He had a voice hard and cutting as a saw blade, which sent a shiver through Grace’s body. Although he wore baggy jeans and an untucked plaid shirt, Grace could tell Rapino was ripped with muscle. He had his shirt rolled up, revealing sleeves of tattoos that wrapped around his arms like growing vines. His lean, sharp-featured face was pockmarked and covered in a heavy five-o’clock shadow. Beneath his thick black eyebrows, his eyes gave off the same ominous feel as storm clouds.
“How are you, Grace?” Rapino asked. Grace could smell cigarette smoke on his breath, and booze too, enough that you’d want to keep a match away from that mouth.
“Hello, Vince,” Grace said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “What brings you here?”
Rapino sent his two companions an overly exaggerated look of surprise.
“I thought this was a place where you could get something to eat,” he said with a derisive laugh.
Grace swallowed hard before doing a reset. It shouldn’t be a total shock to see him here, she told herself. The trial was coming up, so Penny was back in the news. She knew his auto repair place was in Lynn, and he was from there—but while Lynn had plenty of pizzerias, there were no laws on the books preventing his patronage here.
Rapino rubbed a hand across his head and through hair the color of oil.
“What can I get you?” Grace asked, fixing the three men with something of a gunfighter’s stare. She knew they had come to harass her, but she didn’t know how it would play out.
Rapino scanned the menus behind Grace—a set of blackboards in varnished wood frames, arranged so that they blocked the view of some industrial ventilation equipment. Most of the lettering on the menus was done using decals, but Annie always wrote out the daily specials in chalk. Today’s was any slice and a soda for $4.99.
Rapino let out an exasperated sigh that sounded forced. “I was hoping to get a birthday cake,” he said, running his tongue across his lips like he was licking off imaginary frosting. “Don’t see it on the menu.”
A confused look bloomed on Ryan’s face.
“This is a pizza place,” he said curtly. “I think Whole Foods is open; you can get a cake there.”
“Whole Paycheck?” Rapino sounded aghast. “I’ll pass.” And he barked a soulless laugh.
“You know why he wants a birthday cake?” the shorter of Rapino’s two minions asked in an accent straight out of Southie.
“Tell him,” said Rapino, keeping his ominous stare fixed firmly on Grace.
“It’s Rachel Boyd’s birthday today,” said the other man, who hadn’t spoken yet.
Ryan leaned his body over the counter, closing the short gap between him and Rapino, no fear in his eyes. Grace could see the muscles in Ryan’s broad shoulders go taut beneath that plum-colored polo.
“What the hell is this about?” he asked. Rapino took a single step back out of striking distance—he was no dummy. Grace suspected that Ryan could give these men a go, but hopefully he’d stand his ground. Three-to-one odds weren’t in his favor.
“Want to tell him, Gracie, or should I?” said Rapino, casting a chiding smile.
“This is Vince Rapino,” Grace said to Ryan, somehow keeping a cool demeanor while her heart pounded wildly. “He was Rachel’s—”
Grace suspected Ryan remembered the name, but she wasn’t sure how to label Vince and Rachel’s relationship. She didn’t have to think long, because in her brief pause Rapino answered for her.
“She was my girlfriend—something like that, right? Girlfriend,” he repeated. “But that really pissed off my wife.” Rapino scratched at a spot under his chin with a neutral expression. She couldn’t tell what this man really felt, or if he felt anything at all.
“Now, though … now I got divorce papers, child support, and all the crap that goes with it. And you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking that my wife—we’d been married eleven years, two kids—thinking that she might not have known about Rachel and me if your daughter, Gracie—your crazy, bitch-ass daughter—didn’t carve her up like a goddamn pumpkin.” The bit of lightness that had momentarily come to Rapino’s face emptied on the spot.
“What do you want, Vince?”
Heat flushed Grace’s cheeks as a prickle of unease danced across the nape of her neck.
“No harm here,” Rapino said, holding up his hands as a truce. “We were driving around, saw your big, bright sign, and thought, ‘Hey, let’s get some birthday cake to celebrate Rachel on her special day,’ and we come in … and I’m like, ‘Wow, Grace Francone, here you are, what a shock.’ It’s like Rachel herself guided us here.”