Page 64 of Dangerous Deception

“It could have been,” my father assures me quickly. “You did the right thing in coming here. Seeing you is better medicine than anything the doctors can give me. Please, Addie. Stay with me for a while?”

It’s tempting, but my worry quickly turns into irritation. My father seems infinitely less worse than he sounded on the phone, and all those hours of worrying are quickly catching up to me. And I’m not sure I even want to be around him right now since he doesn’t seem concerned that he made me worry myself sick.

“I’d love to,” I say with a small smile. “But I’m exhausted. I want to go home and unpack. It was a long flight.”

“Addie…”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Papà. I can come by tomorrow and I can tell you all about my holiday?”

“I can arrange that,” says Raffaele from where he continues to linger in the doorway. He doesn’t even try to hide the bite of annoyance in his tone. “Let’s get you home.”

As I stand, my father suddenly reaches sharply for my hand and grips tightly at my wrist. “You should stay,” he says urgently, his voice low. He looks up at me with wide eyes. “I’m poorly. I need you.”

If I weren’t suddenly crashing so hard from the false worry, I may have been more sympathetic to his illness, but my annoyance wins out and I pull my hand away.

“No, Papà. I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

26

RAFFAELE

“You’re allowed to be angry.”

“Angry?” Adelina pulls herself away from gazing out the window at the passing nightlife and fixes me with a confused squint. “What do you mean?”

“At your father.”

“Oh.” Her eyes widen as if she’d somehow forgotten about the trip we’ve just had to visit her sick father.

Maybe she’s more exhausted from the long journey than I realized.

“I’m not angry,” she continues after a second of thinking. “I just feel…” Trailing off, she shakes her head and sighs softly. “Italy was beautiful.”

It was. The trip was only supposed to take a few days, but seeing how well Adelina was doing after everything that happened to her, I extended the stay for a few weeks. If I’d had my way, I would have delayed returning until the end of summer so she could have a few decent months of relaxation and bliss.

Already, the weight of reality is settling back over her. Her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes, she’s toying repeatedly withthe hem of her skirt, and despite the sun-kissed glow on her skin, it’s like she’s beginning to withdraw again.

That can’t happen.

“I’ll send over a medical team to make sure your father is alright.”

“I don’t think there’s any need,” she replies, flashing me a tired smile.

I let the silence linger, giving her the option to continue and tell me more if she wants to.

“It’s just… on the phone, he sounded so sick. Like deathly sick. Suddenly, I was a kid again and listening to my mom tell me she was fine when I could see she wasn’t. So all that driving and flying just to come here and see him sniffling with the cold or the summer flu, it's just…” Her hands ball into a fist and her lips repeatedly press together as she searches for the right words. “It’s just not fair.”

We share a similar wavelength of thought, but while Adelina is concerned for her father’s health, I’m more concerned about why he played up his sickness to get us back into America.

“Plus,” she continues, glaring out the window, “he was so insistent that I stay with him as if the whole reason I’mnotwith him isn’t any of his fault. If he wanted me to care for him, then he shouldn’t have—” Adelina catches herself and looks over at me with the corners of her mouth downturned. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful.”

“I take no offense.” She’s right. If her father hadn’t sold her to me, she would have been by his side, caring for him like he suddenly wanted. Given everything she told me about her mother, I would have let her stay if she had asked, but she chose to come with me.

That lifts my heart more than I care to admit.

It also heightens my suspicion. “It won’t be Italy,” I say as I pull out my phone, “but I can make the transition back into regular life a little smoother.”

“What are you doing?” Adelina strains against her seatbelt as she tries to glimpse at my phone, but I tilt it away with a small smile.

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