouble. The girlfriend’s not too happy about them breaking their promise to keep her son safe from the gang.”

Something about Marshall’s info aligned with John Winston’s questions. If the girlfriend was talking after all these years, maybe mentioning names that had been off the radar during the first investigation, it would make sense that Winston had been asking about any other people in his mother’s life. “Wait. Were these buddies involved in my dad’s murder?”

“That’s the part we don’t know. That’s the part no one knows. It’s not even my case. It’s not even at the level of a case yet, to be honest. Just an investigation. All I know is the detectives are looking into it. And you did not get this from me.”

The coach slapped the white wood of the bench, and pointed to the ice.

Ryan, Marshall and the rest of the line hopped over and went out on the rink, returning to the game. As Ryan skated, he mapped out a plan. No reason he couldn’t try to work the case, too. John Winston might be the lead detective, but Ryan could play that role on his own. It was his family, his life, and his story. He knew how to figure things out, and how to put two and two together. And he had a damn good notion of some of the people that he’d need to go see.