Page 82

And I know that.
But I don’t need my siblings to.
They can keep the vision of my parents as in love with each other. Dancing at Elio and Caterina’s first engagement party. The gentle kiss my dad had placed on my mom’s head, the way they’d held each other.
The perfection of the night that they’d died.
I’ll hold their darkness. I’ll keep their secrets.
But holding it, I think, might be slowly killing me.
When we round the final bend to the safe house, I hear Roisin suck in a breath. “Wow,” she murmurs.
I nod. “I know.”
Elio’s family doesn’t skimp when it comes to vacation homes.
We park the car inside the subterranean garage, and I check to make sure there’s no one on the street before I unlock the door. Inside, the house is stunning. It overlooks the lake, and it’s set back from the main town slightly. Highly defensible, and I boot up all the security systems as Roisin peers out the living room window.
I stand next to her. “I’ll have some food sent here in a few hours. Do you need?—”
“No,” she snaps.
I watch as Roisin walks away, her shoes snapping on the floor.
What the hell have I done now?
16
ROISIN
It’s all too much.
The house. The drive. The way that Marco just… took care of everything.
I thought I knew him. I really thought that I at least had an idea of who Marco De Luca was. After all, I spent the better half of a year living with him. I thought I knew details about him, like what made him smile or how competent he was at fixing things like a silly garden gate.
It turns out, I don’t know Marco De Luca at all.
He’s smooth.
Watching him bully a notorious French gangster. Watching him steal a fucking Ferrari. Watching his hands on the steering wheel as he drove it up twisting roads in the Alps, the mountains on either side of us dropping away into the valley floor below, while he didn’t so much as break a sweat…
If I had tried to apprehend Marco De Luca, just on the street, as a regular criminal, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
The fact that he was in my custody for so long, while also beingthistype of a person, tells me one thing.
Marco allowed himself to remain in my little cottage. He chose to be there.
Because the man who smoothly produced two perfect fake passports and a boatload of cash, the man who’s been sitting and monitoring a security system for the past two days, who has cooked me dinners worthy of a Michelin star, quietly leaving the plate outside of the room that I’ve decided is mine, isn’t a man who can be contained.
I was right, all those times when I was overwhelmed by him.
Marco De Luca is a force of nature.
And I never stood a chance at containing him.
I know that I should take the time to dig into who is trying to frame me. It’s been three days since we arrived in Lugano, and basically all I’ve done is eat, and sleep, and mope.