“Sorry for crashing,” she said with a little shrug. “But our kids go to school together, and I need to speak with you ... privately.”
He gave her an appraising look. Then he said, “Follow me.”
She could feel the men in the basement watching as they left the room. Weaving through the partygoers, he led her up the stairs to an office on the main floor. He opened the door and gestured her inside.
A whisper of fear caressed the back of her neck as he pulled the door shut with a soft click.
How many times had she told the young women taking her self-defense classes to read Gavin de Becker’s bookThe Gift of Fear? How many times had she told them to listen to that prickle of unease?
And now here she was, in an enclosed space with a man she didn’t know, failing to follow her own advice.
She reached inside her purse and surreptitiously removed her keys, and the Mace attached to her key chain, fisting them inside her closed palm.
She’d had this key chain for years. Did Mace degrade over time? Did it have an expiration date, like canned tuna? Expired Mace was such a poor substitute for the Glock she’d always carried for work.
Focus, Piper.
She took a steadying breath as Bruno moved to a table beside the empty fireplace and filled a crystal glass with amber liquid from a decanter.
“Drink?” he asked, raising the glass.
She’d addressed this exact situation when she taught self-defense classes.Never accept an opened drink from a strange man.
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” He took a sip, then moved to the leather wingback chair behind an enormous mahogany desk in the center of the room.
“Please, sit.” He gestured to a leather chair in front of the desk. Smaller. Lower. The supplicant’s chair.
She sat with her purse on her knees, keeping her fist hidden behind it. Suddenly she felt silly, like a little old lady gripping her handbag to ward off pickpockets.
Relax. He’s a fellow parent. Not Pablo Escobar. Or some guy trying to roofie a coed in a college bar.
She glanced around the room. Dark wood paneling, a chess set in front of the window. Bookshelves lined one wall, but she noticed the shelves held no actual books.
“So,” he began. “You are a mother ... from the school?” He spoke with an accent, but she couldn’t place it.
“Yes. My name is Piper Mondello. Your son Alex and my daughter Caitlin are classmates.”
“How nice.” He gazed at her under heavy-lidded eyes. “So what can I do for you?”
His accent tugged at her mind. Azerbaijan? Valletta? One of the former Soviet satellite states?
She relaxed her grip on the keys and pulled out her phone. She held up a screenshot. “Your son took a picture of my daughter’s butt during PE class and posted it on Instagram. Then he made an account called Caitlin’s Ass.”
He looked at her evenly. Then he shrugged. “Boys will be boys.”
She tossed the phone back into her purse and clenched her fist around her keys again. “What he’s doing is illegal. It’s online harassment. We could have him expelled. We could take him to court. He could be charged with disseminating child pornography.”
She wasn’t entirely sure if this was true. The law hadn’t caught up with the technology in most states. Penalties were sketchy when it came to adult online harassment, and even murkier where juveniles were involved. But it could be true—itshouldbe true, damn it. She threw it out there so he’d take the situation seriously.
It didn’t work. He looked completely unfazed. “I will tell him to delete this. Is that what you want?”
“It’s a start,” she said, keeping her voice cool, unemotional. “I also want him to stop speaking to my daughter, to stop texting her, to stop taking her picture, and to leave her alone. He’s sexually harassing her. And it needs to stop.”
He tilted his head. “You look familiar.”
Oh no. Not this again. He didn’t look like the kind of person who readThe Washington Post. He looked like the kind of person who got his news from scantily clad women in TikTok videos. But still. He probably watched cable TV, and they’d had a field day with the Incident on Fox and CNN.
