The menacing chill in his voice makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “What will you do to get to her?” I ask, voice low. “I want to help, Draco. This is my fault. I need to do something too, not just hide out here.”
His head shakes from side to side, his face seeming much paler now. “I blame myself for ever sending him out there. I knew something was wrong—I could feel it deep in my gut when he didn’t answer the damn phone. He always answers for big deals. Always, but I ignored that churn in my gut and automatically assumed he was going against me.” His eyes flash up to meet mine. “But I bet that’s what you want, right? For me to blame myself. For me to put everything on my shoulders? Well, fuck that.” He points a stern finger at me. “You are to blame too, Gianna. You. If that no-armed fucker hadn’t been set free, they never would have found Thiago in the first place! He knew everything! He listened and watched for months, and you just let him go, like he was a fucking saint!” Nostrils flared, he takes a step back, going to the door. “I’m really starting to think I should have just killed you the same day I killed Trigger Toni. If I had, none of this shit would have ever happened.”
His words are a solid punch in the gut—or maybe to the face. Either way, it knocks the breath right out of my lungs.
He walks right past me before I can even stop him.
5
GIANNA
He doesn’t sleep in the room with me.
After last night—after what he said—how could he?
It’s well past 8:00 a.m., and since he walked off last night, there has been nothing but silence.
I push out of bed and walk to the door, hoping he’s still around. Stepping around the corner that leads to the dining room, I hear glasses clanking and forks scraping china. I enter the dining room, and am utterly surprised to see Mrs. Molina sitting there with a newspaper on the table.
She’s reading the newspaper, a bowl of hot cereal and fruit in front her. It’s a much smaller table, only able to seat six. She hears me coming in and lowers her paper, smiling wide at me. From that smile alone, I’m assuming she doesn’t know what I’ve done…at least not yet. Draco is nowhere in sight.
“Buenos días, cariño!” she sings, dropping and folding her paper. She sits up in her chair, smiling up at me. I take the seat across from her, warmth coursing through my bloodstream. She doesn’t know. She can’t know, otherwise she wouldn’t be smiling right now. “How are you?” she asks.
“I’m great!” I try and sound positive and uplifted. I’m far from it.
“Are you loving it here? You’ve been here longer than I have, right? I arrived around midnight last night.”
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her.
She smiles, and Emilio steps around the corner, coming from the kitchen. “What would you like this morning, Patrona?” he asks.
“I’ll take what Mrs. Molina has,” I say, and he bobs his head. “Thanks, Emilio.” Mrs. Molina takes a sip of her apple juice. “Will Draco be eating with us too?”
She shrugs. “I have no idea. It is not like him to miss breakfast, but he’s told me he has a lot of things to handle this morning, so he’ll probably be a little late. He told me you would be joining me though. If you couldn’t tell, I was waiting.” She winks.
I smile a little and then twist my lips. We’re quiet for a moment. She takes a bite of her green apple. I grab a red Honey crisp from the bowl. “It’s not weird to be taken away from one home and put into another so quickly?”
She waves a highly dismissive hand. “Oh, please. I am used to it. His father did it all the time. No one place is ever safe for long when you are a Molina. That mansion we were in was just our favorite one.” She looks around. “But this one is starting to grow on me, too. It’s…simple. And we don’t get much simplicity in our lives.”
My upper lip twitches to form a small smile. Emilio returns with a hot bowl of cereal and places it in front of me. It smells delicious, like cinnamon and honey. “Enjoy, Patrona.”
He takes off, eyeing Mrs. Molina briefly before stepping around the corner. Though I have no appetite, I dig into my food anyway, eating without really tasting it, while she reads more of her newspaper.
A door shuts from a distance, and I hear slow and measured footsteps. When Draco steps around the corner, my heart goes mad, banging like drums, my pulse loud in my ears.
He doesn’t even look at me as he walks around the table, gives his mother a kiss on the top of her head, and then takes the seat to the left of her, at the head of the table, of course.