“Giada found Massimo’s address. I figured I’d check here.” She glanced up at her bodyguard. “We’re just going to talk. Go take a break.”
Nina considered her for a long moment and then stalked a little distance off.
Lucy let out a long-suffering sigh. “Apparently I find trouble too easily, so I need to be babysat.”
“At least she’s watching out for you,” I argued. “It’s not safe... anywhere, it seems like, these days.”
“Yeah, well, especially when you’re a girl,” Lucy added.
We exchanged pained smiles.
“So.” Lucy pushed her hair back and sat up straighter. “Tell me what happened after you left the hotel.”
I caught her up on what I remembered, shivering at the memory of Ivan. I’d hoped to never see that monster again. At least he was gone now. Gone. I hadn’t wrapped my head around it. Lucy listened to my rambling and my anxiety about Massimo.
“Okay, that’s a lot. You’ve been through hell, basically, in the last day.” She tapped her lip and seemed to ponder something. Then she straightened up and nodded. “Well, I have a few hours before I need to make my train. What are we doing to turn this day around?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Massimo doesn’t want me to leave the house. I can’t believe the police were here. What if they charge him with something?” I chewed my lip.
“What about your mom, though? We could go and see her,”Lucy suggested. “You said that the other guys are dead... so as long as we’re careful, why not?”
Excitement and nerves flared in my gut. Go and see my mom?
“If you want to, that is,” Lucy added.
I nodded. “Yes, I want to. I want to very much.”
Nina had a rented car,and we drove to my old address.
“What if she moved?” I worried, gazing out the window.
“And what if she didn’t? Let’s go and see!” Lucy pushed open the door.
I got out after her. Nina walked in front of us toward the block of apartments.
Tension and anticipation beating through me, I pressed the buzzer on the door and then waited.
Moments passed.
“I guess she’s not home?” Lucy suggested.
Suddenly, the intercom crackled to life.
“Buongiorno?”
“Hello, I’m looking for someone who used to rent this flat, or maybe she still does... Elena Dmitrova?” I said quickly.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know about any previous tenants. We’ve lived here two years.”
Two years! All this time in Hallow Hall, I’d been imagining my mother here, in this apartment, and she hadn’t been.
“We could check the church? You said she went there often,” Lucy suggested after I thanked the person on the intercom and they hung up.
It was finally a sunny day; the world gleamed white and pure and clean where the sunlight fell on the snow. I didn’t want to go home and obsess about Massimo in police custody.
I turned in the direction of the church. “Let’s go and see.”
The church was quiet as we entered and glanced around. My heart fell when I saw that she wasn’t inside. Sure, she might be at work, but we’d passed the tiny seamstress shop where she’d been employed, and it had been closed. She might have changed jobs, though. Ithadbeen three years.