“All right. I’m done with this conversation.” Turning, I grab Frankie’s info from my desk. “This is for you. Best of luck.”
With squinted eyes, he scans the scribbled address and number. “What’s this?”
“I may have found your sister,” I say.
His gaze holds mine for a fraction of forever, but we don’t exchange another word.
The room hangs heavy with the weight of everything we aren’t saying. Everything we could say, would say, and will never have a chance to say again.
Once he calms down and comes to his senses, we can talk about moving forward, but I will not put up with him storming into my house accusing me of doing something so deplorable to my own daughter.
Folding the paper, he jams it in his jeans pocket, gives me a parting glance I couldn’t read if I tried.
And then he’s gone.
Chapter 30
Fabian
* * *
I stop at a four-way intersection a few blocks away from Rossi’s, retrieve the torn paper from my pocket, and scan the handwriting.
Frankie Catalano
746 County Line Road
Unit 1
Spearville, IA
309-555-8829
My headache whooshes and my skin is still flushed hot from that infuriating exchange with Rossi, but I type the number into my phone and press the green button.
“The number you have reached is no longer in service …” greets me. I hang up. It’s not like I knew what I was going to say if she answered anyway.
Typing the address into my GPS, the screen shows an arrival time of two hours. It’s still early enough in the day that if I showed up, it wouldn’t be too late.
Assuming she even lives there.
There’s a chance I could drive one hundred and twenty miles for nothing.
Either way, it’s not like I have anything better to do.
Until I figure out what happened with those photos, everything’s in limbo. A dark gray void where nothing makes sense and everything that was once sweet is now sour.
I press the “go” button on the navigation system and follow the guided prompts until I hit an open stretch of highway outside of town.
Knuckles tight around the steering wheel, I head toward Spearville with a head full of doubt and body full of white-hot adrenaline.
Even if Frankie turns me away, it’s not like this day could get any worse.
Chapter 31
Rossi
* * *
“What the heck was that about?” Carina shuffles into my office as Fabian tears out of the driveway. “Just put Lucia down for a nap and then I heard the front door slam.”
The wild look in his eyes, his fingers digging into his hips, the cutting tone, the harsh words, the slamming of the door—I’ve officially experienced Fabian’s famous hotheaded temper. Only something tells me that was the diet version …
“I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want you to get offended,” I say, softening my words.
“You know you literally cannot offend me, right?” She laughs.
“Just wait …”
She pulls up a chair to the other side of my desk, crossing her legs and shrugging. “What’s up?”
“So apparently some photos were leaked,” I say. “Of Fabian and Lucia.”
I pause to read her expression. I’ve known my sister for three decades and half the time I know her better than she knows herself. Any time she’s ever told a lie, her nose twitches and she gets this weird curl to her upper lip, like she’s trying not to laugh.
“These pictures were on my phone,” I continue. “And somehow, someone accessed them and now they’re shopping them around to tabloids for a lot of money …”
Carina’s jaw falls and her brows knit. “Oh my god. You guys think I did it?”
Lifting my palms, I say, “No one is saying you did it. We’re just trying to narrow down the possibilities.”
“But I’m a suspect.” She frowns, sitting up. “Rossi, I would never, ever, in a hundred billion years do anything like that. Not to mention your phone is Fort Knox. You have fifty million passwords on everything, and you have to log in with your face. How could I access your pictures? And why would I sell them knowing I would get caught?”
There’s no movement in her nose, no curl in her lip.
No tell-tale salesman tenor in her voice, like she’s trying to sell a lie.
“I believe you,” I say.
The room turns silent. She chews on her lip and I pick at a hangnail, both of us lost in thought.
“Okay, so this is really disturbing. We have to figure this out,” she says. “Who else would’ve had access to your phone?”
The idea of my daughter’s face being plastered all over social media is nothing short of upsetting, but the upside is babies change so drastically from month to month. An image of her at nine months will hardly resemble an image of her six months from now. This is less than ideal, of course. An extreme invasion of privacy, to say the least. But it could be worse.