Page 71 of The Lies We Tell

Tessa nodded, but something in her expression seemed off, even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Kissing her forehead, he left her to dress and made his way back downstairs.

Luca was at the office with Sienna going over all the documents and correspondence they needed to create to make this fake sale of Antonetti Hotel Group look not just real, but like it had been months in the making. Once that was in place, he’d tap Regina to leak the story to her contact at the paper and let Alexei off the leash.

God willing, Antonetti and his son would be dead by this time next week. Then Tessa would be free, and they could talk about what came next. He’d been doing a lot of thinking about what came next lately. He had a few ideas, but he wanted to get her take on it. Especially while they continued searching for her mother.

He didn’t have much hope her mother was still alive. They’d exhausted every avenue they could think of and come up empty. The hardest part was going to be breaking that to her. He didn’t relish it, but he didn’t want to leave it for too long either. Once this thing with Antonetti was done, they’d talk about all of it.

A knock on the door drew his attention. Dressed in a sweater he’d bought her in Paris and a pair of jeans, Tessa had her arms crossed over her middle and was hugging herself tightly. She looked uncomfortable, nervous, like she might change her mind and bolt at any minute.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asked, meeting her in the middle of the room and rubbing his hands up and down her arms.

She swallowed hard and gave him a thin smile. “It’s just important, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“Tell me, piccola.”

She opened her mouth and took a deep breath but was cut off by his ringing phone. Fuck’s sake. They were forever being interrupted by work. He glanced over his shoulder at the phone on his desk, willing it to be quiet so she could get whatever it was off her chest.

When it went silent, he turned to her, giving her shoulders a squeeze and urging her to continue. But she jumped when it went off again. He sighed and sent her an apologetic look.

“Hang on. Let me just…”

She nodded, and he jogged back to his desk, scooping it off the top and frowning at the readout. Why the hell was Peeters calling him when he should be handling the incoming and outgoing shipments?

“What do you need, Peeters?” he said by way of a greeting.

“We have a situation here,” Peeters said, sounding more than a little out of breath.

Matteo snapped to attention. “What kind of situation?”

“Someone attacked the incoming and outgoing shipments. All three of them.”

He flicked a glance at Tessa, who stood watching him in the center of the room. “Attacked them how?”

“They fucking blew them out of the sky. Fire brigade is on their way, and probably the cops. If you have favors you can call in, I’d do it and do it now.”

Matteo hung up and immediately dialed Callum. “Someone attacked me in Belgium,” he said as soon as his friend answered.

Callum bit off a curse. “Who?”

“I don’t know yet. But I can’t do much cover-up from here. Can you—”

“I’ll send Roarke. He’s finishing up business in Brussels and can be there inside of an hour. I’ll call you with updates.”

“Thank you.”

Matteo ended the call, tapping his phone on his palm. He wondered if his guy in Frankfurt had any pull with the Belgian government. Couldn’t hurt to at least ask. He had to take care of damage control and cover-up before he could focus on figuring out just who the fuck had taken such a big swipe at him.

None of these shipments would ruin him financially, but that didn’t mean he would let something like this go unanswered. As soon as he found out who it was, the punishment would be swift and severe.

“What happened?”

Matteo’s gaze traveled to Tessa again, and he sighed. “Someone blew up a couple flights at the airport.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “Can whatever you have to say wait until tonight? I really need to get ahead of this as much as possible.”

She hesitated a fraction of a second, but ultimately nodded and offered him a tentative smile. He really didn’t like that look on her face. “Sure. We can talk about it later.”

“I really am so—”

“Matteo!”

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