Meirna’s brows pin on me as if in pain. “And the other stuff?”
“Since the moment I discovered you were with Bobby. My intention was to approach you, at first, and tell you everything. That I wasn’t Bobby. That it was a mistake. But…you were so enamored by him, I felt as though I was going to be doing you a disservice by saying anything. He already had six months on me…But I looked him up anyway. To see if he was good enough. I discovered he wasn’t. That you were going to become collateral damage?—”
“Shut up,” she mumbles, but there’s no power behind it. “You could’ve come to me.”
“Like I said, I played with that idea, but all I had was he-said, she-said bullshit, at first. Then I saw the way you looked at Bobby. If I had approached you, you would have gone to him and believed all his bullshit. I needed to get you alone, remind you of me, then you got engaged.”
“You would’ve saved metime,” she argues. “If you had come to me and explained the mix-up, I could have—” She abruptly stops there, piquing my interest like a treat being dragged away by a string.
I instantly bite. “You would have, what? Dumped Bobby for me? Given me a shot?”
She wouldn’t have.
Loyalty is a beautiful thing when it works in your favor, but it doesn’t when her devotion was already almost six months deep with someone else.
“I said I don’t share, Meirna. Even if I had to gather all my receipts and wait, stall until your wedding day, it was all going to end up the same.”
“Me going back home to my life with a broken engagement?”
“With a husband, Daydream.” She squints at me, clearly not fully sold on me, my methods, and my shit. But before I allow her to bullshit herself out of giving me a chance, I pilot us back down the sidewalk again. “You cold?”
“No.”
“Hungry?”
“No—yes.”
My lips quirk, and it feels foreign on my face. “Then let’s go stockpile a bunch of desserts for later. Then I want to take you to the Klementinum.”
Meirna picks up her pace, and I’m assuming it’s to get there as quickly as possible. “What about the mob? Bobby said?—”
“Bobby’s talking out of his ass.”
“But…how do you know? He said?—”
I squeeze her hand lightly, meaning it when I say, “You don’t belong to Bobby anymore. You’re married to another man. I took away his leverage and backup plan. I run a multi-billion-dollar company in Boston. I could own their blocks tomorrow if I wanted to and put them out of business. Once they look me up, they won’t. They won’t even try or look at you a second time.”
“Look you up,” she mutters. “If you’re not a Harding, what are you?”
“A Vasiliou.”
“Can you spell that?”
A smile protrudes across my lips. “Need to know how to spell your last name, Daydream?”
“No,” she sasses back. “I want to Google-stalk you and see if you check out.”
“Of course, you do. I’ll give that when we get back to the hotel.”
“And I want your phone, too.”
Okay…
“I don’t have a triplet, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“God, I hope not. I just wanted to see if you had your own Jolene.”
“I don’t,” I return, fishing my cell out of my pocket and handing it off. “But, here’s everything you’ll need, so I can’t delete anything.”
