Page 74 of Take Me Darkly

“I’m aware,” I replied softly, the menacing ghost of Cade’s betrayal hovering between us. “I’ll be careful. I promise. I just really missed them. Can you let me just be me for a little while, and trust that I won’t say too much?”

The line of his shoulders softened by a fraction. He turned his head and caught my mouth properly, hot and brief and entirely too thorough for two minutes of bedroom diplomacy. When he pulled back, his thumb stroked along my jaw one more time.

“I’m not comfortable with any of this, princess.”

“I know,” I whispered.

And it makes me love you even more.

But I couldn’t say the last part out loud. Instead, I just followed his lead out the door and returned to Madeleine and Caterina.

When we rejoined them, Madeleine had already helped herself to the bottle of Masseto and had poured us all generous glasses.

Anton took the armchair across from the sofa. He set his glass on the side table without touching it and laced his fingers over one knee. He had the same contained stillness about him that he wore when he was watching the security feeds at Club O, only now my friends were the screen.

I curled into the corner of the sofa opposite Caterina, where she sat with her feet tucked and knees pressed together. Our position on the couch reminded me of our college days when we’d split a bottle of cheap Chianti and complain about the boys who didn’t deserve us.

For a while, nobody addressed the elephant in the room. Instead, we caught up on meaningless gossip, as if none of us knew what else to say. Madeleine told a story about a runway show in Milan that had nearly burned down a hotel ballroom because a junior stylist had used the wrong kind of tape on a sequined train. Caterina countered with the news that her cousin married a lawyer, only to file for divorce six weeks later once she discovered he had used her loft as collateral on a gambling debt she never knew he had.

Madeleine refilled the glasses without being asked, continuing the frivolous chatter as she poured. I made all the right noises in the right places, but I knew it couldn’t last. We were too good at reading each other to not know what they really wanted to talk about.

Finally, Caterina set her glass down on the marble table, her dark eyes locking onto mine with uncompromising intensity.

“Rena, I can’t do this anymore,” she said, her voice dropping all pretense. “I can’t sit here pretending everything is fine. What the hell happened to you?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. I could feel Anton’s gaze on me without having to look, the weight of his stare holding everything I was not allowed to say.

“There was a fire,” I began. The words came out smaller than I had meant them to. “Mamma was home. I wasn’t. I arrived too late. And then someone shot me. Anton was there for it and brought me here to heal until we could find out who was behind it. There’s not much more to tell.”

Caterina’s lips thinned. “Rena⁠—”

“That’s all I can tell you, Cat. I’m sorry.”

She held my gaze a long moment, then let out a small breath through her nose and reached for her glass again.

“I was on a business trip in London,” Caterina whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “I turned on the news in my hotel room and saw an alert flashing across the screen: Fatal Arson in Lucca. Sylvia Martinelli deceased. Daughter missing.” Her voice broke on the final word.

I’d mistakenly thought Caterina and I had fallen distant. I’d never been more wrong, and my heart ached to hear her pain now.

“We didn’t learn you were shot until days later,” Madeleine added, her sharp accent softening with genuine sorrow. “And by the time we tracked down the hospital in Lucca, you had already been discharged without a forwarding record. You vanished into thin air.”

“I tried calling you so many times,” Caterina said. “I kept getting a recording saying the number was no longer in service, but I kept trying, hoping it was an error. I called the landlord for your flat in Rome. I called the dig site office, the police in Lucca, and the American embassy. Nobody knew anything, or if they did, they would not tell me.”

A sharp ache pierced my chest. I pressed my palms against my face, swallowed by guilt. I had convinced myself they were moving on with their lives, never realizing the agony my silence had caused.

“Serena’s original phone was destroyed in all the chaos during the fire,” Anton cut in smoothly, his lie so seamless it sounded like absolute fact. “I provided her with a new one when we landed in Manhattan. She wanted to reach out, but she didn’t have your personal numbers memorized, and modern technology has made the White Pages a thing of the past.”

At least the part about not memorizing the phone numbers was true.

“White pages?” Madeleine asked.

“It’s a phone directory in America, mostly for landlines that are becoming obsolete,” Caterina explained.

Madeleine nodded, making a sound of comprehension.

My brow furrowed, having just realized that neither of them mentioned how they figured out I was in the United States.

“How did you know to come to New York?” I asked.