Thin Lives (Donati Bloodlines #3) by Bethany-Kris

finally seemed to understand.
    “That’s rough,” she said, softer than he expected. “So you must not remember anything about the tattoo, huh?”
    “No,” he admitted. “But I want to know about it. I’m not a …”
    “Tattoo kind of person,” she filled in, grinning. “You said that a couple of times when you first came in. That’s why Nick was so insistent you make sure you loved what he was going to put on you. He didn’t want you to regret it in a few years.”
    Calisto glanced down at his arm, a sense of comfort passing through him as he looked over the rosary beads and the cross tattooed on his skin. “I don’t even remember it.”
    “Yeah, I got that.”
    “But I don’t regret it, either. So that says something.”
    She nodded like she understood. “You were pretty stoked about it, from what I remember. But hey, if you’ve got some time, Nick will be back in like an hour or so. He’s got to do the newlyweds’ matching rings.”
    Calisto checked his watch. “I don’t have that kind of time, actually. My … boss is waiting on me.”
    “We can set up an appointment for your touch-ups on the cross,” she suggested.
    “Let’s do that.”
    Calisto could wait a little while longer to maybe get some answers.
    After the girl had his appointment made, he turned to leave, but she called out to stop him.
    “Wait a second … I think Nick kept his originals for you, in case you wanted to have them or something,” she said. “Do you want them?”
    Calisto hesitated.
    What would original sketches do for the questions he had?
    But what would it hurt?
    “Sure,” he said.
    She quickly disappeared into the back of the shop, only to return a few minutes later with a handful of sketchpad papers. Calisto took them with a “thanks” and left the shop, finding Tiny waiting on the side of the busy street, leaning against the SUV.
    “Find what you were looking for?” the enforcer asked.
    Calisto shrugged, glancing down at the papers in his hand. The sketched rosary and cross was the exact same as the one on his arm, except …
    He looked a little closer.
    He brought the paper higher.
    Quickly, he shuffled through a couple of the sketches, finding the exact same thing on each one on three of the black-gray rosary beads side by side. Tugging his suit jacket off, and knowing damn well he probably looked crazy, Calisto pulled up the sleeve of his dress shirt.
    He counted down the beads.
    Thirteen, fourteen … fifteen.
    “What in the hell are you doing?” Tiny asked.
    Calisto ignored him, and his gaze traveled between the tattoo on his arm, and the sketch on the paper. It was there on his arm—they were there.
    Faint, but there.
    Five dates. They’d been hidden in the swirls of the rosary just so, he realized. A passing glance wouldn’t be enough to see them without someone pointing them out. On the paper sketches, it looked like Nick had purposely darkened the dates just to show how they would be incorporated and hidden.
    Calisto took the dates in again.
    Some he recognized.
    His mother’s death. His father’s death, and his grandfather’s passing date.
    The two others were unknown. One of the two was just a month and the year. The February of the previous year. He thought about what he knew had happened around that time because of what people had told him. Affonso and Emma had been married in early February, and the month before, Calisto had spent time in Vegas. The third date had the day tacked on as well, and it was for late September of the previous year as well.
    What were they for?
    He understood the importance of his mother’s death, and why he would want to memorialize something like that, but the other two were unknown.
    “Tiny?” Calisto asked.
    “Yeah?”
    “Does February of last year or September Nineteenth of the same year mean anything to you?”
    Tiny thought about it for a moment. “Not to me, I guess.”
    “Would they mean something to me?”
    “I don’t know,