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We’d get past this, and I’d spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
“Did you pass Molly?” Hope said.
She didn’t look especially alarmed—just a little confused.
“She’s not with you?” I asked.
I tried to keep cool, but on instinct, I felt myself becoming concerned.
“She went to the restroom. I thought she had run into you on the way back,” Hope said, a smile on her face.
“I haven’t seen her.”
I walked toward the front of the restaurant, saw the table, and noticed that Molly hadn’t eaten much of her breakfast.
“Where’s Molly?” I asked Giacomo, Nico’s guard.
“She left about fifteen minutes ago,” he said, like that was an acceptable answer.
“And you let her?” I said, my teeth clenched with rage, my voice low, quiet, calm in a way that I knew terrified Giacomo down to his core.
And it should. Because if something happened to Molly, I didn’t know what I would do.
Or who I would do it to.
“I…” He looked at me and gulped, clearly not wanting to respond.
“Find her,” I said.
“I’m sure she’s fine. She wasn’t feeling well,” Hope said, but I looked at her and saw that she wasn’t convinced.
“She left without saying good-bye to you,” I said.
Hope didn’t have a response. But that was answer enough.
And suddenly…I knew.
“She heard me,” I said, looking at Nico.
Hope glanced between us, her brow furrowed. “Heard what?”
“You don’t know that,” Nico said, ignoring Hope.
He didn’t sound convincing.
“Heard what?” Hope repeated.
“I…”
I fidgeted, then took a second to roll my shirt sleeves up my forearms. I needed the break, something to distract me from the way my heart thundered. My shirt felt tight. Or maybe it was my skin. I felt like I was coming apart.
Molly was the only one that would put me back together.
Hope waited—not exactly patiently, but her stance and expression told me she’d get her answers.
I cleared my throat. “That night. At Carlo’s, when…”
“When your cousin threw me in the trunk of a car?” Hope said.