Page 103 of Salvatore

“Oh.” She retreats, averting her gaze, the easygoing eye contact she’s made since I arrived now gone. “That was my breakfast.”

Her response doesn’t pass the sniff test. Her vibe is off.

“I thought you would’ve eaten out here.”

“I prefer to keep things professional and have my meals elsewhere.”

Really? Weird.

I want to press the issue, but I also don’t want to increase her obvious discomfort, so I let it slide.

We do spend the morning together, though—me seated on a stool at the island counter, her making gnocchi from scratch. We chat about random things—her childhood in Italy, my love of food and fashion. It’s the most time I’ve spent out of my room, so when lunch arrives I wonder if she’ll ignore professionalism and stay with me. Instead, she loads up a tray with a meal identical to mine and smiles in apology as she leaves the room.

The whole situation is sus, which is why I wait a beat for her footsteps to fade before I silently push from the table and tiptoe after her.

She’s humming as I poke my head into the hall, catching her as she passes my room and stops before a door farther up on the left.

Her bedroom?

She juggles the tray in one hand, resting it against her hip while she grabs for the knob and glances toward me.

I jerk my head back at aMission Impossiblespy-level speed, then scurry to the dining table, hoping she didn’t catch me being nosy.

Oh, who cares?

She snitched on me. I snooped on her. Karma would consider us even.

I finish my lunch and return to my room to call Liv.

I don’t mention that the house manager is running some Michelin-star-etiquette type situation. Or how it leaves me feeling the slightest bit self-conscious. But it becomes clear it’s a routine when Catarina pulls the same disappearing act at dinner.

She returns to the kitchen ten minutes after I’ve finished my roast chicken and vegetables, her tray empty, her gaze averted as if she’s ignoring me while I read a book on my cell at the dining table.

We don’t really talk again until my eyes are so tired the words begin to blur on my screen.

“It’s past my bedtime,dolcezza.” She offers a comforting pat to my shoulder. “I will see you in the morning.”

“I should get to bed, too.” I push back in my chair and follow her to the hall, expecting her to join me as I walk toward my room, but she goes left instead, heading for the foyer.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Home.” She pauses. “I have a small cottage in the far corner of the property. You weren’t aware you had the house to yourself at night?”

“Oh” is the only answer I can come up with, which I’m sure beats—then where the hell have you been eating your meals?

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” She finger-waves in farewell and continues outside.

This whole eating thing just keeps evolving into increasing levels of weird, and with nothing else to occupy my mind, I let curiosity lead me to the door she keeps disappearing into.

If she’s watching television and having downtime, the situation would make sense. Obviously, she can’t work from sunrise to midnight without a break. But if she’s locking herself in an empty room while I take over the open living space, then I’ll demand a return to my room service so she isn’t being ostracized.

I grab the door handle and slowly twist, all the snarky comments I want to text Salvatore accumulating like a production line until I’m staring down at a dark staircase leading into an even darker basement.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

Catarinacannotbe eating in here. The basement? Really?

Lorenzo Cappelletti must be an A-grade vicious asshole.

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