Page 111 of My Dark Ever After

I shifted through the papers with one eye on the door, so I almost missed it when my fingers pinched the edge of thicker card stock. My gaze flickered down to catch the edge of a postcard.

I frowned, tugging it out from under a notepad to reveal a photograph of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It was astoundingly familiar because I had bought the very same postcard of the bridge to write one of my many unsent, diary-like postcards to Gemma.

My fingers shook as I flipped the card over to see the back, and I sucked in such a sharp breath at the sight of the recognizable cramped handwriting that I nearly choked on it.

Dearest Gemma,

You would not believe the adventure I am having here, only because it seems like something that would happen to you and not me.

I met a man.

I know, shocking.

Even more so? He hit me with his car before he basically saved my life. I was being chased by someone who was trying to molest me, and he just appeared in the road in this ridiculous red Ferrari. He blamed me for hurting the car, can you believe that?

But then he helped me into his car and tied my broken sandal to my foot, and you know what I felt like?

Cinderella.

I’ve never felt that way before. Not like a damsel in distress, necessarily, because you know I’ve been sick and I’ve been dreaming all my life. But like ... like magic is real. Like if I reached out to touch this man, he could change my world.

I’ve been staying at his palazzo (a.k.a. palace!) for ten days now, and I can confirm—he’s doing just that.

Changing my life.

Changing me.

Through kindness and satiating my curiosity. By being the handsomest man I’ve ever seen and taking care of me so tenderly when I’ve been sick.

He says he isn’t a good man, that he’s helping me reluctantly, but I don’t believe it.

There is a loneliness in his eyes, Gemma, and I want to be the one to vanquish it.

Wish me luck.

Your eternally unlucky sister,

Jinx

That was my writing. My postcard.

One of the ones that had been taken from the apartment I’d rented from Signora Verga in Florence.

What in the world was it doing in Leo’s desk?

“Can I help you find something?”

I snapped my head up to see the man himself leaning against the doorframe. Unlike Raffa, with his habitual closed-off pose, his arms crossed and feet braced, Leo had his arms loosely at his sides, a small smile on his face.

As if I had not just been caught snooping in his office.

“I was searching for a notepad,” I said, slipping my fingers off the postcard to the bound papers on top of it and then raising the notepad in the air for Leo to see. “Carmine and I are working on my written Italian, and I’m ashamed to admit it isn’t going well. We ran out of paper.”

“Ah,” he said before a short pause. “Well, here, take as many as you want.”

He crossed to me on those long legs before I could push the postcard back under the mess in the drawer. His fingers lingered alongthe edge of it, but I was not afraid to look up into his face to read his expression.

“It’s a sweet note,” he said finally, lifting the card and turning it over and back. “When I first found it, I didn’t know who Gemma was, but now I can say I’m sorry for your loss.”