Page 37 of Kings & Carnage

"Good afternoon," he said. "Looking for something special today?”

I shifted nervously on my feet, then stared him down because I didn't usually do nervous and I wasn't going to start now.

"Where are your rings?"

Chapter16

Willa

"You really didn't have to go to the trouble," I said as Mrs. Giordana set down a silver tray with a small teapot and two teacups.

"I know," she said, "and to be honest I'm not sure why I have.”

"Manners probably," I said.

She met my gaze. “Probably."

She sounded resigned, like good manners were a cross to bear.

I couldn't really blame her. Good manners were what had gotten her into this mess. If she hadn't let me in the first time, I wouldn't be here now.

She poured tea into the two cups, then took a seat in one of the chairs across from the sofa where I was sitting.

"Now that I've dazzled you with my good manners, why don't you say what you came to say," she said.

I was surprised to hear a note of humor in her voice and I understood how Dean Giordana must've fallen in love with her. She was beautiful and elegant even in her disheveled state and she clearly had a sense of humor under all those good manners.

"My real name is Willa Russo," I said. "My sister Emma was a Bellepoint student who went missing two years ago. She was last seen at Aventine.”

Something shifted in her expression. It was subtle but I was sure I wasn't imagining it. A kind of recognition, like she wasn't completely surprised by what I'd said.

"What does that have to do with me? With my husband?" she asked.

"I came to Aventine this year to look for her. I didn't have any leads or anything, I just had a feeling that something had happened to her on campus. But when I started asking questions, I started to get threats.”

She swallowed nervously and took a drink of her tea. "What kind of threats?”

"Pictures taken of me around campus that made it clear someone had been following me," I said. "Threatening letters and… an earring I’d dropped in your husband's office.”

"What were you doing in his office?" she asked.

"Snooping." I wasn't going to apologize for snooping in her husband's office when he'd later tried to kill me. "Looking for some kind of clue about what happened to my sister.”

"And did you find anything?" she asked.

"No," I said, "but I knew whoever had sent me the earring must have found it in Dean Giordana's office. "And then later, I got another note telling me to come to a cabin in the woods around Aventine, that whoever was sending me the letter would be there with answers about Emma.”

"Why didn't you call the police?”

"I don't know," I said. "I probably should have. At the time I didn't know who I could trust. I just wanted to know what happened to my sister.”

"So what did you do?" she asked.

"I went to the cabin alone, like the letter said. And when I got there, Dean Giordana, your husband, was there with another man." I hurried to continue, just wanting to get the next part over with because even though Mrs. Giordana was technically on the side of the bad guys, I felt a little sick at the thought of having to tell her the truth. "They grabbed me in the woods and took me into the cabin, and then your husband told the other man to start digging a hole for my grave.”

My heart was pounding in my chest, the memory triggering a shit-ton of physiological responses in my body that made me want to run.

I expected her to deny it, to protest. To kick me out. Anything but what she did, which was stare at me across the tea service like I was a debt collector she'd been expecting for a long time.

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