Page 21 of Girl Anonymous

She shook her head.

“Then—when was the last day of your last period?”

“It’s not that easy. The bleeding kind of trails off, you know.”

His teeth clinked together in irritation.

“Um, a week ago?” she ventured.

“Five days? Eight days?”

“I don’t pay attention. It’s an annoyance.”

“Don’t you keep track on your app?”

“I’ve never had a reason to care! I’m pretty regular. When I go work out and I beat the stuffing out of the punch bag, I figure I should start carrying tampons.Okay?” She got progressively louder as she hefted herself to her feet. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to take my freshened uphoney houseand go to bed, and if I’m pregnant I will let you know when I damned well feel like it.”

Although he hovered at her elbow, making sure not to touch her yet staying close enough to catch her if she collapsed, she climbed into bed (someone had changed the sheets when they heard the shower running). She tucked herself in and went right to sleep.

* * *

He dimmed the lights, pulled on a T-shirt and boxers, sat down on the chair beside the bed, watched her sleeping face, and remembered…

CHAPTER 9

Twenty-four years ago…

Nine-year-old Dante Arundel stood in his father’s “office,” actually the expansive foyer of their San Francisco Pacific Heights mansion, and watched Benoit Arundel deal with the business of the day. His father was an important person, a feared man. Women called him handsome, and Dante supposed that was true. Wavy blond hair swept his shoulders, shiny with the care his valet took of it.

Dante was the heir apparent, the legitimate son, so it behooved him to pay attention to his father’s mood, and to pay attention to events, for at any moment Benoit could snap out a question and expect Dante to figure out the answer.

Dante had seen men die for inattention.

Benoit’s imposing velvet-cushioned antique chair—his favorite, and worn around the edges—rested on an elevated platform. Dante’s mother, Raine Arundel, sat on Benoit’s right, but down a step. She was also an important person, although a woman. She was Benoit’s advisor, the person who decided who would be received and who would be rejected. It behooved her to present the right people, the ones who brought gifts and groveled with proper gratitude. Occasionally she got it wrong, but not often. Benoit’s reprimands were swift and painful.

Dante consulted his schedule as a thin worn woman, Pola Daire,arrived through the front door with her pretty, four-year-old daughter, Mary. He glanced at his mother.

She made the almost invisible gesture that told him not to worry.

But she was worried. He could see a tightness around her mouth.

No wonder. Romani. Benoit called them vermin, a scourge on the earth. He carried in him generations of old-world prejudice and, although Dante didn’t know why, a particular loathing for the Daire family. Benoit wanted to eradicate them. He intended to eradicate them. Dante watched as the guards put the woman and the child through the metal detector, then wanded them, then ran their purses and shoes through an X-ray.

So Benoit feared them. As he should. Weeks earlier, Denny Daire had been slaughtered in his suburban Napa home while his wife and child were out running errands. Pola and Mary had disappeared; Dante had presumed his father’s men had caught up with and eliminated them, too. Yet here they were, walking in as if they’d lost all good sense. As if Pola had lost all good sense.

At a nod from Benoit, Axel did a body search on the woman. The man was a brute, he enjoyed her humiliation too much, and when he removed a small wrapped box from her purse and started to untie the bow, she spoke in a low threatening tone that made Axel glance at Benoit, put the box through the X-ray again, and hand it back to her.

He leaned over the child. Mary was wide-eyed and skittish; she’d been taught not to let strangers touch her. Pola had to kneel beside Mary and speak quiet encouragement, and the look Raine gave the guard made him go over the child quickly and unobtrusively. He did examine Mary’s necklace and ask her about it, and at her mother’s urging, she spoke of it in a voice that tripped and stammered.

Axel laughed at her, imitated her stutter.

Mary hung her head.

Raine snapped her fingers, and Axel stopped laughing. Yet he still grinned as he dug through the capacious pockets on Mary’s white ruffled apron and brought forth three small toys, meant to keep the child busy: a doll, a punch-button puppet, and a video game.

With a shrug at Benoit, he let them go, and Mary eagerly collected her toys and looked wide-eyed around the room.

Benoit leaned over and spoke a question to Raine, and she passed him the tablet with the application that had won Pola her chance to attempt to pass through hell. Benoit ran his eyes over the form. Dante knew the moment he read the information that had won her entrance; Benoit’s eyes narrowed, he looked at Raine, who inclined her head, and he handed her back the tablet. He gestured Pola toward him.

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