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“I can take it from here.”
I stand up and turn to head toward the door, taking a couple of steps before Keva calls after me. “Sienna. Can you take Drago’s phone upstairs and leave it in your bedroom?”
“Sure.” I take the device from her outstretched hand and rush out of the kitchen.
When I get to the bedroom, I throw the phone on the bed and turn to leave again, but then halt at the threshold.Don’t do it.I take a deep breath and peek down the hallway. The fourth floor appears to be deserted, so I close the bedroom door. There’s no lock, unfortunately.
Don’t do it.My consciousness yells at me as I walk back toward the bed.You’re better than that.
I climb on the bed and sit in the center with my legs crossed, staring at my husband’s phone. Does he have photos of his exes on it? What do the women he’s attracted to look like? Tall and sophisticated, dressed in those god-awful boring-colored pantsuits? Drago doesn’t strike me as a man who’d keep images of his girlfriends on his phone, but there have to be at least a few. Breaching someone’s privacy is something I normally would never do, but this thing is taunting me so badly. What if I only take a quick look? Just go into his gallery and scroll through the last few photos. No. I’m not doing it.
I resist the temptation for a whole five minutes. Then, I grab the phone and hit the power button. The screen lights up. And it’s unlocked. I close my eyes for just a moment and take another deep breath.
His background is a photo of someone, but I can’t see the image clearly. The entire home screen is covered with app icons, but I can tell it’s a woman. Lying in bed! I didn’t even need to go into the damn gallery. I can’t believe he still has an ex-lover’s picture as his phone background! I swipe at the screen maniacally, trying to find a window with fewer icons so I can see what the bitch looks like. The first three screens are all cluttered, but the fourth is icon-free, and the photo is fully visible. My heart skips a beat.
The bitch . . . is me.
I’m wearing my favorite zebra-striped pajamas, tangled up in the sheets, lying on my side and clutching a pillow to my chest. He keepsmypicture on his phone.
I swipe back to the home screen and click on the gallery icon. More pictures of me—some of me sleeping, but most are taken from afar, without me knowing. Me—standing in front of a changing room, trying on a dress. Me—taking a selfie next to a rose shrub behind the house. Me—crouching next to a doghouse while Zeus licks at my face. There are more than fifty photos and—
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I jump, startled. My husband is standing in the doorway, staring at the phone in my hands.
“I . . . I . . . I was just checking on the screen,” I mumble and quickly click the power button to put the phone to sleep. “It’s broken.”
Drago reaches the bed in a few long, powerful strides and snatches the phone from my hand.
“Were you reading my messages so you could report to Ajello?” he barks into my face.
“What? No!”
“Really? Why not? From what I’ve gathered, you can understand Serbian rather well.”
My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach. Oh my God, he knows.
“Tell me,mila moya, did you know Serbian before? Or did you learn it specifically for this marriage?”
I close my eyes and drop my head. “I learned it,” I whisper.
“Fucking look at me when you’re speaking to me!” he yells and my head snaps up.
“The don ordered me to learn it!” I scream into his face.
“So it wasn’t a coincidence. It was planned well in advance. How long did it take you to prep for your spying mission? Six months?”
I take a deep breath, trying to keep the tears from spilling. “Two.”
Drago’s eyes flare in surprise. “Two fucking months. How the fuck did you manage to accomplish that?”
“I have a thing for languages,” I whisper. “That’s why the don chose me.”
“Did he threaten you? Because if he had, I’m going to gut that motherfucker.”
I grip the bedcover between my fingers, squeezing it with all my might, and close my eyes. Ajello did threaten my brother, but I never believed he would ever actually hurt Arturo. All things considered, I accepted to be a part of this scheme for my own reasons.
“No one threatened me.” I meet my husband’s piercing gaze. “It was my decision.”
