Page 83 of One Breath After Another

PENNY LET NAZ AND ROZ throw a party. For her eighteenth birthday, that was.

She wished she hadn’t.

If only she could have foreseen the way a single conversation with her mother could send Penny flying back in so many ways ... Her nightmares were back. She could barely breathe when someone stood too close to her. Every room was too small to be inside for any length of time, but the outside was even more terrifying.

Nothing was right.

Everything was entirely wrong.

Just like her mother.

Roz brushed off Penny’s snappiness and quiet demeanor as stress leading up to the massive eighteenth birthday party. She even told the teenager that she would be more surprised if Penny wasn’t in a mood lately.

That only made her feel worse.

The guilt was a killer.

Still, she couldn’t tell the truth.

Didn’t dare.

What if her mother—

Penny slammed the heavy door of the mansion’s library closed behind her, dragging in a breath that shook and ached the whole way in. Her palms pressed against the wood as she listened to the hum of the party and music down the hall while she tried to soothe the panic attack clawing its way through her nervous system.

Too many people.

Too many smiles.

Too many lies.

Because she was putting them all in danger—every single one of them. Just by being there. What happened if her mother changed her mind ... what if just telling wasn’t a good enough reason for Allegra—and all the people connected to her mother’s business—to kill Penny?

She sucked in a ragged breath, letting go of the door to wipe the wet tears that had fallen in her haste to get away from the party before anyone could even notice she was gone. No doubt, someone would come looking for her soon.

Wasn’t that the entire point?

This was supposed to be her night.

Her eighteenth birthday party.

Fuck.

It was something she wanted. For the first time, she wanted to be celebrated. Why did her mother have to ruin something else that should have been just for Penny?

“I’m not equipped to deal with the tears of a teenage girl—should I leave?”

The new—male—voice had Penny swinging around on the spot. The library doors pressed against her back as she found a familiar man watching her from the other side of the room. Behind the large desk in the library, he stood drinking what looked to be whiskey on ice as he observed her mental breakdown with nothing more than a cocked eyebrow. His eyes were dark—soul-deep, some might say, but cold, too.

In the time she had been with Naz and Roz, she could count on one hand the number of conversations she had had with the man staring at her.

Cross Donati, that was.

Naz’s father.

Head of the family, she knew.

It was never said.