by Amelia Wilde
How can she be so wonderful, yet clearly be hiding something from me?
On Monday, after I’ve returned from the office, I dial one of the Italian numbers. A man with a clean British accent answers the phone, announcing that I’ve reached a travel agency with one branch in Rome.
“I’m sorry. I’ve dialed the wrong number.”
Could it be that Carolyn is just planning an Italian vacation? Is that seriously what I’ve been worked up about all this time? The name of the travel agency doesn’t ring any bells. Why should it? I never used a travel agency when I lived in Italy.
The second number also connects me with someone who speaks English with a British accent—a woman who answers the phone with a clipped “Aida.”
I was expecting another company, some kind of organization, but I’m not sure why Aida’s voice catches me off guard the way it does.
“Oh—” I say. “I’m sorry.” But I forget to tell her that I have the wrong number.
“Is there something I can help you with, sir?”
“Actually, yes. Have you ever heard of—” I stop myself before I can complete the sentence. What the fuck am I doing? What business of mine is it that Carolyn has called a couple of people in Italy? For all I know, this Aida is a friend of hers. Most of us do have international acquaintances. It wouldn’t be odd.
“No,” I say firmly. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Have a good—” Italy is six hours ahead, so… “—evening.”
“Thank you, sir. Goodbye.”
At least Aida doesn’t seem fazed by this at all.
I’m turning into a goddamn wreck.
Carolyn did not respond to that declaration well at all. And maybe it’s because I didn’t plan it. Maybe it’s because I just blurted it out to stop myself from telling her that I overheard the strange phone call. It’s still true, though. Every other indication tells me that she feels the same way, so why the weird, guilty look?
Am I just getting entrapped into another no-win situation, like with Elisa?
The memory of her giggling in one of the markets in Rome makes my stomach knot up. Things can go so fucking wrong, if you’re not careful.
I just don’t know the best way to fix this.
On Tuesday, she texts me at about three o’clock, and the sight of her name makes my heart flutter, despite the churning in my gut about everything else.
Meet me at my place. 5:30?
Done.
Her spare key has been tucked in my pocket, going with me everywhere, since she gave it to me on Sunday.
Another text comes in.
I can’t wait to see you. I can’t wait to talk with you. Let’s figure this out.
So she feels it too—the unrest, the unease.
The only issue now is that I can’t sit in this office and wait any longer. Not now. Not today.
I open my email and write a hasty out-of-office message telling everyone I’ll be back tomorrow, turn off the screen, and pick up my phone from my desk.
Noah is waiting at the curb when I get there.
“What’s up, boss?”
“Nothing,” I say, but I can’t stop my jaw from clenching. “The penthouse.”
“No problem.” He says it calmly, neutrally, but I see his worried look in the rearview mirror. Maybe I’ll tell him what’s been going on. After it’s over and done with.
I take the elevator up to the penthouse and strip off my clothes. The heat of the water is relaxing, and I stand under the stream for twenty minutes before I can bring myself to get out and shave. I go with a similar outfit—dress slacks and a button-down—but this time I push the sleeves up to my elbows and leave the top button undone.
If Carolyn decides to come home early, I’m going to be waiting for her.
I’m not in her apartment thirty seconds when there’s a knock at the door.
A courier stands outside. “Carolyn Banks’ place?”
“Yes, but—”
He shoves an envelope into my hands and turns on his heel, typing something into a handheld device.
Okay.
I close the door. Where the hell am I going to put this thing? It’s fairly large, at least the size of a file folder, and it has some weight to it.
I flip it over to look at the address.
When I see where it’s from, my heart plummets to my feet. It’s from Italy. From a woman named Aida Russo. The same woman who answered the phone.
The hair on the back of my neck pricks up. Is this confirmation for some kind of trip? My heart hammers against my rib cage. I’m so damn curious that I don’t know if I’ll be able to sit here with it until 5:30.
I go into the living room and toss it onto the table. That’s when it becomes clear that the tape sealing one end of the envelope has been damaged in transit, because a sheaf of papers comes out nearly halfway.
I pick it up automatically to shuffle the papers back in place, but I can’t resist. I can’t fucking resist turning it over.
On the top sheet, there’s my name. And a picture of me.
It says “Investigative Report: Ace Kingsley.”
Holy fuck.
Chapter 35
Carolyn
Two grueling days dealing with police reports and inventory replacements and having the front window glass newly installed, and all I can think about is what an asshole I was to Ace.
All I can think about is how I should have responded right way.
When I sign in to Rainflower Blue on Monday afternoon, I’m blown away by the traffic.
It’s still booming, and there are more threads than ever about Ace Kingsley.
And me.
Carolyn Banks dating a murderer?
There’s even a thread about what happened to the boutique.
If you ask me, she deserved it, writes an anonymous user about halfway down the thread. That’s what you get for dating someone who’s done such heinous things to women.
