Page 11 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

“Are you going to the charity gala the art society is hosting?” he asked, hoping she would enjoy his new plan. “We should go together. Not as an engaged couple, of course, but start moving the wheels toward the idea that we are indeed a couple.”

She didn’t say anything. Didn’t meet his gaze. There was a frown on her face. The elevator doors would open soon, but still he could not resist, reaching over and brushing a hand over her hair.

“Are you feeling all right, bedda?”

She smiled up at him, and it was her normal smile, but something... Something in her eyes was not right. Like a dimming. “Just a migraine. I think I’ll go home and lie in a dark room for the night.” She looked down at her purse. “I know we had plans, but you don’t mind, do you?”

The doors opened, and she stepped out first. He followed, dogged by a strange confusion. “Of course not.” It would give him time to work on his timeline, his media contacts. Ensuring his whisper network never pointed back to him as the source, because that was just another way to twist the knife for Dante. Make it look like Teo himself had been willing to keep such a thing secret.

Saverina hadn’t answered his question about the gala. And she strode toward the lobby doors with clear, quick purpose. So quick, he was practically tagging along after her even though his natural stride was much longer than hers.

They did not share goodbye kisses here at the office, but still something about the way she headed for her car without a goodbye or a smile left him feeling...concerned. Was she angry with him for some slight? Women, he supposed, were forever doing that sort of thing.

But before she fully reached her car, she turned and shaded her eyes against the setting sun to look at him.

“Lorenzo asked if I’d join them on the last leg of their trip. The children are wearing Brianna out.”

“Do they not have nannies for that kind of thing?”

“I enjoy the children, and it would give me the opportunity to tell them about us. Explain everything so they don’t think the engagement is too quick. I’d hate to have Lorenzo disapprove.” Again she gave him that smile that was dimmed.

By the migraine, obviously. She was in pain. It made sense. And she was talking of breaking the news of the engagement to the person keeping that news from being spread far and wide, so this was good. Once Lorenzo knew, the plan could move forward. “I hope you have a wonderful time, then. When do you leave?”

“Early tomorrow morning.”

This shocked him, and he didn’t think he did a very good job of hiding it. Because her smile changed. Sharpened, ever so slightly.

“I’m sorry for the short notice,” she said. She lifted a hand, and for a moment he thought she would reach out. Offer something physical with her goodbye.

But she only made an odd waving motion. “I’ll text,” she offered, then turned to her car. She slid into the driver’s seat and closed the door behind her. No extra smiles. Nothing.

He found himself watching the car drive away. Unsettled. Frustrated. With the strangest sensation battering his chest and the errant and incomprehensible thought that he’d miss her while she was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

SAVERINA DID NOT go to meet Lorenzo and Brianna on their vacation. That had never been the plan. Subterfuge was the plan.

Crushing Teo LaRosa was the plan.

She called off work for the week and spent the next few days hacking into Teo’s personal and professional emails and systems to gather more information, but she was still mostly left with the fact Teo was DNA testing to see if Dante Marino was his father. And he had befriended quite an array of media professionals over the past year—mostly from anonymous accounts.

She wasn’t quite sure how or if these things connected, but they were the only two facts she could be certain of from his digital communication.

She found no evidence Teo and Dante had ever spoken, but she could think of no other reason for a connection to her family’s enemy than that Teo was working against Parisi. She found no evidence Teo had done anything to hurt Parisi on a professional level, so corporate espionage seemed a bit of a stretch.

After a few days, she accepted she’d scoured every computer avenue—now she had to do some real-life digging. She needed more information before she knew how to proceed. How to crush Teo into tiny, jagged, destroyed bits and wished he’d never even looked at her, let alone fooled her.

She’d considered hiring someone to follow him, but she hadn’t been able to get over the desire to hear it herself. From his own mouth, whatever he was trying to do to her family. So tonight, she would set out to follow him herself.

Maybe he would recognize her, maybe it would destroy her revenge, but she needed to do this herself.

Her fury wouldn’t allow anything else. Besides, she had some experience trying to move through the world without being seen. When she’d been at university and Lorenzo’s false misdeeds had been plastered about, she’d wanted to keep a low profile, and she had. All it took, often enough, were baggy clothes, an unflattering hairstyle, and making certain to engage eye contact with no one.

If she failed in this, there would be other ways to get answers, to thwart him, to ruin him. She was an intelligent woman with computer skills and a hefty trust fund and well-paying job. She would use every privilege in her arsenal to eviscerate the man who’d broken her heart.

She waited at the little restaurant patio across from Teo’s apartment that evening, picking at a salad and waiting for him to arrive home. He did not have anything on his digital work calendar, but he’d had a little note on his personal one. No time. No date. Just an untitled entry.

She was going to find out what it was.

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