“Stay here,” she said, getting out of the car. She still had a key to the house from when she lived there, and she knew the security code. Getting inside was easy, but she had to be absolutely sure her parents weren’t home.
“Hello?” she called out, walking through the living room, where a lamp had been left on. It was the only illumination in the whole house. “Mom? Dad?”
She had no real plan to explain her presence if one of them was somehow here, but she had nothing to worry about. Her shouts were met with silence. Still, she was agitated as she ushered Connor in from the car. There was a definitive sense of wrongness to him being here. He didn’t belong in this place.
Then again, when was the last time she really felt like she belonged here?
Still, the whole thing made her betrayal feel much more real to her. She wasn’t close to her parents, and her brother was little more than a bully she tolerated at this point, but they were still her family. She was always taught that loyalty was the most important thing when you were a Mancini, and here she was, turning her back on all that. She wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
“Come on,” she said, flipping on the dining room light. There was no point in pretending she wasn’t here. Her car was in the driveway. But her parents had reservations for eight o’clock, and it was only eight-thirty now. She didn’t expect them to be back while they were still here.
She led Connor into her father’s study. He was completely focused, on a mission as he walked around the desk and pulled at the drawers until he found the pocked one. He pulled a small black case from his back pocket and she watched him open it up.
“A lock-picking kit?” she asked.
“Yep. You can order them online. Delivery in two days, and most locks become useless.”
“And that’s not terrifying at all,” she replied sarcastically.
Connor chuckled, and it was the first time she’d ever heard him do that. The sound caused a clenching in her belly that she didn’t want to think too hard about.
It only took him a couple of minutes to pick the lock. When he pulled the drawer open, it was nearly full of papers.
“Jackpot,” he said.
Alessia grabbed a handful of papers, looking through them for anything that might be connected to human trafficking. There was nothing in the first handful she grabbed. Turning back to grab more, she saw that Connor had papers spread out on the surface of the desk. He was snapping pictures with his phone.
“Does that have anything to do with trafficking?” she asked. He shrugged.
“Don’t know. But it’s all bound to be useful.”
“I didn’t bring you here to give you free access to all of my father’s information. We’re just here to help those women.”
“What difference does it make? You’ve already crossed the line.”
“It makes a difference to me. I didn’t come to that restaurant to flip sides in the war. I only came to help the women.”
“And I came here for the same reason. Shouldn’t I be allowed to collect a little intel for my efforts?”
Alessia was about to tell him to wait in the car, but headlights shining onto the window lit up the curtain and told them that they had company. Her heart jumped into her throat. Rushing to the window, she peeked out and recognized the car that parked next to hers.
“It’s Leo.”
“Fuck,” he hissed.
Her thoughts exactly.
“Stay here,” she said again. She had no idea what she was going to say to Leo, but no matter what, she couldn’t let him discover Connor here. It would result in someone dying, she was sure of that.
Closing the office door behind her, Alessia headed for the foyer, reaching it just as Leo walked through the front door. He didn’t look surprised to see her, having already seen her car outside.
“You really shouldn’t leave the alarm off,” he said, frowning. So much for a pleasant greeting. “What are you doing here?”
“I…I think I lost my earring here when I came to dinner a couple of days ago.”
“Your earring?” he sneered. “It must be nice to have so little going on in your life that you can worry about something like that. So pathetic.”
“Why do you have to be such an ass?”
