Page 74 of One Step After Another

But the missed calls and piling texts on his phone that she hadn’t destroyed were starting to burn a hole in the back of his mind. Not that he’d answered any of them despite the growing frustration from Nazio’s messages and his mother’s constant stream of worries. Luca had been off the grid—unreachable by his family, friends, and even people who had jobs waiting on his back burner—for longer than he could excuse.

At this point, he was just playing with fire.

Inside a bedroom, Luca lingered by the doorway as Penny carelessly shed her clothing and tossed it to a nearby chair. She disappeared into the connected walk-in closet as he considered how to broach the fact that she was running out of time to make the choice of returning herself.

Not that he could force her to go back. The time for that had obviously passed long ago. He missed his chance there big time.

Luca knew that.

He wasn’t stupid.

There were other means at his disposal, now. Ways he could expose her current life and location to the people who wanted that information. Except he was quite aware that could be dangerous for her. Someone had tried to kill her. How long would the Donatis have Penny on their radar—just to know she was alive and well—before the news was passed on to someone else who only meant to do her harm?

It made him pause.

Fucked his plans entirely.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Luca didn’t know where to begin with his next move. He wondered ...

“Was that your plan?” His question came out quiet when Penny reappeared from within the closet with an item that she dumped to the bed. “Get me close, let me see just enough of your business right now that I have a basic understanding of the situation you’re in, and let me draw conclusions myself from there,” he clarified at her silent stare. “Because why else would you stay put with me for days, right? Why else bring me here, too? The devil you know is better than the one you don’t, huh?”

“Luca—”

“I think some of this was ... all accidental.”

“Some of it,” she admitted. “Most of it.”

“You’re being hunted, aren’t you?”

Penny didn’t flinch.

In fact, she smiled.

“It was bound to happen, Luca. One can only keep the company of monsters for so long before they start to notice you’re not quite the same.”

Appropriate, he thought.

Considering everything ...

“You just had to go and make yourself a very present complication while it happened,” she told him without any heat in her tone.

“And if I don’t go along with keeping everything I know about you under the radar—”

“You already have your answer, I’m sure.”

He did.

And it pissed him off.

Because he understood, too.

“I didn’t plan very much,” Penny added, shrugging as she opened a leather satchel across the bed. The spread of sharp knives in all shapes and sizes stared back, nestled in their hooks and glinting under the light of the bedside lamp. “I just let what was going to happen ... happen. Inevitable, you know?”

“No, I don’t—”

“You’re mad because I gave you what you wanted?”

Luca’s brow lifted high. “What?”