Read Through the Heart for Free Online

grinned.
    “What’s the catch?”
    “He’s Colombian.”
    I snorted. That was why I could stand to be around Edward. At least he had a sense of humor, even if it was a dark one.
    “Drug money?” I asked.
    “No, I’m not sure where the money is from. Probably graft, bribes, that kind of thing. But maybe drugs too. Who knows.” Edward smiled, seemingly delighted at the prospect.
    I noticed two women sitting at one of the dirty Formica tables at the back of the restaurant, staring at us.
    Edward noticed them a second after I did. His smile got bigger.
    “Edward, don’t,” I said.
    He just winked at me and sauntered over to them.
    “Hello, ladies,” he said.
    They giggled as if that was the funniest thing they ever heard. But I knew those two were about to stop laughing, because I knew what was coming next. I’d seen Edward do it before.
    He said to the women, “If you ever want to fuck, you can call me,” and he flicked two cards onto the table.
    The cards he gave them had a phone number and nothing else. Edward had a special phone for the number on that card, so he always knew that a call to that number was going to be a random woman who he had no serious interest in.
    Just as I predicted, they stopped laughing. Their faces kind of froze, as if they weren’t certain he’d actually said what they thought he said.
    Edward didn’t wait for a response; he simply turned and walked away. But I noticed they didn’t throw the cards away. That phone of his rang a lot.
    When Edward came back, he grinned at me.
    I just shook my head at him. “What else is going on with the family?” I asked.
    “Andrew’s brats got rejected from that school Mother wants them to go to,” he said.
    “But he wrote the school a check for an obscene amount.” Actually, I had been the one to write the check in his name, so I knew, and I knew the obscene amount down to the dollar.
    Edward nodded. “And they said thank you very much for the money and no to the nasty little munchkins.”
    “That should make for a fun dinner next week.”
    “I think he’s waiting until they get them in somewhere else. I say send them to public school. Toughen them up a bit.”
    Our slices came out, and we carried them over to a table.
    “Anything else?” I asked. I figured I might as well get all the information out of him before he hit me up for the favor I knew was coming.
    Edward had just taken a bite of his pizza, and I had to wait for him to finish chewing to get my answer. I didn’t know how he could eat pizza when it was that hot. Whenever I took a bite as fast as he did, I ended up burning the top of my mouth. Maybe all that crap he got on top didn’t get as hot as the cheese.
    “Mother got kicked off another board,” Edward offered after he swallowed.
    I rolled my eyes. “Anything else interesting ,” I amended. Our mother was always getting invited on to boards, and then getting kicked off. “The old man?” I asked.
    “Who knows. He plays it close to the vest, you know,” Edward said.
    I knew.
    “Did I dance enough?” Edward asked.
    That was the deal. Edward told me the scoop on the family gossip but always in exchange for something. My brother was not one to give away anything that might be potentially valuable for free.
    “All right, what do you want?”
    “Twenty thousand.”
    “Are you going to tell me what it’s for?”
    Edward just looked at me.
    “All right,” I said. “Stop by the office this week. I’ll tell Marie, and she’ll take care of it.”
    “Why Marie?” he started to ask. Then he remembered. “Oh, that’s right. Because you’ll be partying in Nebraska. You get to dole out the money to the rest of us, so it’s only right that you should have to dance to someone’s fiddle.”
    I shrugged.
    He looked at me for a second. “You don’t care, do you?”
    I took a cautious bite. It was the biting that scorched the top of your mouth—when you had to bite down with your front teeth to cut through the