Page 15 of A Taste Of Darkness

Arlo isn’t going to rat you out, neither am I.

Your secret is safe with us. No one’s going to find you. Ever.

I’ve got to go now. I hear Alessandro call for me.

Talk to you whenever I can.

Un caro saluto,

Adriana”

It had been over a year since Adriana’s last letter, which was why it came to me as a surprise when today’s mail got handed to me on my way out of the building, and I read her name on the first envelope.

Adriana was my half-sister, but only a handful of people knew that she was a half-sibling. Not even my father knew he wasn’t her papà. The few of us who knew had no other choice but to act like Adriana was his, otherwise our mother would’ve ended up dead for cheating on her husband.

It was way easier to act that way when Adriana’s father was killed. Ever since then, she has been a true member of the family, and even I could see past the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be there. Now, she was the only family member I was still in touch with, apart from Arlo.

In her last letter from a year ago, she wrote that she didn’t know when her next letter would come as Dante suspected something odd going on. He tried to force answers out of her, according to Adriana anyway, but she didn’t say a word.

When she wrote, “There won’t be any letters for a while,” I expected it to be three or four months, not fourteen.

Something about the timing was odd. Arlo had already informed me about my sister’s engagement four months ago, and now that it was only two months away, she was reaching out to me. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but something about that letter was off.

Her writing was different. The way she talked to me… like I was a foreigner. I was, in some ways anyway. Adriana had no clue who I was anymore, but that never stopped her from pretending she knew me the best.

Usually, in her letters, Adriana would pretend to guess how I’d been during her absence. We used to exchange letters every two weeks—and for all of those seven days it took for my letter to arrive at her destination, she would write about the days she assumed I had. Then she would “predict” the future for the other seven days until I got her response.

She didn’t even try to assume how I’d been these past fourteen months.

Now I sat in my office at Tartarus, staring at the pages she wrote me, not knowing whether I should want to reply. I knew it was only a matter of time before my family figured Rosa—the name I used as the sender—was just a pseudonym. I guessed it would raise suspicions.

Adriana never had a friend named Rosa, but I was confident that she knew how to lie had someone asked about the letters. But inside that house, it was a miracle my cover lasted as long as it had.

Seven years. It had been seven years since I escaped. Seven years since Arlo had been “traveling the world” to find me. Seven years since Luca Veneto had been declared dead and Milo Marucci was born.

Seven years of freedom.

Their discovery of my very-much-alive status was bound to be made, I just didn’t know how long it would take until they would reach out to me, or try to capture me.

I reached for my phone on my desk, ready to call my cousin to discuss my suspicions with him, when suddenly, a knock appeared at my office door.

My head lifted, eyes focused on the door as it opened, and one of the hundreds of security men working tonight emerged from the dark hallway.

“Sir,” he said and cleared his throat. “Miss Adams is here to see you.”

I narrowed my eyes at the man whose name I didn’t bother learning. “Flora or Sterlie?”

It was a stupid question seeing as Flora was no longer Miss Adams or an Adams in the first place, but I just wanted to be sure.

“Sterlie, Sir.” His voice didn’t waver, but I could hear the slight tremor anyway. It was funny, really. Some of the most powerful people feared me, but that didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that my own staff feared me.

They had great reasons to, but I was no Kai Auclaire. I was still human.

“Is she inside the building already?” I asked out of sheer curiosity. After what happened yesterday, I wasn’t sure whether my men would grant her entrance the moment they spotted her, or if they’d still refuse to let her inside.

He nodded, though hesitantly. “She said you were engaged, and Romano confirmed it, Sir. As your fiancée, surely she’s allowed to enter, is she not?

After she ran off this morning without so much as a goodbye, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see her again. I wasn’t surprised she was gone, though that didn’t mean I felt that little pinch of betrayal any less. She’d run off like a one-night stand, and I hadn’t even seen her naked. I hadn’t even touched her like that. Felt her in a sensual way. Kissed her.

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