Page 13 of Revenge on the Mafia

I hovered in the archway, torn between wanting to confirm my doubt and walking away so I could class it as a guilty delusion. It was surreal. So much so that it put me in a trance of disbelief.

Before I’d given them permission, my feet moved. I rounded the bath, keeping my distance, taking a seat across from her. This girl— this woman— fuck, how could anyone penetrate my emotional fortress? Impossible.

She was shrouded in darkness, but it did nothing to hide the outline of a slender face, narrow shoulders, and the soft rise of her breasts. She had fallen asleep or was in deep thought, utterly unaware of how she’d gripped me merely with her presence.

While I’d been carrying this guilt for a lifetime and avoiding any confrontation with it, the object of my conscience had waltzed into my home and waited for me. In my bath. Naked.

Stiff as stone, I watched her, hovering between wanting it to be true and dreading it. If I switched on the lights, I could confirm it. I should get it over with. By the time I reached that decision, she was already aware of my presence. I felt it in the stillness of her breath and the tension that wafted out of the bath.

I was slow. I felt like I was in a drug-induced haze. Then she sprang out of the bath but hit her ankle. Before I could react, she cursed. One word, so familiar. It slammed my chest full of memories. Then she was gone.

¡Joder!

My insides twisted.

Sunshine. Beachside property. Learning the magic of numbers inside an office. Two girls out on the beach. One of them, a teenager. A hand on my shoulder. You’re distracted again, Nico.

I sprang into action.

I raced after her, switching on lights and following the trail of water to the basement. It disappeared beneath a bedroom door. I pulled the handle down with force. It rattled but remained closed.

I wanted to kick it open, burst in, and—and what?

I stumbled back. Gave my head a shake. I was allowing emotion to control me. The last time I did that, a man ended up dead.

I fought to calm my breathing and only then noticed my heart was racing. I rebuilt the Fibonacci sequence. The first numbers were too easy. Flowed automatically. When I fell into the phase where I had to reconstruct patterns, my racing heartbeat slowed. I released my grip on the handle and backed away. Retract. Think. Plan. I drew a ragged breath and dragged my hand through my hair. This was nothing. Could well be my imagination. The absurdity of that was almost funny. I could trace the shape of her body, the tightness of her curls, with my eyes closed. It was her. But maybe, by some miracle, it was a delusion.

It wasn’t. The images from my security camera proved it. A dark silhouette moving around the house, opening doors and drawers while innocently fluffing pillows. The air in my office was suffocating. The memories excruciating.

This was no maid. She was here to spy on me or to end me. And if it was Juan Vales’s daughter, there was only one reason for her intrusion.

I touched the frame on my desk and traced the figure in it. I hated that my fingers shook. If she’d come into the office, she would have found things.

Fuck. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.

CHAPTER SIX

ANNA

He couldn’t know it was me.

But my well-laid-out plan could have been ruined even if he didn’t know who I was. I had actually gotten into his house. Then I’d been stupid and given in to a feeling. A feeling! Estúpida.

But it couldn’t all be bad. In his eyes, I was just a random maid who’d crossed the line and taken a plunge in his bath. He’d fire me. That was the worst-case scenario. Which would be disastrous. I’d sacrificed an expensive plane ticket and the cost of a ninety-day visa for him. Not to mention the seven years I’d waited for him to turn up in Marbella. But if he had, he’d never stayed in that hotel. I’d know because there had never been another Martello on the guest list.

I’d lain awake half the night. Restlessly falling in and out of sleep. When he’d pulled the handle down, I’d experienced what the beginning of a heart attack probably felt like. I’d expected the door to burst open despite the lock. His house. His rules, and he was a man. In the Mafia. Breaking doors open was probably as routine for him as filling a bucket of water would be for me. But it had stayed intact. I didn’t know when he’d moved away or when he’d walked off, but for the rest of the night, every phantom noise had been another twist of that handle. I was brave, but not stupid enough to open the door and peek. Instead, I’d listened to each tick on the wall clock while I wrote one thing down in my diary.

Tranquila. Solo tengo que matarlo y salir de aquí.

Calm down. I just need to kill him and get out of here.

But by the time daylight made an appearance, I had come up with a million possible outcomes. All of them bad. The first one was picturing Magda in the morning with a scowl and a ‘you’re fired’ notice.

Magda stood in front of the stove, firing off a shopping list on the phone in rapid Italian.

“Carne, pollo, pasta, vino…”

She seemed to be planning on buying out the entire market. The person on the other side was hopefully taking note of it.