One of the floorboards is loose. I use the nail file I stuck behind the skirting to lift it. The box I hid is still there. I take it out and blow the dust off the lid. Then I pack the shoes back in their place.
Straightening with the box, I give Emily an impersonal smile. “Thank you for your help. I won’t take any more of your time.”
She runs after me. “Tatiana, wait.”
I don’t because she doesn’t deserve my attention. I trusted her, and she betrayed me just like Dante did. She not only carried on working for him when she knew he killed my mom, but she also developed a relationship with him. She obviously cares enough about him to defend him. That puts them on the same side, which is against me.
Emily doesn’t come after me when I go in search of Dante. I find him in the library, leaning an elbow on the mantlepiece as if he owns it, which he does, of course. He’s staring into the cold fireplace, his perfect features set in concentration.
No, not perfect. He’s impossibly handsome. There’s no arguing the fact. But in the light that falls through the tall windows, the shadows of his face are more pronounced. His nose is the slightest bit crooked, not so much that you’d notice it if you looked him straight in the eyes. But from this angle, the faults in his making are more visible. Yet instead of diminishing his beauty, those tiny flaws only add to them. They make him more unique.
He looks up when I enter. His gaze shifts to the box I carry under my arm. He wants to hide his curiosity, but I know him too well. Even though he feigns disinterest, I recognize the way his eyes tighten a fraction like they always do when something has caught his attention.
I pause just inside the door. We remain like that for a moment, assessing one another from across the distance.
Although his stance remains nonchalant, his tone is serious. “You’re upset about Emily.”
Smiling, I shake my head. “Did you just want to rub that into my face? Is that why you brought me here? To show me that everyone has turned against me?”
He straightens and lowers his arm to his side. “That wasn’t my intention. I brought you here to take what you want. I thought seeing a familiar face would make you feel better. If I’d known finding Emily here would upset you, I would’ve asked her not to be present.”
As if that would’ve changed the fact that she’s a traitor. I prefer knowing the truth to hiding my head like an ostrich in the sand.
I tap the lid of the box. “I found what I wanted.”
He drops his gaze to the box again. “That’s it? No photos or sentimental ornaments? Not even your mother’s jewelry? Leander sold most of it, but I managed to save a few pieces. I reckoned you’d like to have them.”
Walking deeper into the room, I shift my hold on the box. “This is all I need.”
He watches me intently as I stop in front of him. His gaze follows my actions as I put the box on the side table. He’s dying to know what’s inside. His whole body is coiled like a spring. The need to know is eating him alive. He wants to snatch that box away more than anything he’s ever wanted to do. I can tell. But he shoves a hand in his pocket and keeps up his casual manner.
His eyes dart to the box when I flick off the lid. I take out a thick pile of letters, each one addressed to me in the same handwriting.
Dante’s letters.
He left me notes and love letters outside the building, hidden in the hollows of tree trunks and under the flowerpots on the ground floor windowsill. I kept everything, every rose and each wrapper of the chocolate hearts he gave me. The flowers that I pressed between the very pages of the books in this library are now brown and flaking.
One by one, I throw those keepsakes and letters into the fireplace. His gaze is no longer curious as he witnesses the action. The unreadable mask is back on his face. He says nothing, not even when I take the lighter fluid from the mantlepiece and drench the small pile in the fireplace. He doesn’t as much as wince when I put a match to them.
He only speaks when the flames are leaping up the chimney, burning away the sweetness of our history, his tone as neutral as his expression. “Those were my letters.”
“No.” Transfixed, I stare into the orange glow of the flames. “Those were your lies.”
“Burning them won’t change the fact that I meant every word I wrote on those pages.”
The fire burns out quickly, just like we did.
Slowly, I turn my face back to him. “I stopped believing you on the night you proved to me that you can’t be trusted. And burning them doesn’t only erase your words. It erases every trace of the farce that existed between us.”
Those letters are the symbol of everything that went wrong in my life. They represent every tear I shed and all the pain and humiliation I suffered. Dante crashed into my life like a wrecking ball and destroyed everything.
Before him, I was an obedient daughter. I never lied, I never slipped out in the dead of the night, and I never went against my parents’ wishes. My father had no reason to check my email or my phone. No one knew about Dante’s letters or messages.
Back then, when I was young and in love and naïve, I could live on a bowl of strawberries and Dante’s text messages. I didn’t need food or water. He was my everything, the air I breathed. We were inseparable even though we could only sneak in a few minutes to be together a couple of times a week. Time and space had no meaning to me, not when it came to Dante. I believed he was my soulmate.
I was a fool.
I stare into his golden eyes that resemble the color of the dying embers in the fireplace. The line of his jaw is set in a hard line, but his anger is as cold as the ashes soon will be.