Page 135 of Valentino

She lifts her chin, and even tied to a chair with dried blood at her hairline, she manages to look like she's deciding whether I deserve the answer.

"Because I wanted to destroy him."

My knees give before I can stop them. I catch the edge of the cot against the wall and sit before I end up on the floor. The shaking comes all at once, like my body waited until now to remember the car, the ropes, Valentino walking away from me.

"Start talking," I tell her. My voice sounds raw from screaming. "And I mean actually talking. If you give me one more polished half-answer, I swear to God, I will slap you."

She smiles. The split in her lip opens again, fresh red at the corner.

"I deserve it."

I keep my hands in my lap and wait.

"I had a sister," she says. "Katya. My mother's first marriage, before Italy. She was eighteen. I was fourteen. She got a contract, a real one. Modeling. The kind of thing everyone in the building celebrates because maybe one girl got lucky enough to get out."

Her throat moves.

"Then she disappeared. No fight. No note. No body. Just gone."

The radiator ticks in the corner.

"I saw her with Aldo once," Francesca says. "Outside the agency. He had his hand on her elbow, and he was making her laugh. I thought he was handsome. I was sixteen, and I didn't understand what I was looking at." Her mouth tightens. "I understand it now."

I don't move.

"I grew up looking for her. Every agency. Every list. Every girl who came back different than she left. I never found a grave. A photograph. Anything."

"So you went to work for the man who took her." The words taste bitter. "That was your revenge? Planning his parties?"

"Getting close to him was the only way in." She shifts against the rope and tries to hide the pain. Badly. "I made myself into the kind of woman that world trusts. Useful. Elegant. Connected. I learned which girls arrived and which girls left. I kept records. Names. Dates. Shell companies. Bank transfers. I wanted the whole thing. Not just Aldo dead. Exposed. Ruined. Every man who paid him dragged into the light with him."

"You could've killed him."

"I had chances."

Her gaze drops to the floor.

For the first time, she looks less like Francesca Renaud and more like the girl who lost her sister and never stopped hurting.

"Three times," she says. "I was close enough. Alone with him. No guards. No witnesses. I couldn't do it." She breathes out, rough at the edges. "You can hate a man with everything in you and still not be built to kill him. I told myself I was waiting for the right moment. The truth is, all I ever really did was collect evidence and call it courage."

I stare at her, trying to reconcile the woman in front of me with everything I thought I knew.

"The office," I say. "The night of the gala. You came and got me."

"He told me to." Her jaw tightens. "Someone told him you'd been asking questions at the shoot. The bruised girl. He wanted you brought to him."

"So you brought me."

"I thought it was a warning." She looks at me now, and the truth on her face is worse than a lie would be. "That is what he did before. He charmed someone. Frightened them. Made sure they stopped looking. I thought you would walk out angry and careful. I didn't know about the drink until you were already swaying."

"You left me there."

"I went to find Valentino."

That stops me.

The radiator ticks twice before I can speak.