Page 37 of Tease

So, I’m going to offer you a little hint as a reward. Perhaps you’ll find this useful.

I’ll be waiting to see if you can solve the puzzle and work out who I am.

There was an attachment to the email. Rina clicked on the link, and it brought up an obituary from twenty-five years ago for a man named Pietro Marino. He’d died in a freak accident, according to the article.

Rina let out a breath, her body going very still in the chair.

“What is it?”

“Pietro…Papátalked a-a-about a Pietro. He s-s-said he w-w-was a g-good b-boy, and he wished things c-could have turned out differently.”

She looked down at the desk for a long moment. Then she was pushing the chair back, forcing me to move before she rushed out from underneath the bed. I didn’t have time to stop her from leaving the room. I chased after her, finding Rina running up the stairs to the attic.

“Rina, where are you going?”

She didn’t respond, so I kept following her. She didn’t go into Sofia’s bedroom but opened up the door on the opposite side of the landing and stepped into another room. I entered a minute later, finding her kneeling on the floor next to some boxes. The room was full of them. I assumed this was where they kept things in storage.

“Rina.”

She opened up the closest box to her and started rifling through some papers.

“These arePapá’sthings.”

That was all the explanation I was getting because she fell silent as her eyes scanned the pages she had in her hands. I didn’t know what she was looking for or why she wanted to go through her father’s things, so I waited by the door. She was so focused on searching through the box, I didn’t think it was a good idea to question her.

The email bothered me. The implication there was clear. This person had been watching Rina. How else would they know we were getting closer to the truth? The fact they said they’d be waiting to see if she could solve the puzzle angered me. They had some fucking audacity.

I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled out my phone, hitting dial a moment later. If I was going to be waiting for Rina, I might as well do some digging of my own. Not to mention I should inform Zayn about this, anyway.

“You calling to tell me you found everything you needed at the house?” he asked when he answered.

“Not exactly. Does the name Pietro Marino mean anything to you?”

“Should it?”

I let out a sigh and began to explain what had happened today so far. Zayn kept quiet until I’d finished.

“So, you’re telling me this person, whoever they are, has somehow been watching Rina?”

“I think so. How else would they know what we’d found?”

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I.”

I was trying not to get worked up over it, but that was my girlfriend this person was spying on. Her family was in danger because of them. We needed to find out who the fuck they were and deal with them appropriately.

“I’ll speak to some of Gennaro’s men, see what they know… not that they like me very much. I suppose they’re Gil’s men now, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ll get back to you soon.”

He hung up before I could respond. I stuffed my phone back into my pocket and moved closer to Rina. She was staring down at something in her hands.

“What’s that?”

Her eyes darted up to mine. There were tears in them. I immediately put my hand on her shoulder.

“What’s wrong,mia preziosa?”

She angled the page she was looking at so I could see it. It was a hand-drawn plan of her bedroom, complete with detailed notes about the various things Orsino planned to build for her in it.

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