Page 114 of Lorenzo

“So you decided to follow us through several turns and off the highway.”

“I panicked.” Her voice breaks on the final word.

More tears track down her cheeks.

“I saw all those cars and I didn’t know what was happening. I thought you were trying to hurt me.”

She looks at me as she says it.

Appealing to me woman to woman.

Lorenzo stops several feet from her.

Rachel turns her attention to him.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know you. I don’t know what you think I did, but I’m sorry.”

He looks at her without speaking.

She lowers her chin and presses trembling fingers to her mouth.

Her shoulders begin to shake.

It would be convincing if I didn’t know exactly who and what she was.

Up close, I see the small pause between each breath. The way she checks his expression through lowered lashes. The moisture on her cheeks without the swollen eyes or reddening skin that comes with real grief.

Rachel is producing what she thinks he wants to see.

A frightened woman. A victim.

Lorenzo’s face gives her nothing.

“I didn’t mean to follow you,” she says. “I only wanted to know why you were looking for me.”

“You know why,” he says.

His voice is quiet.

Her shoulders still.

Only for a fraction of a second.

Then she shakes her head. “I swear I don’t.”

He moves closer.

Rachel backs into the side of the sedan.

“Drop the act,” he says coldly.

Something in his tone strips the fragility from her face for just a moment.

Her eyes sharpen before she forces them wide again.

“No, you’re wrong,” she says, shaking her head.

“You lured Alessio out of the club,” Lorenzo says. “You took him to the hotel. You had sex with him. You waited until he left. Then you helped put your dead sister in that room and built a murder case around my son.”