Page 10 of When She Tempts (The Fallen)
That earns me a cautious glance. “Why?”
“A lot of it where we’re going. Have you ever been to Umbria?”
“No. I haven’t seen anything in Italy besides Casal di Principe and Naples, and that was so long ago I barely remember it.”
De Rossi kept her away from Italy all these years because he didn’t want her anywhere near Sal, but even if Sal discovers Martina is with me, he’ll never know where I’m taking her.
“We’re going to an old castello about forty minutes from Perugia.”
Perugia is the capital of the Umbria region, and I bought the castello over a decade ago. It’s under a false name, so no one knows that I own it.
Martina taps her index finger against the armrest. “Just you and me?”
“No. There are three servants there. A maid, a cook, and a groundskeeper. It’s a small staff for a place as big as the castello, but we’ll only be using the first two floors.”
She nods and turns back to the window.
A noise of frustration threatens to escape me, but I hold it down. I amnotused to being the talkative one. In fact, one of my hobbies is letting silence linger and seeing how long it takes for people to become visibly uncomfortable. It’s a surprisingly amusing pastime.
But this silence? Nothing amusing about it. It spreads through the recycled air of the plane and leaves a sour taste at the back of my mouth.
When she starts scrolling through her phone again, my patience can’t take it anymore. I unbuckle my seat belt, reach over, and snatch it out of her hand. “No phones.”
Her hazel eyes go round, and she drops one of her feet to the ground. “What?”
My gaze skates up her shapely calf before I can stop myself. “You heard me. No phones.”
“Why?”
“Phones can be tracked. I can’t have you giving our location away.”
Her eyes dip to my own phone lying on the table.
“Mine’s encrypted,” I explain.
“So encrypt mine.”
I turn her device off. “You’ll benefit from less screen time.”
There.That’s the line that finally gets me the response I want. She purses her lips, and for the first time since I picked her up, something sparks inside her gaze.
“That’s ridiculous. What am I supposed to do with my time?”
“Reading, cooking, going on walks. There’s plenty of other things to do at the castello besides filling your head with nonsense. Humanity existed for a long time before it invented screens and somehow managed to entertain itself just fine.”
“They also had a life expectancy of like forty because they probably died of boredom. Just because that’s how people used to do it, doesn’t mean it was better.”
Ah. So she’s got some spunk when she’s not so absorbed with being miserable. Nature and some fresh air is going to do her a lot of good.
“My house, my rules,” I say with a shrug, my tone firm.
Her fingers tighten on the armrests, and panic flits across her face. “I need my phone.”
“No. You don’t.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t understand. It helps me.”
“Helps you with what?”
