(Miss Hawtrey-Moore tightens her lips, visibly distressed by the topic.)
EHM: He’s not my father. I love him, but… I don’t know, he’s never been a father to me.
AM: Would you say that Mr. Dubois has been?
(Silence. The officer repeats the question.)
EHM: No, no. There’s always been two men in my life, but I’ve never had a father.
Chapter 15
Enzo was outside. The Club Montari only had one exit, and with so many people inside, it was almost a miracle that he managed to spot my face in the crowd. He ran toward me, my coat and Gina’s tugged under his arm.
“Vera!” he exclaimed. The relief at seeing me softened his features. “Thank god you’re safe. I tried to find you but couldn’t. Where were you?”
“At the Sortija,” I replied, letting him drape the coat over my shoulders.
He frowned.
“What were you doing there?”
“I was living out my fantasies,” Gina, wrapped in her furry jacket, exhaled steam. “Until Vera interrupted me.”
“Hey!” I said, giving her a playful punch on the shoulder. “I didn’t know you were there. Gina.” Then I looked at Enzo. “I went to the Sortija because you asked me to.”
His eyebrows knitted together, creasing his forehead. “Me?”
“In the call.” I blinked, the confusion settling in like a fog. “Did I misunderstand? I barely had any signal in that casino.”
“A casino?” Gina interjected. “Fuck, I can’t believe I missed that.”
Enzo pulled out his phone,showing us the screen. It was an iMessage conversation with an unknown number.
“Vera, you were the one who told me to go to the Sortija, so I called you,” he said, his forehead wrinkling. “This iswhat I received.”
Oh, fucking casino. Fucking club. Enzo wasn’t telling me to go to the Sortija; he thought I was already there. I handed his phone back, my fingers grazing his for a fleeting moment. Without a glance, he tucked it into his back pocket.
“I assume that’s not your number,” he said to Gina, tilting his head.
“Sorry, sweetheart, you’re not my type.”
“They must have mistaken the person,” I tried to reason.
Neither of them seemed convinced, and to be honest, I didn’t believe my own words either. Still, they both murmured their agreement, and the matter was settled. None of us had the energy to dig deeper into who the number belonged to.
“Do you want me to take you home?” Enzo offered.
I shot my friend a skeptical look, but her eyes sparkled with a crescent-shaped smile.
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice pitched louder than necessary. “I need to go to my parents’ house tonight. I’ll call a taxi for myself, you can take Vera home, right?”
Minutes later, I found myself in Enzo Woods’s car, the very same guy I’d spent a year telling myself I couldn’t have. The boy I had dreamed about for weeks. But, instead of butterflies, my stomach felt like a knotted net. Someone had tried to get Enzo to go to the Sortija. Could it be that whoever it was thought I would be with him? Would I have found out that the club belonged to the Hawtrey-Moore family if I hadn’t gone to the Sortija? Did someone want me to figure it out?
My thoughts flew to Bastian. Bastian, whom I had encountered at the club and seemed as surprised as I was to see me there. Bastian, who had helped me find the Sortija, who already knew that the Dubois and Hawtrey-Moore owned theplace. He, who was dating Timotheo Larousse’s stepdaughter.
What if it had been him all along?
“Is everything okay?” Enzo asked me.
