Page 136 of Valentino

"He asked you where I was. At the bar. You flirted with him and walked away. He told me."

"In front of forty people, yes. I flirted and walked away because four of those people belonged to Aldo and two were watching me." Her voice sharpens for the first time. "I couldn't hand Valentino a map in the middle of the room."

I press my hands flat against my thighs because they've started shaking again, and not from fear this time.

Valentino heard me through the door.

But Francesca pointed him toward it.

That does not make us even. It does not make what she did disappear.

It changes what I think I know.

"And after?" I ask. "After the shooting."

"I walked into that room and Aldo Basile was dead on the floor." She stops, and whatever she felt then pulls across her face before she shuts it down. "Your purse was on the couch. Gold clasp. I took it and left through the kitchen."

My stomach drops.

"A day later, two men came to my house. They didn't ask questions at first. They took me." She tips her ruined face toward me. "Since then, they ask. Who is the blonde American? What she knows? Who she belongs to? I haven't given them anything. Everything they know, they learned somewhere else.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Amanda

Isit on the cold floor with my back against the wall, and I look at her. "Francesca." She waits. "Did you know Elio?"

She nods once. Careful. The split in her lip holds. "Elio Mancini."

"Yes."

"How?"

"He came into a room." Her one eye stays on me. "Three weeks ago. Maybe four. I was with Aldo at the agency office on Via Savona. The door opened, and a man walked in. Aldo stood up. He said, this is Elio, our new colleague from Chicago. He shook his hand. Poured him a drink. They talked for an hour."

"About what?"

"Routes. Containers. Names I won't repeat to you while we're locked in this room."

My mouth goes dry. I laugh once because nothing else comes out. "New colleague," I say.

"Yes."

"Francesca." I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Old blood drags across my skin. "Elio Mancini was a man I fucked. For months. I ended it because he had a fiancée, and now I'm finding out he was in business with the man who drugged me."

She doesn't move.

"Am I stupid?"

"No."

"Are there other women in this world who don't see past the end of their nose, or is it just me?"

"It's not just you."

"Don't be nice to me right now."

"I'm not."