The farther down I scroll, the worse it gets. Theories about what happened to his wife, who is as of yet unnamed, which has to be some kind of miracle. Theories that he’s still married and is just on the run. Theories that the Italian government is running some kind of cover-up for him.
It turns my stomach.
This is how I’m making all my money, and it’s just fucking wrong.
I’m going to start by telling Ace everything—absolutely everything—and letting the chips fall where they fucking may.
For the first time, I can see it: that I deserve to lose him, and other good men, if this is the kind of life I’m going to lead, if I’m going to keep an open platform for witch hunts while I drag my heels on confirming it.
Jesus, why should I? That’s the real question. Why should I confirm or deny anything? If anyone wants to know my opinion on any kind of situation, they can ask me.
My God.
I text him with fingers that shake and hit the wrong keys.
Meet me at my place. 5:30?
It takes almost no time for him to reply.
Done.
Maybe it’s overboard, but I send him one last message:
I can’t wait to see you. I can’t wait to talk with you. Let’s figure this out.
There’s radio silence, and it makes me nervous as hell.
When my phone vibrates again forty-five minutes later, I snatch it up, sure that it’s Ace, sure that he just needed a little while to reply. He could have been in a meeting. He could have been doing anything.
But it’s not from Ace. It’s from Aida.
Results were delivered to your place minutes ago. They’ll be waiting for you.
Thanks.
I put my phone back down in its place near the register, trying not to frown too much and alarm anyone else in the store.
It’s odd that Aida wouldn’t have sent the information—whatever it is—to my apartment without confirming that it was actually placed into my hands, but maybe things are different in Italy. Gerard would never dream of it.
I shru
g a little and shake it off. Oh, well. The likely scenario is that they slipped it under the door and it’ll be waiting for me when I return.
That just means I need to leave a little early.
At four-fifteen I tell Natalie I have some errands to run. She gives me a nervous nod.
“You don’t have to worry. I made sure the police are running rounds on the block all the time for at least the next couple of weeks. Plus, I’ve got Sara coming in to help you close.”
“Thanks, Carolyn.” Her cheeks go pink with relief. The break-in seems to have shaken her much more than it did me, even though nobody was actually at the boutique when it happened. Discovering it must have been pretty damn unsettling.
I walk the three blocks home in the cool September air, treasuring the late afternoon sun on my face and trying to stop my heart from pounding.
This isn’t going to be a fun conversation. But when it’s over, we’ll both know exactly where we stand, and that’s what I want. I love him enough to ignore these rumors, and he loves me enough to know that my feelings for him are separate from the jobs I do.
I hope.
The doorman, Arnie, traps me into a conversation in the lobby, so I spend five minutes talking to him about the beautiful weather before I can extricate myself. I hope Ace hasn’t come home from work early for this. I just need a few minutes….
The moment Arnie sets me free, I race for the elevator, then hurry down the hallway to my door.
The moment I put the key in the lock, I know something is wrong. There’s no resistance, like there would be if the door was locked from the inside.
I take my key out and push the door open slowly. Did I forget to lock it this morning when I left for work? Did Ace—God forbid—show up early and forget to lock it behind him?
I know immediately that the second scenario has played out when I step into the entryway.
I know immediately that things are even worse.
Because Ace stands at the end of the hall leading into the living room, a large envelope in his hands.
By the look on his face, he’s seen the contents.
He knows.
He knows.
I feel my face go pale.
“Ace, I—” I want to be angry that he opened my mail, but I can’t begin to choke those kinds of accusations out. My heart beats slower, clenched in a cold fist. All I want to do is explain this to him, to take the pain away from his face. “I can explain all of this—”
“Can you?” His voice is low and sharp and angry. “Can you tell me why there’s an investigative report from someone in Italy in your apartment? Can you tell me why that would possibly be necessary?”
Every word is a slash of a knife to my gut.
“You shouldn’t have opened my mail,” I whisper, and even as I say it, I know it’s just the beginning of the disaster.
Chapter 36
Ace
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” I try to keep my voice level, but it’s impossible to keep my rage out of it. “What are you, some kind of spy? Are you that fucking damaged that you need to do background checks on the men you sleep with?”
“No,” she says, stepping toward me. I hold up one hand. I don’t want her any closer.
I want her much closer. I want her in my arms, relatively innocent and hot for me and falling more in love with me every second. I want her mouth on mine, kissing me like there’s no goddamn tomorrow.
It feels like that right now, but if she comes any closer, I’m going to fracture into a million pieces.
“Then what?” I throw the envelope onto the couch, the papers spilling out.
Carolyn holds up both hands for a moment, then drops them to her sides. “I run a website.”
I raise my eyebrows. That doesn’t fucking explain anything.
“I run a website called Rainflower Blue. It’s very exclusive, and very secret, and it’s basically a closed gossip site for New York’s wealthiest people.”
