Page 71 of Ruthless Claim

“Are you going to keep doing this?” I ask her. She’s sitting at the island in her robe, nursing a cup of coffee. She has her glasses on, trying to make it very clear she’s not watching my face as she “reads” her book.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says, without looking up.

“The notes.”

“What notes?” Valentina asks innocently.

I shoot her a look. She looks so entirely unbothered and so entirely full of shit that my stomach flip flops, which it’s been doing a lot recently.

“The notes on my things,” I say, gesturing to my coffee mug. “In languages you know I’ll have to look up.”

She turns a page. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

I roll my eyes. “Valentina.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe your things just come that way.”

On Friday I put one on her favorite handbag, using a language I know she wouldn’t understand. Mo phian sa tóin. My pain in the arse.

I’m in Connor’s office by the time she finds it.

The text I get at noon says, this means war, Brennan, and there’s a small, slightly lopsided star drawn in the corner of the message.

Right. So she can give as good as she gets.

I already knew this.

I file the note away in the part of my head that is filling up entirely with Valentina-specific information and try to concentrate on what Connor’s saying.

The war escalates, as wars do. She puts one inside my running shoe in what turns out to be Swahili—mkaidi, stubborn—and I put one in her glasses case in Welsh.

I find a pink Post-It note tucked into my passport three days later in what the camera app, after some deliberation, identifies as Tagalog. Naiinis ako sa iyo. You annoy me. She’s drawn two lopsided stars next to it.

Two stars.

The first one had one star.

The Swahili shoe note, when I go back to look at it, has no stars.

What is the meaning of the stars?

And why do I care?

I put one in her coat pocket that says cailín deacair (difficult girl) in Irish and I draw a small crown next to it because she’ll hate that I’ve outdone her. Crowns obviously outrank stars.

The next morning she comes into the kitchen with the note in her hand and a scowl on her face.

I hide my smile behind my coffee.

“A crown,” she says, raising a brow at me.

I shrug. “It felt appropriate,” I tell her.

She puts the note in the pocket of her robe and goes to the coffee machine.

I notice that she doesn’t throw it away, which is doing very strange things to my heart.

She’s keeping the note.