I removed a card and placed it on the table, then hastily scribbled my cell phone number on the back and scratched out my office phone.
“It’s better to reach me here,” I said as I slid it toward Ruggeri.
She examined the card, then tucked it away in her purse before pulling out one of her own and writing her own cell phone number too.
“I think I will be in touch, Mr. Zola,” she said. “Thank you for the drinks. It has been most…illuminating. Tell Marcello I said hello.”
I picked my hat off the table and leaned in to trade farewell kisses to the cheek as I stood. “And you as well, Ms. Ruggeri. I appreciate it more than you know. Ciao.”
Chapter Eighteen
Matthew
I arrived back at the hotel with a skip in my step, eager to relay the news to Nina and hopefully find her waiting for me. In bed. I wanted to celebrate.
We had a little hope at last. I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the information Ruggeri had provided, but it was all worth knowing. That at one point, multiple governments had been on the lookout for Calvin Gardner under his other name. It was a big fuckin’ deal to be using a Russian chemical agent as a murder weapon. Maybe big enough that it wasn’t something his previous alliances with the Janus society would allow him to pay off. Everyone’s influence had a limit. Maybe this would crack the dam.
Now I had only one thing left on my agenda: use our last night here in Florence to make things right between Nina and me once and for all. We were close. So close.
“You ready for dinner, doll?” I asked as I unlocked the door to the room we’d been sharing. “The landlord said there’s a fantastic trattoria close to the river we can try if—Jesus.”
I found Nina standing in the middle of the room in nothing but a slip, throwing clothes into her trunks like she was a kid throwing rocks into a river.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, holding out my hands like I was approaching a wild animal. The door closed behind me, and I tossed the room key and my hat onto the desk. “What’s going on here?”
Nina hurled a pair of shoes into a trunk with a loud thunk. “Get out.”
“Come again?”
The carnage wasn’t limited to her clothes. There was a broken vase in the corner, and it looked like someone had gone to war with one of the pillows. Feathers were everywhere.
I pulled off my jacket, sensing we were going to stay a while. “Nina, are you okay? What the hell happened here?”
“You happened!” She whirled around, a twister of silk, blonde hair, and fury. Her face was streaked with tears. “I saw you. With her.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes ago. I took a short nap, and then woke up and went for a walk through the city to clear my head. Then I rounded the corner, and I saw you, Matthew! Sitting on the fucking sidewalk, enjoying your drinks, smiling at her with that infuriating smirk of yours!”
I jerked, as much for hearing the word “fuck” come out of Nina’s mouth as for what she was implying. The last time I’d heard her swear like this, she was losing it on Eric and Jane’s rooftop.
“Wait, what?” I asked. “You saw me…oh! Nina, no. That’s not what you think. That was Silvana Ruggeri, she’s a—”
“I don’t want to know her name!” Nina spat like a wildcat. She struggled with a blouse, then threw it backward on the bed with the mess of feathers. “Fuck it. I hate that shirt anyway. It can rot in this godforsaken city with the rest of this mess.”
I took a cautious step forward. It was the day. The stresses of the trip. She was tired and scared—that’s all this was. Right?
“Nina,” I tried again. “I don’t know what you think you saw, baby, but I swear to God, I was just trying to—”
“You kissed her!” she shouted as she turned around and threw another piece of clothing straight at me. It fell to the ground impotently. “Don’t bother denying it, Matthew. I saw it. I saw the entire fucking thing!”
“I kissed her? What the fuck are you talking about?” I was finally losing my patience.
“God, you won’t even admit it? You’ll just lie straight to my face?”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Jesus fucking Christ, Nina. Emotional is one thing, but this is fuckin’ nuts.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make me out to be crazy when I know what I saw.” She turned back to her packing in a huff, and picked up another pair of heels to toss into another trunk like hand grenades. “You kissed her, Matthew!”
I frowned. “Are you talking about when we said goodbye? We’re in Europe, doll. That’s what everyone does.”
“Oh, that’s a fine excuse!”
The second heel clocked me straight in the forehead.
“Jesus!” I batted the thing to the ground. Fuck this gentle shit. “What the hell has gotten into you?”
“You!” she shouted through mounting tears, even as I charged across the room through a hail of silk and leather. “You’re no different than all of them!”
“Nina. Goddammit, Nina, will you fucking stop?”
I parried a sleek white handbag and managed to grab her arms before she could snatch another round of ammunition off the bed. She was sobbing by this point, pearl-shaped tears welling from her silver eyes, fury etched over her brow.
“Why?” she cried. “Why couldn’t you have been different? I believed in you again, Matthew. I believed you weren’t like the others!”
Keeping hold of one of her shoulders with one hand, I fumbled in my pocket, took out Ruggeri’s card and pressed it into her palm. Her chest heaved as she sucked in labored breaths. But eventually, she managed to look at it.
“What is this?” she croaked.
“The business card of
