Page 65 of Luca
"I'm sorry," I tell Carlos, backing down the sidewalk away from him. "I’ll be back and then we’ll catch up."
"Wait!"
I'm already moving fast, slipping through the alley between two buildings.
Sofia is here.
That’s all that matters. She's alive and looking for work in the art world, trying to build a new life for herself.
And I just led Luca's people directly to the place where she might return.
How stupid could I be?
Chapter 25: Luca
I'm standing in the shadows across from a run-down hostel in Prague's backpacker district, watching my wife embrace a man who clearly knows her very well.
And everything I thought I understood about my marriage just shattered.
She told me she was going to rest in our suite. Said she was tired from travel and needed a few hours to adjust. I believed her, went to make business calls, and when I returned an hour later, she was gone.
Not just gone from the room. Gone from the hotel entirely. The service entrance security footage showed a woman in worn jeans and a jacket slipping out through the staff corridors. A woman who moved with the confidence of someone who'd done this before, who knew exactly how to disappear without being noticed.
It didn’t take long for my men to pick up her trail, following her path through Prague's old town to this neighborhood that no wealthy tourist would ever visit. A neighborhood where the signs are in Czech and where people who don't want to be found come to disappear.
And now I'm here, watching her.
The woman talking to that man isn't Sofia Romano. She's not even trying to be Sofia. Her posture is different, more relaxed. She's speaking in a manner that suggests familiarity with him or a shared history.
But it's the way the man is treating her that removes any last doubt from my mind.
I watched as he ran across a busy street to greet her, wrapping her in his arms and hugging her like lost lovers.
He's talking to her like someone who knows her intimately. He even touched her fucking hair and brushed it back from her shoulders.
It’s taking every bit of self-control I have not to rush over there and slit his throat right where he stands on the sidewalk.
But if I do that, I won’t get the answers I need.
I watch silently as he pulls up his shirt to show her a tattoo on his shoulder, an elaborate dragon that covers most of his upper arm. She smiles and leans closer, touching it with a finger and examining the tattoo with the critical eye of someone who has opinions about the artwork. This isn't a stranger showing off a tattoo to impress a pretty woman. This is someone sharing something with a lover who helped make the decision.
They have history. Intimate history. The kind you build over time. The kind of history Sofia is supposed to have with me, but doesn't.
Because Sofia isn't Sofia.
This woman is someone else entirely. Someone who has lovers in Prague who she goes to meet while on her honeymoon for fucks sake.
I’d give up my jet to hear their conversation right now since all I can do is imagine their words.
Are they making plans to meet up later? Will she slip out while I’m asleep to fuck him in a rundown hostel?
She laughs at something he says, then appears to be apologizing. They’re in the middle of a tense conversationwhen she suddenly gets spooked. Maybe she caught sight of one of my men. I know she hasn’t seen me.
She tries to back away and he reaches out to stop her. And then she turns and she’s gone.
I hear him yell after her ‘Wait!’
She doesn’t slow down or look back.
