Page 99 of Dark Love

A safe.

She has a shelving system inside the closet, but the safe doesn’t fit.

That safe is top-of-the-line. I can crack it, but not easily, nor without breaking the locking mechanism. She won’t miss that.

Why does she have a safe like this?

Jewelry maybe?

This house wasn’t cheap by any means. The Vincenti’s make it hard for outsiders to move into their neighborhoods.

There’s always a family discount, but outsiders pay top dollar.

It has to be jewelry.

But she doesn’t wear much.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a collection of family jewelry.

A safe deposit box in the bank would be a better choice in most cases, but she could probably leave them sprawled out everywhere living on this street without a single worry.

I flip through a few shelves, but they don’t hold anything more interesting than bills. Normal bills at that. She has far too many streaming services.

Another thing we have in common.

The library took too much time. I can’t shuffle through anything else, not that there’s anything interesting outside of that safe.

Should I come back and crack it...

I dash down the last set of steps, through the living room, and into her kitchen.

This room is lived in.

Everything is neat and tidy, but Dahlia actually cooks here.

You don’t have time to dissect her kitchen. Drinks and a bowl need to happen before she starts questioning the timing.

I pull a crystal bowl and a cut-glass vase off a shelf, filling the vase with water and the flowers before I move to the fridge. It’s big enough to feed a crowd,which is way past what a single woman would need. But a Vincenti probably designed this space, and families around here tend to be large.

The door opens to a mostly empty space. There’s a half-full quart of milk in the door and not much else…

BEER!

Dahlia doesn’t drink, but there’s beer in here. Two bottles are missing from the six-pack. I snatch a bottle up. This is a craft beer. A nice one at that.

Someone has exceptional taste in beer.

And it’s not her.

Maybe she doesn’t drink liquor but enjoys a beer once in a while.

Drinking beer while watching a baseball game is almost a requirement. For guys.

Not for a woman who has a floral and lace coverlet on her bed.

Did she just recently break up with someone?

Is she seeing someone else? My empty hand balls up into a fist. We aren’t anything yet. She doesn’t know I’ve claimed her, but that doesn’t matter. If she’s seeing someone, that guy is about to disappear from her life one way or the other.

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