She gets up, slips her shoes on, and walks ahead of me into the hallway. I wrap my hand around the back of her neck. She tries to pull away, but I hold tight and guide her down the stairs and to the open library door where Bastian is waiting.
“Dandelion,” Bastian says, making a show of inviting her in. “So good to see you again.”
She stops short and looks from Bastian to me. I guide her past him, noticing how she tries to avoid touching him.
“Sit,” I tell her as Bastian tops up his glass and pours us each a healthy serving of whiskey. She sits in the middle of the leather chesterfield that faces the two matching chairs and takes in the space. I see it anew, remembering how I’d fallen in love with the two-story library with its huge arched window overlooking the vast sea. I know she doesn’t want to be impressed, but she is.
Bastian sets her glass on the coffee table, hands me mine, and takes his seat in the armchair beside the one I sit in.
“Is it poisoned?” she asks as she lifts the glass.
He grins. “If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
She drinks a big swallow, and I know the tough exterior is a façade. She’s scared.
I take her in properly. She’s pretty. Very pretty. Even in this state, with her hair a tangled mess over her shoulders. She must have washed it and didn’t have a comb. I’d only left the bare minimum. Long blond waves spill down her back. Her makeup is completely gone, and she looks younger, apart from the shadows under her eyes. Eyes that scan the room searching now. My guess is if she sees something she thinks she can use as a weapon, she’ll jump to it.
“What do you want with me?” she finally asks, addressing me.
“Why did you accompany your father’s body to Italy for burial? You knew the danger.”
“He wanted to be buried in Italian soil.”
“So why not send the body with guards? Watch from behind a video like your coward brother?”
She raises her glass to me in a mock toast and sips. “I think you just answered your own question. I’m not a coward. I’m not scared of either of you.”
“I think you are, Dandelion,” Bastian taunts.
“But let’s shelf that,” I say. “Are you scared of your brother?”
“Lucien?”
“Unless you have another we’re not aware of.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “No.”
“Were you afraid of your father?”
“No, of course not.”
“Now that he’s dead and conveniently days before your twenty-first birthday, you and your brother will share Russo Properties & Holdings, is that right?”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a fifty-fifty split?”
She drinks. Nods once but looks uncertain.
“You sure about that?” Bastian asks.
“Either way, it’s none of your business.”
“Oh, we already made it our business. Your brother has a creative way of managing funding.”
She sets her jaw, and I wonder how much she knows about how exactly Lucien Russo finances his personal debt.
“What do you want with me? Why am I here and not in my prison?”