At the Count's Bidding(68)

                “Do not attempt to contact my mother again.” His voice got dangerous then. Flint and fury, and still, he was a stranger. “I will have you arrested and thrown in jail and no judge in any country would ever grant a woman with mental problems and a prison record custody of a child over me. I want you to remember that. You so much as text Violet and you’ll never see that child again.”

                “Stop,” she threw at him, in a terrible whisper. “You can’t think—”

                “A driver will pick you up in an hour,” he told her, and he was merciless. Pitiless. As if he was made of marble and was that soft, that bendable. “I want you gone. And I never, ever want to see you again. Not in ten minutes. Not in another ten years. Is that clear?”

                Paige couldn’t reply. She was shaking so hard she was afraid she’d fall over, the tears were hot and endless, and he looked at her as if she was a stranger. As if he was. Crafted of marble, but far crueler. Marble might crush her. But he’d torn her into pieces first.

                “Do you understand?” he asked, even harsher than before.

                “Yes,” