Page 72 of The Lies We Tell

Luca’s voice echoed down the hall seconds before he burst through the door with Sienna on his heels. He sent Tessa a look so scathing she stumbled back from him, and Matteo took a menacing step forward.

He really didn’t have time to deal with Luca’s temper and vitriol today. He had enough on his plate without piling on more.

“What do you want, Luca? I have a bit of a situation I need to handle.”

Tessa turned for the door. “I’ll go, and we’ll—”

“No,” Luca snarled, shooting out his arm to stop her. “You should stay. You’ll definitely want to hear this.” Luca nodded at Sienna.

“We’ve been monitoring Antonetti’s call activity to make sure he hasn’t been tipped off by anyone,” Sienna said, tapping a series of keys and then looking at Matteo over the lid of the laptop.

“Right. And?”

“And yesterday”—she flicked a glance at Tessa—“we noticed a new contact pop up in his call history.” She turned the screen to face him and hit the return key to make the number she’d highlighted bigger. “Recognize that phone number?”

Matteo squinted at it, trying to place it in his memory. When the realization hit him, his head snapped up, eyes narrowing on Tessa’s face. She looked stricken, eyes wide, face pale, arms still tightly wrapped around her body.

“Your father called you?”

Her mouth opened and closed again, and her eyes flitted to each one of them before settling on Matteo’s and filling up with tears.

He took a step forward, and she took one back. It had to be a mistake. He couldn’t be this blind, this naive, this fucking stupid. But yesterday was the first time her number had shown up in his contacts. They’d been monitoring him for weeks, and her number had never shown up before.

“How long did the call last?”

“What?” Luca said. “Why does that matter? She—”

“How long,” Matteo said through gritted teeth, “did the fucking call last?”

“Almost ten minutes.”

His phone announced an incoming text message. Numb, unable to make all the details make sense in his brain, he glanced down at the screen. Roarke.

On my way to Bruges. Will send updates when I know more.

He read the text message twice more, and everything snapped sharply into focus.

“You told him about Belgium.”

“No…I…Matteo,” Tessa stammered. “I can explain.”

“What’s in Belgium?”

Ignoring Luca’s question, Matteo stalked across the room and gripped her arm so hard she winced. “This isn’t the first time, is it?”

She slowly shook her head, and he felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

“How? How were you contacting him?”

“A burner phone. Matteo, please.”

“No,” he barked, hauling her toward the door and into the hallway. “How long have you been in communication with him?”

“Since the beginning.”

She was crying now, tears streaming down her face and dripping off her jaw onto the collar of her sweater. He hated that there was still a part of him that wanted to comfort her, to wrap his arms around her and tell her everything would be okay. But everything wasn’t okay.

All this time he thought he was protecting her, and Luca had been right. He’d been fucking the enemy. Pulling her in too close when he should have been pushing her away.

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