Page 59 of Reign

Dinner-table-adjacent.

Birthday-party-adjacent.

Possibly-holding-someone’s-baby-at-a-family-function-adjacent.

My stomach drops.

Both of my sisters-in-law are pregnant.

Which means there will be baby showers. Christenings. Family holidays. Events where everyone pretends we are not all one badly timed comment away from gunfire.

And Luciano could be there.

Luciano Castillo could stand across a room at some future family function, looking polished and bored and impossible, while I sit beside my brothers knowing I submitted an inquiry to his adult club under a fake name like a lunatic.

“Oh my God!”

How did I not think of this before?

How did my brain catalog every stupid detail about him and still refuse to process the part where my brother is married to his sister? How did I go from Luciano has pretty hands to let me request a private consultation at his sex club without pausing once to consider the Thanksgiving implications?

I press the heel of my palm to my forehead.

Too late now.

I open my settings again, as if changing my email display name after the fact will somehow erase the inquiry from whatever polished, secretive database it has already entered.

Name: Elena Amato.

I stare at it.

Then laugh once. I may actually be the dumbest woman alive.

I delete Elena Amato.

Then type Lena A.

As if removing five letters is enough to outsmart the cartel.

Fantastic work.

Truly inspiring.

I hit save anyway.

***

By morning, I decide the best solution is to pretend none of it happened.

This works for approximately eleven minutes.

Then my phone buzzes, and I nearly throw it into a moving box.

I sigh. Just a notification from the airline reminding me to check in for my flight.

Right.

I suppose, while I was busy committing digital self-sabotage, I forgot I was flying back home today.