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“Bullshit. Who are you? There’s something you’re not telling me, I know there is.”
I decide I’ve waited long enough. I lead her through a side door into a smoking room I rarely use. “You really want to know?” I ask.
“Of course I do.”
“You sure? Because once I tell you, there’s no going back.”
“Quit being so mysterious and just tell me. Are you James Bond? Is that it? Are you some international playboy spy? Or are you Blofeld? Are you a Bond villain? Is that what you are?”
“If you stop talking for long enough to take a breath, you might find out.”
“Sorry. Go on. I’m just curious, that’s all.”
“You seem a lot more than curious. This is your last chance to walk out that door. Once I tell you the truth, there’s no turning back. You understand?”
She groans. “Enough. Just tell me.”
“It’s simpler to show you. Come this way.”
I push open the secret door in the bookcase on the far wall. “Up to you,” I say, looking back over my shoulder at her. “How badly do you want to know? Willing to walk into the dark to find out?”
I know what’s at the end of the corridor in front of me but she has no idea. How brave is she willing to be?
The decision she makes now will tell me everything I need to know.
Is she the one?
She gets to her feet, looks back at the door behind her, and then at me. She swallows hard. “You can’t just tell me?”
“Easier to show you who I am and what I am. No one ever comes further than here. You the same as all the rest? Or you want to see for yourself.”
“Sounds creepy.” She takes a step away from me. She pauses and my world does too. She looks at the ceiling and then spins around to face me. “All right,” she says, nodding my way. “I’m sure if I had decent parents, they’d have warned me not to do things like this but fuck it. I know I’ll live to regret it but let’s do this.”
She takes my outstretched hand. I feel the softness of her fingers, the slight tremble as the door swings shut behind us, leaving us trapped together in the darkness. The only sound left is her heavy breathing, it’s close enough to my ear to make me want to claim that mouth, rip that dress of her, fuck her right here, right now.
Not yet.
She deserves to know the truth first. After that, it will be too late for her to stop me.
Fifteen
Ophelia
The bookcase swings shut behind us. For one moment, we’re engulfed in darkness and I’m glad he’s holding my hand. Then lights flick on above my head, one at a time, running along the broad corridor in front of me like an arrow guiding us forward.
“This way,” Vincenzo says.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
We reach a metal door. Vincenzo presses his hand to a panel in the wall beside it. There’s a hiss and a click and then the door slides open.
On the other side is a set of steps leading down between two spotlessly white walls. I grip onto the banister to prevent myself from falling as we head down. Each tread has an F in the center, I notice.
We step out a few moments later into a garage filled with cars so expensive I don’t recognize a single one of them. “Take your pick,” Vincenzo says.
“Are these all yours?”
