He has to be. He’s a liar and a scumbag, and I have no reason to believe the person who plastered my mother’s naked photo over our shop door for revenge. Who threw a crowbar through the Karrases’ window. Who said all those horrible things about my family in front of a room of people at that party. Who’s basically stalked my cousin since she broke up with him.

Adrian Summers is not a nice person.

So why am I sick to my stomach right now?

Why would I even entertain any single thing he told me about Lucky?

He must be lying.

I just don’t know why.

And that’s what’s eating away at me while Mom and I leave the Marblecliff with Evie. The three of us are heading back to the above-shop apartment while Aunt Franny keeps the resort suite for a few days, until she can catch up on her jet-lagged sleep and figure out what to do about her rented-out house.

I should be happier to be going back to the apartment. And I am. Relieved, utterly and completely. But I’m also stressed by Grandma’s meddling and trying to figure out a counter plan for what she did about the window.

And.

I can’t get Adrian’s stupid text unstuck from my brain.

A horse-drawn carriage carting two tourists clops past the Pink Panther as we idle by a brick building covered in vines of blooming flowers. Early August heat is making me crankier, and even with all the windows rolled down, we still can’t catch a breeze.

“Victory Day is next week,” Mom says, ducking her head to see the vertical banners on the gas streetlamps. That means one big last influx of tourists before the end of summer. “Guess they didn’t have flotilla celebrations in Nepal.”

Bet they didn’t have copy shops to print giant nude photos, either. Ugh. I’m just sick with worry and having a low-level panic attack because I just can’t stop thinking about why Adrian would say that Lucky gave him my mother’s photo.

Why?

Because my grandmother talked to his father and told him to back off the Karrases and rein in his boy. That’s the logical reason, right? One last act of revenge against me.