Page 145 of Breaking Rosalind
“I want to take you home.”
She shifts on her feet. “Where’s Rosalind?”
“Home,” I say. “With me.”
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t she come with you to get me? Why do you need to sneak in through my window when she could call the academy and you could both walk in through the door?”
My jaw clenches. These are all good questions. Questions I want her to ask a strange man with bad intentions, but now I wish she wasn’t so suspicious.
I run a hand through my hair, trying to find the right words. “Rosalind can’t climb with her injured shoulder. Before you ask, I snuck out because I didn’t know if the man from the airport was watching.”
Her breath catches. “He’s having you followed?”
“I sure as hell didn’t tell him when my plane would be landing, yet he still ambushed us on the runway.”
She gazes up at me, her eyes wide. There’s so much I want to apologize for, starting with making her a pawn in the game I’m playing with Rosalind. If I had left her alone, then she wouldn’t be a potential person of interest to that murderer, Matty Galliano.
“Am I really in danger?” she asks, her voice shrinking.
Dropping to my knees, I gaze up into her glistening eyes. “I can’t answer that question, love. All I can do is take you somewhere you’ll be safe.”
“Your house?”
“It’s a fortress up in Alderney Hill, surrounded by twelve-foot-tall walls, topped by electrified fences. All the property around it belongs to my family and is patrolled by armed men. My great-grandfather built the house, and since then, no one has gotten past our small army of guards.”
“Not even the police?”
I shake my head. “Not even them. You can stay there with your sister until that man is no longer a threat.”
“Are you going to kill him?” she asks.
“Any man who hurts innocent women deserves to die,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Alright,” she whispers. “I’ll come home with you.”
Half an hour later, we’re sitting in Sofia’s kitchen. It’s a basement room filled with stainless steel ovens, a wall of refrigeration units, and a huge island of cookers. This is where she oversees the preparation of meals for the family, dozens of staff members, and our stores of preserved food in the pantry.
Miranda perches on a stool, gazing up at a ceiling extractor fan the size of a small car. Her stress melted on the journey in the back of a limousine, and now she’s ready for a snack.
“You can cook?” she asks.
“I learned from the very best,” I say.
“Your mom?”
Shaking my head, I swallow down the lump in my throat that appears at every reminder of how she stabbed us in the back. “No,” I rasp and turn my attention to the slab of dark chocolate I’m chopping into small pieces. “Our housekeeper, Sofia, always put me to work if I stayed too long in the kitchen. That’s where I picked up my skills.”
She glances at the milk warming on the stove. “Can I help?”
“Hold on a second while I get the biscotti.”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“You’ll see.”
I walk over to the pantry door and slide it open, revealing shelves upon shelves of pickle jars, preserved fruits, and food preserved in glass jars. I grab a selection of items, including the biscotti, and move onto the second phase of my plan.
After glancing over my shoulder to check that Miranda occupied, I turn on the camera and slip it in my back pocket. Rosalind will hear our voices, but the lack of visuals means she won’t know we’re only talking about food.