Page 68 of Little Deer

“Wouldn’t it make more sense that if she was going to make a secret way in and out, that she would do it so that no one might question any extra space? Build it along one of the other passages? Just borrow a small bit of space that no one wouldprobably really catch if they were looking at the house or the blueprints.”

“Or she went underground like it does to the bunker,” Davide agrees.

“Underground would make more sense, but I doubt she would have been able to hide a giant tunnel during the excavation,” Papa points out. “That would have raised suspicions immediately.”

We all go quiet, thinking. I’m getting really tired of all this secret bullshit.

“We really should have gotten Amara to come up here,” I joke, trying to lighten the mood. “She’d have found the exit in a heartbeat.”

Lazaro smirks. “I’ve already texted one of the guards to ask her to come up and have a look. Better to have her help than all of us wasting time.”

“I’m not some sort of miracle worker,” Amara’s voice declares loudly from down the hall. We all turn to see her and Sienna walking toward us.

She’s only been here a week, and Amara has seamlessly slid into this life so perfectly.

She slides into Lazaro, dwarfed by his giant size, while Sienna moves to stand with Alessio. Alessio quickly steals a kiss, while Amara looks up at Lazaro and says, “If you all looked at everything, I want to try something different.” Then she grins at him and adds, “Time to air jail me, baby.”

“Air jail?” I repeat, confused.

“Yeah,” Amara grins. “I need him to pick me up and keep me up so I can look around. It’s like those naughty dogs that you see on social media that get picked up and carried around everywhere when they’re bad? I’m not bad, of course, but Lazaro has a habit of picking me up to argue with me so we’re on equal ground, so to speak.” She snickers, and Lazaro grins at her.

I share a look with the others. Yeah, it’s weird as shit, but whatever works for them.

We watch as Lazaro kneels down and Amara clambers up to sit on the top of his shoulders, his arms gripping her shins to keep her in place. Good fucking thing this place has such high ceilings with her being twelve feet up off the ground.

“I really want a piggyback ride like that now,” Sienna laughs. “Damn, that looks fun.”

“All you have to do is ask,coniglietta,” Alessio laughs.

“It’s not the same. Those extra inches count, you know,” she teases with a wicked grin at him. The innuendo is not lost on us, and we all snicker. Sienna always knows what buttons to press. Alessio’s expression darkens, and his eyes narrow.

Before Alessio can reply to her statement, Amara calls out, “I already see something interesting.”

We hurry over to one of the rooms on the right side. It’s directly in the middle of the hallways. “What do you see,colombina?” Lazaro asks, looking around the room in confusion.

I take it in. It’s a simple room, with a queen-sized bed, fireplace, desk, and an ugly painting of some kind of old-looking European figure, and the large window and seat that take up most of the outer wall.

I see nothing different, and I’m pretty sure that Nico and Dante were the ones to search this room.

“Well, you said all the other rooms are identical up here, right?” Amara asks. “Well, this one isn’t. This is the only one with a window seat and a desk.”

Wait, she’s right, my blood buzzing with excitement.

“We already searched everything in here and found nothing,” Nico reminds her tightly. Lazaro gives him a warning look, but Amara doesn’t look like she’s upset.

Instead, her head continually looks around the room. “Are you sure that every room has a picture in it?”

“They all do, though this one is slightly larger than the others,” Dante answers. “You think it’s behind the picture?”

“Does one of the passages come out in this room?” Amara asks him instead of answering.

“No,” Dante answers. “There’s no passage that comes up to this part of the house.”

“Why?” Amara asks, frowning.

“This wing was one of the last put in when it was built,” Nico replies, a deep, thoughtful frown on his face. “The passages were designed and put into the rest of the house, but I remember my father getting pissed off when my mother decided to change the layout of the house to include the north wing. He didn’t want to spend more money to put the passages so he ordered the rest of the house built, but nothing else in it. Son of a bitch.”

“That is what you are, yes,” Alessio jokes, dodging the right hook that Nico throws at his face.