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With that, Altiere turns sharply, striding out of the room without another word, his message delivered. And I sit there on the bed, my head spinning, a sudden wave of defeat washing over me.
I can’t simply sit back and let this happen to me—or my child. But I have no idea how I’m meant to get out of it.
Tomorrow. I’ll see Dante tomorrow.If I can get a moment to speak with him, then maybe there’s some way that he can help me.
Right now, it feels like my only hope.
21
DANTE
For a month, I’ve tried to find Emma, to no avail.
It’s as if she were a ghost. It would be impressive—someone with so little knowledge ofhowto vanish doing it so effectively—if it weren’ther. But the fact that she disappeared so completely sent me into a panic, unlike anything I’ve ever felt.
If I hadn’t realized that I loved her before, I did then. But it was never more apparent than when I finally broke down and went to her condo again, only to find that she hadleft. I’d been standing outside, knocking hard on her door in an effort to get her to give in and finally come talk to me, when I heard a voice behind me.
“You’re making quite a racket, young man.” A woman who was eighty if she was a day was standing behind me, a slightly peeved look on her face. “It’s after suppertime, you know. You should go on home. Emma’s not here, anyway.”
“She’ll be back eventually.” I’d thought at first that the woman meant that Emma had gone to work—that she’d found a new shop. But she just frowned at me.
“Doubtful. She packed up and left a week ago. Haven’t heard from her or seen her since.”
My chest tightened at that, an unfamiliar fear sweeping through me.What if I actually can’t find her again?
It felt ridiculous, when the thought occurred to me. Now more than ever, it’s difficult to entirely disappear. I couldn’t imagine Emma simply vanishing off of the face of the earth. But that’s exactly what she did.
When I tried to call again, she’d changed her phone number. I went to her friend Brendan’s apartment, and stood in his doorwayjustthreateningly enough that when he insisted he had no idea where she’d gone, I believed him. Especially because of what hedidtell me.
“All I know is that she was leaving,” he insisted. “She didn’t say anything about where she might go. When we talked, I don’t even thinksheknew. If she came up with a plan after that, she definitely didn’t tell me about it.”
“Whywas she leaving?” I pressed, glaring down at him with an expression that made him go a little paler. “From what she told me, she loves LA. We had an entire conversation about how badly she didn’t want to move away. So what changed?”
The twitch at the corner of Brendan’s eye told me that he knew something more than what he was sharing. So I took a step forward, into his apartment, and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m going to need you to start talking.”
“Nick—my boyfriend—he’s going to be home any minute. And then he’ll call the cops, if there’s a stranger here who refuses to leave. You need to go. Or I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” I gave him a threatening look. I wouldn’t actually hurt him—not when I know how close he and Emma were—but Brendan didn’t need to know that. “Tattle on me about what happened to Rico? You know the old adage about snitches, right? Or were you thinking that you’d just get the cops to come and handle this? Because I promise you, almost all of them are in my pocket. And if they’re not, I have enough money to change thatveryquickly.”
Brendan went pale enough to make me think that there wasn’t actually anyone coming home anytime soon. He mumbled something that I couldn’t quite make out, and I cleared my throat.
“I’m going to need you to speak up.”
“She’s pregnant, and she didn’t want you to know.” The words came out so fast that I nearly missed them again, but one in particular stood out.
Pregnant.
And unless I was worse at math than I realized, it couldn’t have been that last night that we didn’t use protection, either. It was one of the other nights, when we at leasttriedto avoid any accidents.
I couldn’t possibly know how that madeherfeel, but it made me feel as if maybe it was meant to be. As if, despite our best efforts at screwing this up, we’re supposed to be together.
But if Emma ran without telling me, then she clearly doesn’t feel the same way.
“And you don’t know where she went?”
Brendan shook his head, looking more terrified by the second. “I swear I don’t. I told her she should talk to you, and she insisted she had to leave. That’s it. I have no idea where she ran off to, Iswear.”
“Alright.” I backed down, because I could tell by that point that he was telling the truth, and there was no point in scaring him further. “Thanks.”
