Page 78 of The Lies We Tell

She anchored it under the knife in the middle of the bed and slipped quietly into the hallway. Looking left to make sure the coast was clear, she darted across the hall for Matteo’s room.

If it was locked, she could try the knife trick from the outside, but the knob twisted easily in her hand. No need to be worried about her snooping while she was under lock and key.

The room was empty, and it smelled like him, like cedar and spices. She gave herself a minute to take a single deep breath, letting the scent of him wrap around her. She missed that too. Crossing to his nightstand, she crouched in front of it.

The top drawer was a normal one, but the bottom one was locked and required a numeric code to open it. She’d watched him secure a gun and extra magazines inside it right before they left for Paris, after the incident at the restaurant.

4-9-3-2-7 Enter

She held her breath while she waited for the light to go from green to blue, nearly sobbing with relief when it did. Sliding the drawer open, she lifted out the 9mm, hefting the unfamiliar weight of it in her hand.

It had been a long time since she’d fired a gun. Her mother was still alive, and her grandfather had been visiting and insisted on teaching her how to load and fire one. She hoped she remembered enough to make sure her father didn’t walk away from this meeting today.

Tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans, she moved toward the balcony doors, pulling them open and shivering against the blast of icy February air.

Her balcony was small and narrow, with just enough room for a table and two chairs. Matteo’s balcony was wide and long, and it had a set of curved stairs leading down to the backyard. She didn’t really understand their purpose, and she’d never seen Matteo use them, but she followed them down and crept along the back of the house to the garage.

She hadn’t thought this part through. How to actually get into the garage to get the keys hanging on pegs along the back wall. She needed a code to access the automatic door from the outside and had no idea what it was.

Slipping along the perimeter of the garage, she found a door on the far side. Twisting the handle, she grunted when she found it locked. If only she had a knife out here. It was too risky to go all the way back upstairs to get it, and she was running out of time.

Toeing the grass around the edge of the building, she nudged a rock free, stooping to pick it up. She could do this. She could break into his garage and steal his car and kill her father in cold blood. What other choice did she have? Live as Matteo’s prisoner until he decided he was ready to deal with her?

Squaring her shoulders, she braced herself and launched the rock through the window. It slid across the floor a few feet, and she breathed a sigh of relief that it didn’t hit the car closest to her and set off any alarms. Using a second rock to clear out the remaining shards of glass, she reached in and opened the lock.

Grabbing the first set of keys she touched, she hit the button on the remote and blew out a breath when the red Alfa Romeo gave a series of beeps. It was as good a car as any, even if it was a little bright, and she didn’t have time to be picky. It wouldn’t be long before someone noticed she was missing. And when they did, they’d call Matteo.

She climbed behind the wheel, set the gun on the passenger seat beside her, and stuffed the key into the ignition. As soon as she hit the button for the garage door, she started the engine, prepared to leave the second it opened wide enough to let her through.

All she had to do was convince her father she was still on his side, catch him by surprise long enough to kill him, and then plead her case to the only man who’d ever given a damn about her.

No big deal.

Chapter Thirty

“What I want is to know who the fuck cost me seven million in premium Columbian coke! Antonetti is smart, but he’s not that smart. Are you really suggesting he covered his tracks so well on a last-minute op we can’t find a single shred of proof it was him?”

“What I’m saying is I don’t have anything concrete. Yet,” Luca bit off.

“Or it wasn’t Antonetti.”

Luca scoffed. “Of course it was. Who the hell else could it be?”

Matteo had been asking himself that question for almost twenty-four hours. Every single angle they worked, every direction they looked, every contact they uncovered, none of it pointed back to Antonetti. They were running out of things to search and leads to tug.

As unflinchingly certain as Luca was that Antonetti had to be behind the attack in Bruges and Tessa was responsible for tipping him off, Maeve couldn’t believe Tessa would do such a thing. Matteo was sure the truth lay somewhere in the gray area in between.

There was no denying Tessa had been in contact with her father. She herself admitted to it through all her tears and pleading. But it was becoming clear there was more to the story, and at some point, he was going to have to stop avoiding her and find out what the fuck it was.

“We could check the burner number we recovered from her phone records again.”

“We’ve checked it a dozen times,” Maeve said to Luca, sounding as annoyed as she looked. “Are you so intent on pinning it on her that you won’t be satisfied until you find a way to make her guilty?”

“I haven’t trusted her from the moment she crossed the threshold into my fucking house—and I was right, need I remind you.”

“Oh, God forbid you forget to remind us you were right.” Maeve rolled her eyes. “If she was feeding her father any kind of useful information, wouldn’t he have held up better against us? The man’s fallen like dominoes at every turn.”

“Maybe,” Luca snarled, “he was just luring us into a false sense of security. Trying to make us think we had the upper hand so we’d let our guard down. Or so Matteo would. Seems to me it worked.”

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