Page 2 of My Dark Ever After

He looked, almost, like Carmine, Raffa’s associate back in Florence. Suave, suited, and inexplicably dangerous despite the veneer of civility.

Without thinking it through, I veered toward him.

He glanced up with a surprised blink when I stopped just before the seat where he was scrolling through his phone. A quick peek showed he was looking at food reels on social media, and I wondered if I was being unduly suspicious.

“Hello, I think I saw you here this morning. Is there something I can help you with?” I asked sweetly, but one hand was curled inside the mouth of my purse, around the can of pepper spray I’d started carrying.

He blinked again, his face utterly expressionless in a way that made me shiver. And then, suddenly, he smiled. A bright, wide grin that could have been handsome if I’d found anyone attractive since I’d met Raffaele Romano.

“Are you Ms. Stone?” he asked, standing and swiftly buttoning up his blazer in a move that was utterly seamless and reminded me, as most things seemed to, of Raffa. He offered a square-fingered hand. “Your father mentioned you this morning, actually.”

“My father did,” I echoed, taking his hand reluctantly. Noting the calloused ridges not typical of a wealthy man.

“In our introductory client meeting,” he elaborated in a flat American accent. “My name is Tom Kirkpatrick. I just moved here from Washington, and your firm comes highly recommended.”

My spine softened slightly at the information.

A prospective client.

It would explain why he was around the building. And really, it wasn’t unusual for people to run through the many parks in the city. It was one of the appealing aspects of living here.

I let out a long sigh and smiled back at him. “Well, why don’t we go up together and get to know each other a bit. If you decide to do business with us, we will be working together closely.”

“I hope so,” he said a little too baldly, then ducked his head with a wince as if he was embarrassed by his enthusiasm.

Last year, I might have blushed and tried to flirt with the handsome older man. It would have flattered me to know he was interested, that he thought I was pretty.

Now, his attention moved through me like a cold draft, emphasizing the emptiness within me.

It lingered as we stepped into the elevator, his voice a dull drone in my ears.

It was late, and the glass walls of our twentieth-floor office were black reflective mirrors highlighting the fact that I was seemingly alone. Everyone had long since gone home for dinner, to their families or friends.

I didn’t really have either at the moment, so I stayed.

Burying myself in work because even when everything else went to hell in a handbasket, I was good at my job.

The best, second only to my dad.

He’d trained me for this since I was a girl. While most girls doodled in coloring books and played with dolls, John Stone gave me puzzles and taught me to play chess. When I was older, we spent weekend mornings racing to finish theNew York Timessudoku puzzles and playing math games over pizza at the dinner table.

Gemma and Mom had left us to it happily, focusing on their shared love of food, wine, and fashion. It wasn’t that Gemma wasn’t smart enough to participate, but her skills lay in languages and sensory disciplines.

If sometimes I watched Mom and Gemma cooking and laughing in the kitchen and wanted to join them, I never acted on the impulse.

I gritted my teeth as the pencil in my hand broke, a splinter of wood lodging in my forefinger. A bead of blood pooled, and I brought it to my mouth to suck it clean.

“What are you still doing here?”

I snapped my head up to see Dad standing in the doorway to the conference room. Even though it was long after hours, his suit was still totally immaculate, cuffs buttoned, tie perfectly flat against his chest and knotted close to his throat. You never would have known he had old, faded tattoos beneath the silky fabric, only a handful of symbols and Latin words along the backs of his shoulders and the base of his throat. Even at home, he never went shirtless, always covering the marks as if they were scars instead of art.

John Stone gavebuttoned upnew meaning.

But God, I loved him.

He’d been my hero when I was growing up.

Some of my friends didn’t understand my often blind love for and loyalty to him, but they didn’t know what it was like to be so sick as a child you might die. To go to bed every night wondering if this was the time you wouldn’t wake. To have that fear be such an elemental part of your life and then to trust the man who told you each and every one of those nights that he would see you in the morning. That he would be there no matter what, and then hewas.