Page 52

“Enough,” I clipped.

Zeno faced the road.

“No. Not nearly.”

The motorway narrowed as we turned onto a road lined with cypress trees. Darkness gathered between them in thick columns.

“If Bruno Coccico only wanted her dead,” Zeno surmised, “she would already be dead.”

My body went still. “You’re certain?”

“I’m certain Bruno enjoys efficiency when efficiency serves him. Chasing her this aggressively means he wants something else from her.”

“He may think her father told her what he discovered.” Zeno’s eyes lifted to the mirror. “Did he?”

Adriana looked up. Zeno held her gaze through the glass.

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

“No.”

Her fingers moved beneath the coat. It was small, barely more than a tightening of fabric.

The road ahead curved sharply. Zeno took it without slowing.

“Years, Demi,” he challenged suddenly. “It has been years without a word.”

My temper stirred. “This is not the time.”

“It is the only time you have given me.”

His voice rose enough to fill the car before he pulled it back under control.

I looked through the windscreen. The road gleamed beneath the headlights, wet and black.

“Do you know what Tone did when you disappeared?”

My chest tightened. “Do not,” I warned.

“She searched for you.” His hand struck the steering wheel once. The sound cracked through the car. “She tore through half of Italy. She went to hospitals, police stations, morgues. She paid men to search cities where you had never set foot because someone claimed they had seen a man who resembled you.”

“Zeno.”

“She thought you were dead!”

I closed my eyes for one moment.

“And when she couldn’t find you,” he continued, “her thoughts turned to something worse. That you were alive and had simply chosen not to come home.”

The truth was its own form of punishment.

Zeno laughed once. It was an ugly sound.

“Your sister died a thousand deaths without you. Your brother learned to stop asking questions because every answer hurt him. Your family suffered, and you convinced yourself that you were doing the right thing.”

I stared at the road. “You know nothing about what it cost me.”

“Do not speak to me about cost,” Zeno spat, his voice full of resentment. His pain was worse than his anger. Zeno had never allowed pain to make him careless. Even as a boy, he had hidden hurt well. Now, it had escaped before he could stop it. “I protected your secret,” he reminded me. “When they asked me whether I knew where you were, I lied for you.”