Page 222 of Lorenzo

“How?”

“We are still working that out.”

She looks around the office again, but the reaction I expect never comes.

There is no panic.

No visible fear.

Instead, her attention sharpens.

Her eyes move from the filing cabinet to the desk, then toward her laptop bag, and I can almost follow the direction of her thoughts as she begins turning both break-ins into information.

It reassures me that she's not scared.

It also irritates me.

“You are taking this remarkably well.”

She looks at me.

“I’m pissed.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Because all I could think of was, what if you had been home last night?”

She huffs out her breath. “Then at least I would know who did this.”

Anger surges through me, but my voice is deadly calm. “Oh, is that all?”

It should have been a warning to her.

She plants one hand on her hip and continues looking at the mess. “I’m just saying I would have had a better chance of figuring out who they were.”

“That is precisely what I am talking about.”

She finally looks at me, as if realizing for the first time that I'm angry. “What?”

“You are standing in the middle of an office someone tore apart, after finding out they did the same thing to your house, and your first instinct is to complain that you missed the opportunity to catch them yourself.”

Her brows draw together. “I know how to handle myself.”

“Damn it, Donna.” I continue in a string of curses in Italian.

“Don't curse at me,” she says, but I'm nowhere near done.

“Don't curse at you? Then what is there for me to do when you're so hard-headed?”

“I’m hard-headed?” she says incredulously. “Me? I'm not the one keeping secrets.”

“Don't change the subject,” I say, my accent thickening in my irritation. “This is about you and your tendency to run headfirst into danger.”

“I've been handling myself just fine for a long time, thank you very much,” she says.

“Handling yourself?” I repeat. “You call this handling yourself?” I gesture at the office around me. “You could have walked in on someone still inside your house. You could have walked in here this morning and found them waiting for you.”