“Of course.” He takes it. Doesn't look at it. “Anything else,signore?”
“Just that and then we can go.”
He nods once, gets out of the car, and walks across the sidewalk into her building without looking back. The door closes behind him.
I wait.
The driver is looking straight ahead through the windshield. A delivery truck idles three cars up. A woman walks past with a stroller and a small dog on a leash who tries to sniff the limo's tire and is dragged away.
And while waiting, I try but fail to stop myself from remembering...
The first time I saw her.
Those memories over the years just become more vivid. And more romantic. Doesn't it mean I'm losing my mind to think that? Or is it because I find myself loving her more and more as time passes by?
I remember so many things about her. Things that make my heart clench, my heart bleed—
What the hell?
I'm out of the limo as soon as I see Rollo coming out of the building. He's not walking. He's running. Running, with the envelope still in his hand, across the sidewalk toward me, and I've never seen Rollo look like this.
“Signora...is gone!”
No. No. No no no no no.
I run up the four flights to her apartment, taking the stairs three at a time, doors cracking open as I pass. Rollo's already asked all of them...and no one's seen her leave.
El Carnicerois dead.
Who else would want to harm my wife? Who do I have to kill to get her back?
Rage and fear are a terrible combination as they start gnawing at each other, and by the time I reach the fourth floor and shoulder through her unlocked door, I feel like I'm about to explode.
It's empty.
And there's nothing.
No struggle. No overturned table. The lamp's where it should be. The framed tree-in-the-snowstorm Odessa always calledtoo on the noseis still on the wall, still standing in its snow. Her keys are in the bowl. Her coffee cup is in the sink. The throw blanket is folded on the back of the couch the way she folds it.
No sign of forced entry.
No sign of her at all.
No. No. No no no no.
“Signore?” Rollo is in the doorway behind me. His voice sounds far away. “What do you need me to do?”
Chapter Twelve
IF SOMEONE HAD TOLDme three days ago that I'd be crawling through a vent that connects my apartment to a neighbor's, I would've thought they had completely lost their minds.
But if someone had told me this, like, yesterday? After learning the man I married eighteen years ago isn't actually Nate the I.T. guy but Nicolo, the once-missing Sestini heir who has more written about him than half the men I've transcribed in court?
Absolutely. Totally. Believable.
I push myself another foot forward on my elbows. The metal's cold against my forearms even through the long sleeves of the dark sweater Elliot made me change into, and somewhere ahead of me, a small light's bobbing. It's Elliot's phone flashlight, which is the only reason I haven't cried yet from the dark.
Don't think about it, June. Just keep moving.