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I don’t say anything as my fear of telling Rafael and my guilt about ruining their relationship, again, take hold.
“Never,” Tamar replies to her own question. “It’s gone from her device and from the backup. It’s a system breach.”
She’s right. There’s no other way to look at it. Marco—or someone—wanted that photo gone. Completely gone.
“Would you mind if I talk to him first?”
“I think you should. But it has to happen right now. Otherwise, I’ll have to intervene.”
54
RAFAEL
“Hi,” Lexie says from the doorway of my office.
I’ve been expecting her since she texted to say she needed to see me right away. I made a joke about how I’ve always dreamed about having her under my desk, and she responded with a smiling devil emoji.
I assumed my greedy angel wanted a little afternoon pick-me-up. I know I do. But standing in the doorway, with pasty skin and shoulders hunched, I don’t think she’s here to have her pussy licked.
“Hey,” I say softly so that I don’t frighten her away. I jerk my head toward the sofa. “Let’s sit over here. Do you want something to drink?”
She shakes her head.
A meek Lexie is not something I’m accustomed to seeing. “What’s wrong?”
“Promise me,” she pleads, “that you’ll hear me out before you go off half-cocked.”
The hair on the back of my neck rises as I imagine scenarios ranging from I’m pregnant—which I actually wouldn’t mind at all—to there’s someone else—which would send me on a murderous rampage. “Let’s hear it.”
“Not until I have your word.”
I want to tell her that there’s no way I’m making that promise, but I also want to hear what she has to say, and I don’t want to waste time negotiating. “I’ll hear you out. You have my word.” But once you’re through, all bets are off.
She peers up at me like she needs a lifeline. “Do you remember when I told you how beautiful Rhone was?”
She’s changed her mind about where we’re going on vacation? A small part of me relaxes. A very small part. She’s ashen and her lips are dry. Lexie wouldn’t hesitate to tell me she changed her mind about something so inconsequential. “Yeah. You saw the pictures Valentina took.”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip, and she chews on it for a moment. “Marco was in a photograph with a man Valentina didn’t know.”
I have no fucking clue where this is going, but I know it’s not going to be as sunny as a Greek island.
“Let’s sit down.” I take her by the arm and lead her to the sofa. She props on the edge, her hands clasped in her lap. Lexie’s not a hand clasper.
“What about the man?”
“He looked familiar. At first, I wasn’t sure from where. But the longer I looked, the more convinced I was that he looked like Paolo, Francesca Russo’s boyfriend.”
What the fuck did I just hear?
There’s so much noise in my head, it’s about to detonate. “Say it one more time,” I mutter, while I try to wrap my mind around it. She’s upset, and maybe I misunderstood.
“The man in the photo,” she begins, then proceeds to fill in details that have me reeling. I see the turmoil in her face with each word that emerges. She’s on the verge of tears, something I’ve rarely seen. I want to comfort her. I want that so much, but I’m caught in a storm and need all the energy I can harness as I try to sort through and make sense of what she’s telling me.
By the time she gets to the deleted photo and starts to sob, I feel the magnitude of the problem deep in my marrow.
I pull her onto my lap. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to let anything happen to Valentina, and certainly not to you.” Valentina didn’t just put herself in danger when she asked Marco about the photo. She implicated Lexie too. Unwittingly, of course, but it doesn’t matter. The damage is done.
“I’m not worried about me.” She sniffs.
