Page 161 of Valentino

“No longer than two minutes. She just grabbed her diary and….”

“Do not let her out of your sight.” I cut him off.

“I….”

I hang up on him midsentence and lean back in my chair, shocked but not surprised.

I flick to my other computer and scroll through to what I need.

She lied to you.

No, she wouldn’t, this is a mistake, it has to be. I roll my lips to the bitter taste of betrayal.

No. I cannot believe she would betray me…. It has to be a mistake.

I turn the computer screen toward me and replay the security footage from her office.

Anna bounces out of the SUV, scans her card, and walks through the front doors.

Marco closes them behind her and waits outside. She gets into the elevator, and I scroll through and flick to another screen from her floor.

There’s a delay….

“She’s on a different floor,” I murmur. “What is she doing? She should be out by now.” I furiously type. “I’ve lost her, I only have cameras on that floor.”

The elevator doors open. “Wait…. There she is.”

With my heart in my throat, I sit in silence and watch her walk into her office and close the door, she looks left and then right before digging something out from beneath her sweater.

I lean closer to the screen.

“What’s she doing?” I whisper.

She opens the locket and pulls out a SIM card and looks around her office and eventually picks up the corner of the filing cabinet and slides the SIM card underneath it.

The computer screen blurs as the knife of finality cuts me to the bone.

“She’s still in touch with him,” I murmur to myself. “She’s still in love with him; he’s been using her against me.” I pinch the bridge of my nose to try and calm myself, to act unruffled, to stave off the thermonuclear rage I feel.

The sheer blinding betrayal.

Here I am falling at Anna’s feet…. While she worships his.

“Why did she give me the phone?” I stare at the screen as I watch her get back into the elevator. “It doesn’t make sense, if she didn’t want me to know anything about it, why did she tell me at all? Is this a setup or some kind of a trap?”

The elevator opens into the foyer, and I watch on as she walks out and locks the front doors of the building behind her.

I have no idea what she’s capable of at this point.

Marco opens the back door for her, and she climbs into the back seat. I clench my jaw, too angry to form a sentence.

Too heartbroken for comprehension.

Pain sears through my chest as the last of the light vacates the premises.

She knows that if she helped him that it would be catastrophic for all of us…. And she did it anyway. I clench my jaw as the sky turns red.

The rules just changed.