He smiles. “And now Kayden owes me a favor.” He glances at Kayden. “Or ten.” He lifts a hand and heads for the door. Matteo says something to Kayden in Italian and takes off after Nathan, and just like that, I’m alone with Kayden.
Desperate to get my confession over with, I rotate and say, “Kayden,” only to discover he’s already standing in front of me and I’ve just pressed our legs together. I tilt my chin up to look at him. “I . . . You . . .”
He arches a brow. “I what?”
The words don’t want to come out of my mouth. “About what happened upstairs—”
“Matteo is coming right back.” He opens the bottle and pops a pill onto his hand, holding it out to me. “You need to take this now before you end up in bed again.”
He’s right. The last thing I need right now is to turn into a mess like I was last night. I reach for the pill, my hand going to his palm, the touch electric, and his fingers close around mine. My eyes dart to his, and I try to read his still unreadable expression. I wait for him to say whatever he intends to, but he is silent. He just looks at me, his gaze probing, and I realize he’s waiting for me to say whatever I wanted to say.
“I know you’re not him,” I say, my voice hoarse, affected in a way that is all about this man and what I have yet to tell him.
The door opens behind me and Matteo enters, saying something in Italian to Kayden. Kayden responds and then refocuses on me. “Take the pill,” he orders.
Frustrated at the interruption, I pop it into my mouth, and then accept the bottle of water and chug several long swallows. Kayden takes the bottle from me and sets it on the table. “
You need to hear what Matteo has to say.”
“I have to have a conversation with you first.”
“It has to wait.” He turns to his friend and orders, “Tell her what you found.”
I want to shout at him that no, no, it does not have to wait, but Matteo is quick to demand my attention. “Let’s talk about Ella,” he says as he reaches under the island and produces a file he sets in front of him.
“You mean let’s talk about me,” I correct.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s talk about you. Only you don’t exist. There is no missing ‘Ella’ that’s traveled from the United States, or anywhere else for that matter, in the past year.”
“I took your fingerprints when you were asleep,” Kayden adds.
I cut him an incredulous look. “You did what?”
“Gallo is going to be at my doorstep looking for you,” he says. “I had to know what we were dealing with.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, yet somehow those prints feel more private than the clothes he stripped off me. But I want answers, and I glance between the two men. “You ran them through the database?”
“I did,” Matteo confirms. “And there was no match.”
“That makes no sense,” I argue, convinced he’s made a mistake. “I’d have to have prints on file for a passport. How can you even run my prints? Isn’t it a government database?”
“The right hacker can get anywhere he or she wants to get,” Matteo replies. “You have no prints on file.”
My throat thickens. “Try again.”
“I always double-check myself,” Matteo adds. “You could be an Italian-American who lives here.”
“I don’t speak the language,” I argue.
“You don’t remember speaking the language,” Kayden corrects.
“I don’t speak the language,” I assure him. “I might not remember everything but I get strong feelings about things. I do not speak Italian.” I eye Matteo. “Do they fingerprint for driver’s licenses? Wouldn’t I be on file here if I lived here?”
“No fingerprints,” Kayden replies. “Just a signature.”
I look between them. “This is crazy. I have to have a passport.”
“You might have had one,” Matteo responds, “but you don’t now. You might have been erased.”