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‘Did I fall through the rabbit hole?’
‘It’s called a briki. For an Italian, your coffee equipment is woefully lacking. It’s a disgrace.’
‘And you just happened to have this in your pocket?’ Antonio asked, even the image of his friend with a briki in his pocket failing to raise a smile to his lips.
Dimitri looked affronted. ‘Last year—Christmas. I didn’t know what to get you. Emma suggested something that would make you more human in the mornings. It was in the back of your cupboard.’
‘And the coffee? It doesn’t look like it takes ground beans.’
‘That I did bring with me.’
Antonio leant back on the kitchen counter that he rarely used and waited as Dimitri poured thick dark liquid into two small coffee cups.
‘What are you doing here?’ Antonio demanded, thankful that Dimitri ignored the hostility in his tone.
‘You didn’t answer your phone.’
‘What’s happened? Is everything okay?’
Panic rose in his chest, filling up the spaces and making it impossible to breathe. Had things got so bad that he had turned his back on his friends? Had something happened to Emma? For just a moment he felt the sliver of guilt as sharp as a chef’s knife.
‘Well, Danyl’s trade negotiations are hanging by a thread, but he’ll fix that. My father’s company is on the brink, but I’ll fix that. What are you going to do?’
Antonio cursed.
‘You really messed this one up,’ Dimitri said, casting an angry glance in his direction. ‘And Emma is too good a person to mess with. So get in the shower. You smell like self-pity and alcohol and I don’t like it. Be quick.’
Antonio forced himself under the hot water jets of his powerful shower. But it did nothing to remove the taint of dark grime he felt on his skin—had felt ever since seeing the photos of Mandy Bartlett his PI had dug up...ever since Emma had walked away from him.
Antonio decided to leave his hair wet. Although he was feeling much better, rubbing his head didn’t seem that appealing. He entered his kitchen to find Dimitri poring over the images in the folder on Mandy Bartlett, and felt oddly furious that yet another person had seen them.
‘Damaging stuff.’
‘Yes,’ Antonio practically growled, feeling oddly proprietorial over the contents of the folder...over Mandy’s downward descent.
‘Girl needs some sense knocked into her.’
‘She needs help, Dimitri.’
‘Yeah. Not sure her father will give it to her if he gets hold of these, though,’ Dimitri mused. ‘So Emma’s gone, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘A shame. I like her.’
Antonio felt himself bristle.
‘Don’t be stupid—not in that way. So you can put the caveman back in the box.’
Antonio took a sip of the rich, peaty coffee, almost scalding his tongue in the process. He wasn’t sure whether he was ready to hear what Dimitri had to say, but he knew Dimitri would say it anyway.
‘Look, I know how much this deal means to you. I know your need for revenge, Antonio—trust me,’ said Dimitri. ‘I really do. And I will support whatever decision you make. Because you’re my brother. You’re my family. I don’t believe those people who say you can’t pick your family because I can and I have. You and Danyl—you’re it. Whatever you choose to do with Bartlett is your own matter. I’m not here about the deal. I’m here about her.’
And finally all the resistance, all the avoidance that he’d practised since Emma had left him in the hotel suite in Argentina, dropped away.
‘She held a mirror up to me, Dimitri. And I didn’t like what I saw,’ he admitted finally. The ache in his chest was opening up into a river of pain. ‘The horror in her face...the betrayal... I don’t think I can come back from that.’
‘We all have to face the darkest parts of ourselves at some point, Antonio.’
