Page 114 of Phantom Mine

With a final breath, she releases me, her arms falling to her sides. She doesn’t step back. Instead, I feel her forehead come down between my shoulder blades.

“I didn’t show up that night because I couldn’t, but that doesn’t mean I ever forgot about you. That I stopped thinking about you, even though I tried to fight it.” When I finally turn, she’s looking at the floor, as if the weight of her emotions is pulling her down. Her gaze lifts to mine and I see the heaviness of her heart reflected in her eyes, even as a soft, tender smile touches her lips. “The thought of you is the only thing that got me through those eighteen months, Phantom.”

I cup her nape, angle her face up, and crush my mouth aggressively to hers. Pure, unadulterated ecstasy immediately rushes into my blood, making me dizzy. My body roars to life at the feel of her lips against mine, lips that I should have kissed thousands of times by now, not mere hundreds.

Pulling my mouth away with much difficulty, I rasp, “I never left London.”

A world full of emotions crosses her eyes—confusion, disbelief, uncertainty. Hope.

“What do you mean?”

“I never left, Leni. I never went back to Italy,” I confess, the words tumbling urgently from my lips. “I stayed up that entire night, waiting for you. At first pacing hopelessly in my bedroom, then on my balcony. I was hoping that I’d be able to spot youon the street as you walked up to the hotel. But you never came. I couldn’t go without seeing you again, so I stayed at the hotel a few more days in case you showed up—only five, when apparently the magic number was seven. I can’t believe that if I’d only stayed two more days, I would have seen you.”

I bring my mouth down over hers once more, trying to convey a world of emotions to her that I couldn’t begin to name. “I still couldn’t leave after those five days. Don’t ask me why, Enzo’s been trying to get that answer out of me for nearly two years. I don’t know, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Instead of going back to Italy, I bought this place and moved in. I knew that I’d see you again. I didn’t know how, or when, or where, but I knew I would. I used the only link I had to you and got closer to theFirenzeside of the operations so I had a reason to be there more often. I started going to the club every Saturday night, with the sole hope of seeing you again. Every Saturday for a year and a half.Carnivalewas on a Saturday so I thought—”

She gasps, and a blush colors her cheeks a lovely shade of pink. “I auditioned on—”

“—A Saturday.” I smile at her. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I had nothing better to do that night. I’d been waiting for it for eighteen months.” I brush a strand of her thick, glossy hair behind her ear. “When I walked up to you in the alley and you turned around, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like my dreams, my fantasies, and reality were all colliding before my eyes.” I tug her into my body. “So you see, my words aren’t empty when I say I’m not going anywhere. I’m not walking away from you just because you’re holding parts of yourself back.”

“Maybe not yet.” Valentina’s face falters. An undercurrent of bitterness infiltrates her tone. “But you will soon.”

I’m about to correct her, to say I’m not going anywhereever, when I realize she’s referring to Marina. I seem to completelyforget about my soon to be fiancée’s existence until someone reminds me of it.

I don’t want to talk about Marina, I want to talk about Leni. I want to peel back her layers and expose the heart I’m starting to desperately crave.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” I urge.

She runs her hand over my jaw and up my cheek, feeling the stubble there. Her face tells me she enjoys the roughness of it against her fingers.

“What do you want to know?”

Everything.

“Who was Adriana to you?” I ask. “She wasn’t just a friend, was she?”

Valentina’s lashes flutter, but she holds my gaze.

“Trust me,” I implore, a pleading note leaking into my tone. “Trustme.” I cup the hand she has on my face, clamping it in my fist. “Talk to me.”

“She was my sister.”

I inhale a shocked, stabbing breath.

“Yes.” Valentina acknowledges my reaction with a sad smile. “Your brother killed my sister.”

Chapter Thirty-One

Matteo

“Cara…”I shake my head, at a loss for words. The hate that surges through my body might just be powerful enough to raise my brother from the dead just so I can kill him again. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. You helped me understand she was just another victim in a long line of his casualties.”

Valentina tugs her hand out of my hold and walks over to the bed. She sits on it and draws her knees into her chest, exactly the way she was sitting when I found her under the rain. The beginnings of a cold have thickened her voice.

“My parents died when I was four. I was a child so I don’t remember much, but when you’re young, all you know is your parents. I can still hear my dad’s deep laugh, I can still feel the scratch of his beard against my cheek. I remember the way my mom used to strap me to her back while she did chores. They were there and then they were gone and I was left alone. Adrift.Unable to understand what changed and why, and yet unable to ignore the fact that my life would never be the same. I was lost, and who knows how long I would have continued to be lost for if it wasn’t for Adri.”

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