“Is that so?” Steepling my hands under my chin, I speared him with my eyes. Only he didn’t look away.
“It’s so. And for those of us who knew you before,” he shrugged, “we all knew there was something between you two. Everyone knew.”
Everyone knew? I’d heard that already. Gio’s men had said the same. Again, the cold, uneasy feeling twisted my gut.
“Did Gio know?”
Seven sets of eyes looked away, and the twisting in my stomach intensified.
“There was a call…”
“A call?”
“To your hotel room the night her parents were murdered. It took us a while to trace those calls and messages because it was so long ago,but,” straightening his shoulders, he met my eyes, “Gio made several calls to his sister that night. Only one was picked up.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Their parents had just been murdered. Of course, he would have called her repeatedly.” I shook my head. This wasn’t helpful. Nothing he was saying was out of the ordinary.
“He also made a call to your room.”
“Wait, what? No call came through…” But of course it hadn’t. I’d been pretty clear about not being disturbed. Plus, we both had our cell phones for emergencies.
“Shit.” I blew out a breath. He knew. Six years ago, Gio had known exactly where Sophia was and who she was with.
And if he knew about that then…
“There was also a car waiting for her when she left.”
Yeah, he knew. He had probably known for a while, and that changed things, but it didn’t mean Sophia was innocent. She might have been in on the plan.
What plan? a small sarcastic voice whispered in my brain. Sophia had absolutely nothing to gain back then. The only person who did was Gio.
Pinching the skin between my eyebrows, I tried to fight back the headache that was already forming.
“Do we know anything more about their parents’ death?” I didn’t know what made me ask it. But deep in my gut, I just knew that was the key to it all.
“We know everything there is to know there.”
There was the sound of shuffling papers and the click of a phone being used. I grimaced back. I hated it when they didn’t put their keyboard on silent. The click clack grated on my already frayed nerves.
“The only thing we didn’t know before was this.” The phone was slid across the table to me. For a long time, I stared at it without understanding it.
“What am I looking at?” I finally asked.
“Ticket confirmation. For a flight to London Heathrow.” There was a long pause. “In Sophia’s name.”
“Well, she had to get there somehow. Why wasn’t this found before?”
“Because the flight was booked a month before their parents’ death. On Gio’s credit card.”
My head snapped up with such force that my neck cracked painfully and loudly. “A month before?” I hissed.
Now that could be because she was in on some plan I didn’t understand, or it could be because—
“Did she get on that flight voluntarily?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“I’ve spoken to an old cook from their home. He said there were a lot of arguments between Sophia and Gio. She cried a lot. Which is understandable, considering, but,” he paused, “in his words, Sophia was forced to leave. Her brother was heard threatening her.”
I jumped up off the chair.
