Page 65 of Broken Crown

I hated it.

"Do you always wander other people's homes uninvited?" I asked.

His mouth curved. "I'm a Diamanti. This was my home long before it was Sebastian's fortress. I know every room, every passage, every place the marble creaks when you're trying not to be heard." He glanced at me sideways. "Third corridor on the left, by the way. That's the one that squeaks. In case you ever need to avoid it."

I didn't know what to do with that. Was he helping me or letting me know he'd been watching?

With Arcangelo, I suspected the answer was always both.

He set down his espresso and moved to the bocce court, picking up a stray ball that had rolled unnoticed under one of the stone benches.

He turned it in his hands, testing the weight. "Can I ask you something, Sabrina?"

"Can I stop you?"

"No. Family trait." He tossed the ball lightly and caught it. "Are you happy here?"

The question was so simple it almost winded me. No one in this house had asked me that. Sebastian asked what I wanted to eat, what I wanted to wear, whether I was cold. He asked questions he already had answers to. He asked questions designed to steer me to where he needed me to go.

No one had just asked if I was happy.

"That's a complicated question," I said.

"It's actually the simplest question there is. People only call it complicated when the answer is no."

I looked away, focusing on a cluster of geraniums spilling from a cracked terra-cotta pot. "Why do you care?"

He set the bocce ball down on the edge of the court with a soft click against the oyster shells. "Because my brother is one of the most brilliant men I've ever known. And brilliant men are capable of extraordinary stupidity when they confuse strategy with feeling."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means Sebastian has spent his entire life turning people into chess pieces. And he's very good at it. The problem…" He paused, selecting his words with a care that was almost surgical. "The problem is that somewhere between Paris and Rome, he forgot which side of the board you were on."

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

He held up a hand. "I'm not going to tell you what my brother's plans are. That's not my confession to make. And honestly, even if I wanted to, I'm not entirely sure he knows anymore." He smiled, and for just a second, it wasn't charming or calculated. It looked almost sad. "That should worry you more than anything else I could say."

The silence between us filled with the distant sound of water trickling from the courtyard fountain and the faint metallic ring of what I now realized was Sebastian fencing somewhere below us.

Arcangelo straightened his collar and picked up his espresso cup. "For what it's worth, I think you're good for him. I just haven't decided if he's good for you." He started toward the archway, then paused without turning. "The kitchen is two rights and a left from the globes, by the way. You keep going one corridor too far."

Then he was gone.

I sat there for a long time after he left.

The glass of amber liquid still sat on the bar. I still didn't touch it.

But I thought about what he'd said. About Sebastian forgetting which side of the board I was on. About the difference between strategy and feeling.

And I thought about the fact that of all the Diamantis I'd met—the mother who wanted me gone, the brothers who circled me like I was a problem to be managed, the sister who offered survival tips with a smile—it was the one dressed as a man of God who'd come the closest to telling me the truth.

CHAPTER 19

SABRINA

"Trying to freeze me to death?" I called out over the rush of wind and the powerful purr of the engine. "Is this your new strategy?"

Despite the November chill, Sebastian had insisted on taking the convertible for our drive through the Abruzzo countryside.