My stomach turns over. Really? This is what sweet, kind, compassionate Carolyn does in her spare time? I shake my head, letting my disgust show on my face. “Let me guess. They’ve been talking about me. And my time in Italy.”
“Yes,” she says, her cheeks turning a deep red.
“Why the hell would you believe any of it?”
“Because—” She looks away, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “It’s not that I believed them, Ace. I wanted to be able to deny them so that we could move on.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s why you just asked me about it outright?”
“You didn’t seem to want to talk about it.”
“No shit I didn’t want to talk about it,” I spit. “It’s my personal fucking business. The internet doesn’t need to know. You don’t even need to know.”
“I want to know,” she says softly. “I didn’t want to be—to be caught off guard by another man.”
“Right,” I say, my mouth curling into a sneer. I fucking hate this version of myself. “You probably have a reason for everything.”
She looks down at the floor, and I’m so angry I could die right here.
“You want to know what happened in Italy? Fine. I’ll tell you.” I take a deep breath and brace for the pain of what happened with Elisa. “I went over there for business, and while I was living in Rome, I met a girl. Her name was Elisa, and she was everything I wanted at the time. Fun. Carefree. Beautiful. I thought it was the real thing.” I want to actually spit on the ground at this memory. “We were together six months before she dropped the bomb.”
Carolyn’s mouth opens, like she wants to interrupt, to ask a question, but she closes it again. Wise.
“She was the daughter of a man who led one of Italy’s biggest crime rings. He did most of his work underground, and he wanted her to have a clean source of money. So he sent her to seduce me. And she did.”
Carolyn shakes her head, her shoulders slumping.
“Except it turned into the real thing. We had real feelings for each other. So I started planning to get us out of Italy. That bastard had people everywhere. Still does. So it wasn’t going to be fucking simple, even though I had more than enough money to pay for a private flight out.”
My jaw tightens. “It didn’t matter. Before we could leave, she got diagnosed with aggressive brain cancer. It only took her six weeks to die.”
Carolyn gasps, then covers her mouth with her hands, tears beginning to well up in her eyes.
“You can imagine that her mob boss father wasn’t pleased with that, and in his grief, he got the Italian authorities involved. He ran a smear campaign against me, trying to get me tagged for murder—even though it was clear she’d died from cancer—and everything went to hell.”
I look at her until she’s looking me straight in the eye. “I came back to New York because I knew I’d never be able to get out from under his thumb in Italy. Not unless I wanted to be wrapped up in the process for the rest of my life. Who was going to trust me, anyway? I was married to the daughter of a wanted criminal.”
“Ace, I—”
“That’s what happened. You still think I’m a fucking murderer, go ahead and think that. I can’t change your mind.”
“I don’t think you’re a murderer. I just—I just wanted to know the truth.” Her voice is on the verge of pleading, and for a split second I consider going over to her, taking her face in my hands, and kissing her until all this is in the distant past.
But my fury rages.
I can’t do it.
“Then you should have asked me,” he snarls.
“It seemed more complicated than that.”
“You know what?” I say, and her eyes widen a little. Is that a flicker of hope that I see there? Fuck that. “You’re just like all the other gossip-hungry bitches in New York City.” I can feel my mouth curling into another sneer, and I force it to stop because it’s an ugly expression to wear, and I don’t want anyone, ever again, to have the satisfaction of causing it. “You�
��re just as bad as the rest of them. This was another set-up, wasn’t it? You just wanted up-close-and-personal content for your little website.”
She shakes her head harder, emphatically. “No. That’s not what I wanted. I didn’t—I heard about you coming back to New York, but I didn’t know about any of the other rumors until later.” She takes in a shuddering breath. “I always thought you were cute in high school. You caught my eye. I just wanted to be sure that—”
“I would be in jail right now if I’d killed my wife!”
She presses her lips together, her chin quivering.
“You are just as bad as all the rest.” I head for the door, going past her on the way out, leaning the other way so I don’t touch her.
I turn back once I’ve opened the door, gesturing to the air between us. “This is over.”
Then I’m gone.
Chapter 37
Carolyn
The moment the door closes behind Ace, I sink to the carpet, sitting down heavily when my knees won’t hold me up any longer.
It’s just like that first night we spent together, except this time the cold look on his face was laced with pain and anger and betrayal.
Because of what I did.
It’s all my fault, and I had no business at all prying into his life like that.
Was it worth it, Carolyn? I think sharply as the tears fall hot onto my open palms.
No, the answer comes back, too little and too late.
I weep on the carpet by my doorway for exactly five minutes before I force myself to stand up and walk back into the apartment, trying my damnedest to swallow the painful lump in my throat.
My hands are trembling so badly I can barely swipe the screen on my phone, and it takes three deep breaths before I can collect myself enough to unlock it. But once I do, I have no idea who to text, who to call. All I have is my stupid fucking website, which has made me an obscene amount of money and ruined my life.
