Renzo comes in with a doctor behind him and he looks at me and then at Luca and he reads the room as Luca stands.
"Make sure she gets home safe," he tells Renzo, his voice stripped of everything, and he walks out without looking at me again.
The doctor looks between us, puzzled. Renzo dismisses him quietly, promises him payment, and the doctor goes, and then it is just Renzo standing in the doorway looking at me.
"It's not what you think," he says carefully. "Luca would never hurt you. The things his father did, the work we do, Luca is not his father, and he?—"
I press my fingers to my lips.
He stops.
I walk over to him, I lean up and I speak quietly into his ear. He listens without moving, without changing his expression or giving anything away. When I step back he looks at me with an expression that is equal parts reluctance and something else, something that might be respect.
"Why would I do this behind his back?" he asks.
I shrug. "Your choice," I tell him.
He is quiet for a long moment. He looks at the door Luca walked out of and then at me and then at the floor and then back at me.
"Fine," he says finally. "I'll help you."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nathalie
The cab pulls up outside the house and I sit in it for a moment with my hand on the door handle and I breathe.
Then I get out, the front door opens before I reach it, and a maid is holding it. I walk into the entrance hall and I feel the eyes immediately, the security man by the staircase, and the maid hovering. The house is on alert. They all look at me with blankness, they have been told to watch and report.
I keep my face appropriately miserable.
My father's office door is closed but I can hear him through it. He must have been containing himself for hours and was running out of patience for the exercise. I push the door open.
He sees me and the decorative statue on the edge of his desk almost hits me. I duck and it hits the doorframe beside my head and shatters.
He shouts, "So you still remember where you live!"
Gerald is standing to the right of the desk. His eyes move over me.
I look at my father's face and I let my chin wobble.
Then I run to him and I drop to my knees and I grab his legs with both hands, I press my face against them and I sob. I cry between gasps, "What did I do? What did I do wrong, I was so scared to come home, I didn't know what to do, I was so scared?—"
My father looks down at me.
I feel Gerald's eyes on the back of my head.
"Your cousin," my father says, his voice dropping from a shout to a colder tone, "told me you left with a man.
He pauses. "Luca Di Meglio."
I pull back from his legs and I look up at him with my eyes streaming and my mouth open and I make my face do the thing it needs to do, the shock, the hurt, the bewilderment of someone who has been wrongly accused of something terrible, and I say, "My cousin said what?"
"So you didn't leave with him? Don't lie!"
I stand up, sniffing and I reach into my bag with shaking hands. I pull out my phone and I pull up the video of Alana and James kissing. It never left my phone, I just needed Alana to stop searching. I hold it out to him with trembling fingers and I let out a fresh sob as he takes it.
"I didn't want to show you this," I cry, pressing my hand against my mouth. "I knew how important this marriage was to you, I knew what it meant for the family and for the campaign and I wanted to protect that, I wanted to protect you, so I kept it to myself and I?—"
