She shrugs a shoulder and shifts her gaze away. He tilts her face up to his.

“Give us two days. We’ll talk again once we’re in Italy.”

“Why do you need to stay? What are you going to do?”

“Need to look into a few things,” I say. She turns to me, eyes narrowed. “Dandelion, don’t look at me like that.” She doesn’t respond to me but to Bastian.

“Two days,” she says.

“You’re cute when you’re angry,” he says.

“Which is a good thing since you’re angry a lot,” I add, moving toward her and tugging on one of her braids.

With a sigh, she looks down, then finally up at me. “I trusted you. I know you can make me do whatever you want, but just remember that I trusted your word. Please don’t let me have been wrong to do that.”

In her eyes is such a raw emotion, an open wound, that I find myself unable to speak. She’s right. I swallow over the lump in my throat and nod. A knock on the door interrupts us, and Bruno pokes his head in.

“We need to go, or we’ll lose our time slot.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, and Bastian and I both step away. She doesn’t say another word or even look at either of us. Instead, she makes her way out of the room, leaving Bastian and me alone in the penthouse.

“She’ll be all right,” Bastian says.

“I know, and I’m sure this isn’t easy for her.”

“Let’s take a look around. I’ll find Lucien’s office.”

I nod and take the seat behind Geno Russo’s desk.

* * *

Bastian and I spend two hours in the penthouse. Geno’s office was in pretty decent order, but if he kept anything of importance there, it’s gone now. Lucien’s office, on the other hand, looked like someone bulldozed it. Or, more accurately, shredded every single piece of paper in it and left the mess like confetti all over the floor.

The bedrooms are pretty generic like no one really lived here. I’m sitting on Vittoria’s bed flipping through a book on the nightstand when Bastian walks in.

“Bruno texted. Flight took off without a hitch.”

I close the book, set it aside, and stand. “Good.”

“You got the password to the desktop?”

“Yeah. Brady passed it along. Why?”

Bastian holds up a thumb drive. “Found it taped to the bottom of a drawer in Lucien’s bedroom.”

That gets my attention. I follow Bastian to the study, switch the computer on and type in the password. Very tricky. It’s Vittoria’s birthday. Bastian plugs the thumb drive in. He sits behind the desk to open the single folder on the drive, and I stand behind him and watch as the first photo fills the screen.