Page 80 of One Breath After Another

See, she’d never been honest.

Not completely.

Penny’s biggest demon wasn’t a man long dead. The monster hiding in the depths of her soul wasn’t every man who had ever used her body as a child for their sexual pleasure. The truth was far more frightening than that. Who haunted her was more real than all of that combined.

She had the chance to take them down.

And currently ... Allegra was still smiling at her.

Like Penny should already know what would happen next.

Maybe she did.

• • •

PENNY’S FEAR GOT AHEAD of itself ... thankfully. She hadn’t even needed to speak to her mother—or barely look at the woman—once the lawyers really got down to business. Allegra had her side of things, the estate had its own lawyers, and then Penny had hers as well. Signing her signature on all the many dotted lines ended up taking the bulk of the time. Luca ended up being back in lots of time while Roz remained in the quiet room feeding the baby.

Once it was all said and done, Penny was shuffled out of the room by her lawyers, given a folder and told, “That’s it. And when—or if—you want access to the money, you walk into the bank and tell them what to do with it.”

That was it.

“Everything good?” Roz asked when Penny came to stand in the doorway of the quiet room. “I’m almost done.”

The shawl Roz had thrown around her son while he drank his bottle did little to hide his wiggling feet. It was cute. Something he had always done, even when he was brand new, while someone fed the boy.

“Yeah, it looks like we’re finished with our side of things,” Luca said for Penny. “The estate lawyer is in there with the other one, but that doesn’t involve us. So, whenever you’re done we can leave. I’m gonna go use the bathroom before we go.”

“All right,” Roz replied to her brother.

Luca headed down the hallway near the bank of elevators where a sign pointed around a corner for the bathrooms.

Penny let out a little sigh. “That went easier than I thought it would.”

“Of course, it did. Just some paperwork.”

Right.

Well, that’s what she wanted Roz to think. There was no reason to worry her with things that hadn’t even happened—like a confrontation with her mother.

While Roz went back to feeding the baby, Penny lingered out in the hallway just beyond the visibility of the doorway to the quiet room. She wanted a minute alone—even if it was only a sense of privacy in some way—to hold the weight of the folder in her hands that now said she was the recipient of several of her father’s millions.

She still hadn’t figured out what to do with it or—

“Will you look at me now?”

Penny’s head snapped up at the quiet question. Somehow, in her distraction, she had missed Allegra leaving the conference room to come and stand in the hallway. Just ten feet away from Penny. Ten short steps separated her from the person who had caused her the most pain.

And probably wasn’t done, she knew. Because that was the thing about her mother ... it never really felt over.

“I—”

“You do know why I allowed you to leave the country the first time, don’t you? Why I kept you in private schools?” her mother asked.

Penny swallowed hard. “It fixed a problem.”

“In a sense. I gave you what you wanted—to be away from it all—and it corrected the issue of having you near. Coming back wasn’t any different, was it?”

What?