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Nope. Not going there again. “I gotta run, Mom. I’m home. But I promise—if I talk to the boys, I’ll have them call.”
“Take care of yourself, Iris. I love you.”
“Love you too.” She hung up, then gathered her bags and got out. The driver popped the trunk, and she grabbed her backpack and carry-on.
“Need help, ma’am?” The driver was a younger man, Italian, with dark hair, well-dressed. Very Milano.
“No, thank you,” she said, strapping the bags over her carry-on handle before putting on the backpack. She tipped him, then pocketed her phone, then schlepped her bag up to her gate entrance. She could enter the front door, but it opened on the street level, a tiny alcove with just a place to hang her coat and store her shoes before a steep flight of stairs led to the main level.
Instead, she unlocked the wrought iron gate that led to her tiny cobblestone garden. A table with chairs, a few planters with geraniums spilling out in desperate need of pruning.
She used her key and opened the back door and hung her keys on the rack near the door. In the semidarkness, she set her bags on the small island in the kitchen. Then she headed toward the stairs.
Nearly tripped on a book in the middle of her floor.
What?Walking over to the wall, she flicked on the light.
Stilled.
She’d been robbed. Or maybe not, because at first glance, it seemed she had the big stuff—the flat-screen television, the Bose stereo system.
But her bookcase had been emptied, most of her collection on the floor. And the cushions were off her sofa.
She froze, listening. Nothing but the thundering of her heartbeat. Still, she grabbed her Japanese chef’s knife out of the drawer. Swallowed.
Then she crept upstairs.
Her upper floors weren’t big—a master and guest room-slash-office on the second floor, and another guest room in the attic.
The stairs creaked, and she stopped.
No intake of breath, no creaking of the floorboards. She held her knife up, took another step—silent—and kept going.
She reached the landing—it overlooked the open room below—then eased her way to her bedroom.
The mattress was off the frame, the sheets torn from the bed, and the contents of her closet lay on the floor—shoes, dresses, pants, belts, jackets. The drawer to her dresser hung open, also emptied.
Her gut knotted at the destruction. Even her nightstand drawer had been pulled out, upended, her toiletries on the bare mattress.
No, not a robbery either, because her jewelry case lay open, pawed through, the jewelry there, although not fancy, still in puddles on her dresser top.
She closed the door and kept going.
The guest room was in the same condition, mattress tossed, the bedclothes on the floor, only now the pillows spilled out foam pieces, stabbed and empty.
Now a heat added to the knot. For the love—why her pillows? From America, no less.
Jerk. Whatever the thief had wanted, it hadn’t been her Anatoly Metlan original oil of Portofino that hung over the bed, so that was good.
She took a breath, then turned and headed up the stairs to the attic.
She’d heard from Jonas that he and Fraser had stayed here a month or so ago while Fraser had been on his runabout through Europe looking for Princess Imani. She’d missed him by a day or two.
The room stood untouched, the single beds still covered with white duvets, pillows. Nothing of value here except the view, really.
She stood at the window as the last of the sun departed the sky. The moon was already rising, its beam upon the dark waters of Lake Como. Then she pulled her phone from her pocket.
“Don’t do it.”
