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I crossed to the window, putting the length of the room between us. Demitri remained near the door, not deliberately blocking my escape, though his presence made the room feel smaller.

“What do you have that they want so badly?” he asked.

My fingers closed around the rosary beneath my blouse before I could stop them.

“I already told you. I don’t know.”

His gaze dropped to my hand.

I released the beads as though they had burned me.

“You reached for it when the Coccico representative spoke to you.”

“I was frightened. It belonged to my father, and it’s the only thing I have left of him.”

I looked toward the closed door.

“Did your father give you anything else before he died?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you anything?”

My throat tightened.

“Adriana.”

“I said no.”

Something shifted in his expression. He had spent too many years reading frightened people to miss what I had just shown him.

My pulse began to strike against my ribs.

“What did he tell you?” Demitri asked.

“Nothing.”

He studied me for another moment. “Adriana, why are you so afraid to trust me?”

The room tilted. The Coccico representative’s warning returned with brutal clarity.

You’ll do well to remember what happened to your father, Adriana.

Then I saw my father’s trembling fingers wrapping mine around the rosary.

This is the key. Keep it close.

The sitting room disappeared. I was standing in our kitchen while rain struck the windows. My father’s shirt clung damply to his chest despite the cold, and his gaze kept cutting toward the door as though he expected someone to come through it.

My lungs seized.

“Adriana?”

I tried to breathe, but the air stopped somewhere inside my throat.

Demitri stepped toward me.

I backed away until my shoulders struck the window.