Page 58 of Shades of Grey & Gold

“You’re going to have to take her back.”

“I know that too.”

“She can’t stay here while this Volkov thing is happening.” His words tumble faster and his tone gets concerningly tight for Nico. “I haven’t even let Maggie and Sophia out of the house for weeks. It’s not safe.”

“I know.” I turn away from the house and into the office. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”

Nico tells me. I listen. I ask questions. I give answers. My father’sconsigliere3, Ferraro, shows up with three of our senior men, and we sit around the long table in the center of the guest house while the afternoon shifts outside and through the window I can occasionally see movement in the kitchen—my mother, my sisters, and a girl who wouldn’t stay in the car.

I wonder briefly if she changed her mind. If she wants to leave.

I want her to stay.

But not like this. Not with what’s coming. Not until it’s handled and the Volkovs are dealt with and there’s no reason for anyone to look at who’s connected to me. Not when someone could connect those dots and find her.

But someday…

Looking at her around the island with my family one more time, I commit the scene to memory.

Someday she could be a reason to come home.

1.cazzo— dick; prick

2.coglione—literally, testicle; casually, asshole, idiot

3.consigliere —an Italian term for an adviser or counselor

Chapter Eighteen

Max

Cal’spenthouseiswhite.

Not warm white, not the white of linen or plaster or something that has been lived in and softened at the edges. Cold white. Clinical white. The white of a room that has been designed by someone who cared more about photography than livability. All sharp angles and reflective surfaces and a kitchen that looks like it belongs in a magazine about kitchens rather than a place where a person makes pancakes and drinks their coffee while sorting their mail.

It’snot Cal at all, and I have to work hard to wipe the grimace off my face.

I run my hand across the stark white marble counter. It’s cold under my palm and absolutely flawless—and deeply, profoundly sterile.

“Not for you, is it?”

Cal is leaning against the corner of the room watching me with his arms crossed. It’s not a question because he has been in my past apartments.

“It’s not my penthouse, so…” I say.

He smiles. Just a small one, just the one corner of his mouth lifting. He paces forward to come to lean on the counter across from me, arms still crossed.

“What would you do to it?”

“What?”

“If it were yours. What would you change?”

I look at him. He looks back. He’s serious.

After everything we have talked about today, this is exactly the conversation we have the capacity for at this moment, and I love it.

I look around the kitchen. Then the living room. Then back at the kitchen.