Page 37 of The Road to Ruined

"Cool," I reply. "You look stupid. There's no way you're really reading that fucking newspaper in this lighting with a mask on. How'd you even get it?"

"You look stupid sleeping on the bathroom floor. Why'd you do that?"

"It was warm," I reply weakly. I grab my purse from the countertop. "I'm leaving. I'm sure I'll fucking see you around even if I don't want to."

"Yep," he says without looking up, still pretending he's reading the fucking paper.

As I walk toward the doorway, I realize…

"I don't have any shoes."

"There are shoes in the closet," he says.

"They won't fit me," I say. "They'll be too big."

"So? Go barefoot, then."

I sigh. If he were Luca, there would have been new shoes waiting for me when I woke up this morning—coffee and food, too. There's no way this guy doesn't drink coffee. He can't do that in a mask.

If he were Luca, he'd hold me after.

"Where are they?" I ask. My lower lip trembles, and I bite it back. "Where are Luca and Declan?"

"I don't know," he says dully. "Eastern Europe, I think."

"Why aren't they here? When are they coming back…for me?"

"The De Rossis brought an organization that's existed as a feared whisper for hundreds of years into the spotlight and under scrutiny because they couldn't properly dispose of bodies and needed to bring women they barely knew, like you, behind the curtain, and then they couldn't even run away right. That's why they aren't here."

"Isn't that last part your fault?"

"No," he says. "They should have shot you all and left you on the bus to be placed into barrels, but they didn't. They've been given too much leeway because of their father and their fame; people who should have known better let Declan De Rossi make his own rules and his own harem, and now we have a bunch of twenty-year-old girls to babysit and one of the dead ones left a diary behind for the police to find. I don't think anyone is in a hurry to help Declan and Luca back into the country. Famous people on 'Most Wanted' lists don't exactly move around easily. And Teagan, as far as I know, they haven't even asked."

"Luca loves me. He wrote that song for me."

"Maybe he did. But that doesn't matter," he says, so disinterested he still doesn't even bother looking up.

Defeated, I grab my bag from the counter, throw it over my shoulder, and walk toward the door, preparing to drive home barefoot.

"Your phone will be scrambled until you're ten miles away from the compound," he says to my back as my hand closes around the doorknob. I pause, listening. "Just head west once you're down the mountain. The government is watching you, Teagan. They're listening to your calls and reading your texts, too—keep that in mind."

"And are they the only ones?" I ask.

"No."

Without replying, I pull the door open and begin descending the staircase into the garage. And there sits my old grey Toyota, right beside the shiny blacked-out Aston Martin.

The garage opens on its own as my feet hit the floor. I climb into my car and pull out onto the one-lane road, heading down the mountain and then west once I get to a highway. When my phone starts lighting up with notifications, I put in my address and continue home.

Two hours.I'm two hours from my house, and it takes even longer once I hit traffic outside of L.A.

When I finally make it home, I park down the block and walk through the front door, finding my parents sitting in the living room.

"It hasn't even been a week, Teagan," my mom says. "Where were you?"

"I was out," I say. "With a man."

"Jesus, Teagan," my dad sneers.

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