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I set it aside.
"Aren't you going to see what's inside?"
"Not now. I'm feeling happy today. I'm afraid that seeing these mementos will bring the sadness back."
It's already evening when I return to my apartment. Ares had to go to SIN,but he said he would return in an hour.
When I open the door to my duplex, however, I am surprised to find JeAnne standing in the foyer.
"Hi. The maid let me in. I hope you don't mind."
I go to her and hug her, sighing in relief when she reciprocates. Despite our last conversation, the hug and kiss she gives me feels the same as always.
"I can't believe you came. How long can you stay?"
We walk together towards the living room.
"Until your debut. I wouldn't miss it for anything. Where were you? You spent the whole day away. I tried calling."
"My phone died. I think I need to change it. The battery dies all the time."
"You didn't answer where you were."
That irritates me, I'm not a child anymore. Any other time, I would tell the truth, but I don't feel like it, so I just say, "I left for a walk."
Before she can ask any more questions, the night shift maid enters the room. "Mrs. Villatoro is coming up."
JeAnne's expression changes instantly, and I roll my eyes.
Will they never get along?
"Be nice," I beg. "Debra has been traveling and came to help me with rehearsals for my debut."
Ares
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Two weeks later
“So the doctors were right?”
“Yes, the scorpion had been genetically modified. Whoever put it there didn’t want to kill her; they wanted to hurt her or scare her,” Odin responds.
“Scare her? If her body reacted badly to the poison or if she had not been rescued in time, the result would not have been just ‘a scare.’” Thinking about the mere possibility makes me want to kill someone.
“There is no doubt that this stalker is a psychopath. If what Serenity said is true, that the stalker left flowers and notes wherever she was in the world, it means he is a man with money and also knows how to sneak around, as he was never caught by her bodyguards. Like I said before, if she had told us what was happening from the beginning, we could have tracked the footage. But it’s deleted after a few months.”
“And what about camera footage at the theater in Paris? That would be the most recent. It was the last place she performed before moving back here.”
“I’ve already checked it. There was a delivery of a single rose by a courier. I tracked down the store. It was an anonymous order, made online. I entered the company’s servers to see who it came from, but the only thing I discovered was that it was made from a coffee shop here in the United States.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
“It does. This guy is smart. He used the place’s Wi-Fi to avoid attracting attention, but I sent a trusted employee to check the footage. You have no idea how many people enter a coffee shop throughout the day, but he analyzed everything calmly, cross-checking data. Unfortunately, the footage from the day the rose was ordered had already been deleted. The purchase was made with a credit card stolen from a ninety-year-old widow.”
“I can’t wait to put this son of a bitch behind bars.”
“Your concern for her doesn’t seem like that of someone who’s just her guardian.”