“Damn it, Benji, it’s missing!”

Benjamin turns, muscles drawing up under his navy jacket like puppet cords. A man preparing to strike another against his own desires, all to keep the teenager in line. Mob violence hardly ever discriminates by age.

At least not here in Boston. Never in Boston.

“You better find the wretched thing, Paul…” His knuckles fatten around golden rings, “I swear on my life, you fuck this up and you’re finished.”

My heart skips a beat. Skips two. And then my palm pushes into my chest to make sure the organ is still functioning.

“What’s the matter with you?” Benjamin cocks his head my way, hard amber eyes oozing suspicion. “Don’t like birthday parties or something?”

I shake my head. “It’s just the clowns, balloons—I don’t know, boss, it’s all… dated. Don’t you think?” Sweat pools around the collar of my dress shirt, and I reach to pull the fabric from my neck on a swallow.

Both men go dead-silent.

Almost as dead as the body on the stainless steel cart between them.

I’d been careless. Wheeling the thing right through the chef’s kitchen on my way to the shed. They’d told me Carmela had stepped out to pick up vanilla frosting, the last ingredient she needed to finish icing the rest of the cake, and it seemed faster than taking the paved road around the mansion. Of course, I hadn’t anticipated all the wrapped boxes in the entryway, the mess of rainbow decor, the bottomless trays of antipasto along the marble island…

Nor the baking tray with creamy batter at the end closest to the oven. Several knuckles deep.

It could be anywhere. Right?

“You saying I’m throwing my baby a lame party?”

Benjamin’s voice crawls to murderous volume.

I swallow again, but this time the lump swells to twice its size. The off-key choir of guests singing ‘happy birthday’ just outside the shed, dragging a shiver into the pit of my stomach. Shaking loose undigested antipasto from the walls.

Sending it high up into my throat.

Paul’s alabaster face somehow manages to grow shades paler when he connects the dots. And suddenly all three of us are peering out at Benji’s backyard through the gap between the gray doors.

Mowed grass swipes at moving feet. The ghost of once-lit candles, wafting into the shed with a waxy warning as Maria pulls the striped pink sticks from the cake.

If he spots it when I do, he says nothing.

But I don’t miss the furious anger gripping his brow as Benjamin leans in.

The shriveled beige tip juts out from the white frosting.

A bump in the buttercream, pointing straight at me from the side of the cake facing the shed.

The knife pushes in.

The folding table jostles, Carmela sawing to a stop.

Guilt snaps my gaze to the stainless steel cart—to the wet stump at the end of the dead guy’s right arm. And all I hear next is the blood-chilling scream of a birthday girl who’ll probably never eat cake again.