Demand (Careless Whispers #2)(57)

“How?”

“I don’t know.” My brows furrow. “Wait. Do you think he had a connection to The Underground?”

“It’s a long shot, and I don’t have enough to go on. Just the year that he died, and that he had a wife, and a daughter he left behind, with red hair.”

“Would that make me a Hunter?” My eyes go wide, and I dismiss the fleeting memories of being a teacher that just didn’t feel right. “Could David and I have been on a hunt for another division of The Underground, and I was never really engaged to him?”

“I’ve made absolutely certain that you, or any incarnation of you, have no connection to The Underground prior to meeting me. Could you have been working for someone else? I’ve considered it, but turned up nothing.”

He stands and takes me with him. “I need to throw on some clothes and be ready to debrief with Matteo before we go to bed. I’ll have him cautiously do some digging around about your father. But grab some slippers. There’s something I want to show you.”





sixteen




“What is it?” I ask, concerned that the bombshell of Niccolo showing up tonight isn’t the one I face.

“Relax,” he says, brushing my hair behind my ear. “It’s just something special to me.”

“Now I’m really curious,” I say, letting him lead me to the closet. “Where is it? What is it?”

“I left it in my jacket in the other room,” he says, grabbing a long-sleeved gray T-shirt from a hanger and pulling it over his head. “And you have to wait to see.”

Eager to find out what his version of “special” is, I ditch my robe for black leggings and a black sweater, while he pulls on sweats, and it’s not long before we’re stepping into the chilly, creepy hallway.

“I swear I hate this hallway,” I murmur, snuggling close to his side, his arm wrapping my shoulders. “It always gives me a haunted feeling.”

“Ghost and goblins are part of the charm of the place,” he teases. “As is a great kitchen stocked with food, where we are headed. I haven’t had anything I’d call a meal since lunch.” He glances at his watch. “And it’s midnight. No wonder.”

“My stomach is actually growling,” I reluctantly admit, letting him turn me toward our kitchen, but hating that our “special” something is delayed by food. We make it all of two steps through when it hits that I would have noticed the kitchen light being on as it is now, earlier. “Wait,” I say, stopping us, and turning to face him. “You said the kitchen light was on when you got here?”

“Yes. It was.”

“It wasn’t on when I got here,” I say. My brow furrows. “And our bedroom door was open and the light was off when I got here, too, and that didn’t feel right.”

“It had to be Marabella.”

“She doesn’t leave things out of order. And why would she enter after I did and not check on me?”

“I’m sure she was afraid you’d be asleep. As for why she might leave things out of order, Giada and Gallo have her pretty rattled. But we can use the iPad in the kitchen to check the security footage, after you feed me.”

I laugh. “If you think I’m cooking, we had better call Marabella, because if I know how to cook, it’s traumatic and I’ve blocked it out.”

He laughs. “Traumatic. Yes, well. For a feminist, I can imagine it would be.”

“Don’t even go there,” I say as we enter the kitchen and he leads me around the island. “Because the whole point of being a feminist is that I can choose to cook or not cook.”

“You sure know a lot about this stuff,” he says, stopping us in front of the fridge and opening the door.

He’s right. I do, and I have no idea why. But before I can really analyze why, he’s already offering our dinner choices. “We have a new batch of spaghetti,” he says, glancing from the fridge to me. “I’m guessing that’s why Marabella came in earlier.”

“Which reminds me. She wants to set up days to cook and clean for us.”

“You two work it out,” he says. “And how do you feel about skipping the spaghetti and eating Kellogg’s Coco Pops?”

“Coco Pops? Are they like American Cocoa Puffs?”

“Basically the same thing, different name. And much to Marabella’s distress, I love the damn things, which means I have to sneak them in when she’s not watching.”

“Coco Pops it is, then,” I say, laughing, and together we gather bowls, the cereal, and a jug of milk before settling at the table.

“So when did this Coco Pops obsession start?” I ask, filling my bowl with cereal and eager for a further glimpse into the man behind The Hawk.

“College,” he says. “The whole ‘get drunk and eat an entire box of cereal’ routine.”

“Drunks are not in control,” I say. “You are, therefore I can’t imagine you drunk.”

“Neither could Kevin, which is why that phase lasted about three months.”

“So you went to college here?”

“Right here in this neighborhood,” he says, pouring milk into my bowl and then his. My gaze catches on the watch, and just that easily, I’m in the past. There’s another hand. Another watch. He touches my arm. He says my name, Ella, and I hear his voice, really hear his voice, for the first time since my amnesia. It’s deep, accented. Dominant.