Page 112 of The Lies We Play

I drop my keys into the bowl by the door. I peel off my coat. I leave my bag on the chair where my bag lives. I go into the bedroom and lie down on top of the covers, still in my work clothes, because the work clothes are what I survived the night in, and I'm not yet ready to take them off.

I close my eyes.

The phone, on the nightstand, lights up.

Once.

Then again.

Then a third time, in the particular pattern of a number that is not stopping until someone answers.

I don't move.

The room is too quiet. The bed is too cold on the side I don't use. The hour is too late for anyone in Italy to be calling me.

I open one eye.

The screen, from across the bed, glows in the dark.

A New York area code.

A number I don't recognize.

A number that, somewhere inside my chest, I do.

Chapter Sixteen

Livia

Now . . .

The phone rings again.

I stare at it until the sound becomes less like a phone and more like a dare.

My apartment is dark except for the square of light on the nightstand. Outside, Florence is mostly quiet, the city finally asleep or pretending to be. I should let it go to voicemail.

Sensible women let unknown international numbers go to voicemail late at night. Sensible women don't answer after sending professionally alarming emails to old lawyers attached to wealthy families with trust clauses, questionable provenance records, and surnames that still have access to the softest, stupidest parts of them.

I have never been at my best when sensible.

So, naturally, I pick up.

For one second, there is only the line. A thin hush. A distance big enough to hold an ocean.

“Ms. Crane?”

My hand tightens around the phone. “Who is this?”

“You emailed me earlier,” he says. Not asks. States. “My name is Fitzhenry Everhart.”

I sit up too fast.

The room tilts in protest. The phone nearly slips from my hand, and Bella gives one offended twitch against my thigh, as if she, too, disapproves of men calling from New York after midnight with names pulled straight out of family secrets and old money regret.

“You called quickly,” I say.

“Your email sounded . . . important.”