Page 103 of When She Tempts (The Fallen)
What is this place anyway?
There are spider webs all over the front door, displaying an assortment of decaying leaves and dead insects. It’s pretty obvious no one’s been inside for a very long time.
I glance down at Sophia. “Have you been here before?”
She snorts, hops off the stairs to run a circle around me, and then tugs on the leash like she wants me to follow her to the back of the house.
“Where are you going?”
This dog is acting like she hasn’t been outside in weeks, even though that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
We round the cottage, and she stops suddenly to sniff at a random patch of dirt. She whines and starts digging, sending dirt flying directly at me.
I jump to the side to avoid getting hit in the face. “What on earth are you doing?”
She digs for a while, but then stops and starts barking, glancing back at me as if she wants me to come take a look at what she’s found.
“What’s this?” I ask. “You found a…stone?”
She barks.
I suppose that’s the kind of exciting stuff dogs live for.
“Good girl,” I say, lowering down on my haunches beside her to take a closer look. “Oh wow, you got a big one.” I swipe my hand over the flat gray surface, brushing some of the remaining dirt aside.
It’s flat. Rectangular.
Hold on, is there’s something carved into it?
I clear it some more, using both hands this time, until I finally realize it’s a…grave.
Francisca Girardi
1970-2007
She will be avenged
The wheels turn. Girardi is Giorgio’s last name.
Is this a relative? Someone who lived in the castello? But those dates are fairly recent.
Could this be the grave of his mother?
I frown. Why is she buried all the way out here?
And the lie about the fire… I glance back at the cottage.
Giorgio didn’t want me to find this place. But why? Is it the grave he didn’t want me to see? Or something inside the cottage?
Sophia settles at my feet and starts licking her paw.
I should respect Giorgio’s wishes, right? I’m already going to be in trouble when he finds out I came all the way out here. If there’s something personal inside, it’s his right to keep it away from me.
But he knows so much about me, and I still know so little about him. I eye the web-covered door. The desire to understand him burns bright within me. What we have now likely won’t last once I leave the castello and return to my brother, so is it really so wrong of me to want to gorge on everything Giorgio while I’m here?
I brush the dirt off my palms and stand back up. The door might be locked. I should probably check that before I waste more time thinking about whether or not I should go inside. If it is locked, I’ll take it as a sign that I’m not meant to go in.
The wood steps creak beneath my feet, and a bird breaks into a song somewhere up in the trees. The rusted keyhole is covered with a web that I brush aside with a stick I find on the ground. There’s a gap between the door and the doorjamb, and I can see that the deadbolt isn’t even closed.
