Page 139 of Desperate Crimes
Chapter Thirty-Five-Leanna
It’s been seven weeks, six days, and thirteen hours since Nico left.
Not that I’m counting.
Okay—I am.
I’ve been counting every moment like a prisoner etching marks into stone.
Every night without him feels like a season.
Every hour without his voice grates against my bones.
In the beginning, he called often.
Short check-ins, midnight whispers, a single growled “mine” before the signal would cut out.
Once, we managed a glitchy video call.
I saw his face—tired, scruffed, shadowed by harsh overhead lights—but his eyes were still that impossible shade of glacial blue, still full of heat just for me.
He blew me a kiss.
But now?
Nothing.
Three days.No word.No call.Not even a“Still alive.Don’t panic.”
And I am panicking.
The house he built for me feels too big without him in it.
Every room echoes with him.
With his scent, his voice, the ghost of his laughter when I get sassy, the way he growls my name like a promise and a curse in one breath.
I’ve been doing my best to keep my mind busy.
My thoughts organized.
My heart tethered.
Lately, I’ve been thinking more seriously about my future.
What I want to do.Who I want to be—outside of being his.
Not instead of.Just more.
And then, like fate throwing me a bone, his Aunt Maria called.
Maria Batiste, married to his Uncle Luc, is an avid reader and art collector.She’s also sweet and lovely, an absolute goddess of a woman.
Anyway, she needed help finding a specific sculpture from an obscure but brilliant artist upstate.
Someone I actually knew from an old gallery internship.
It was like a puzzle.
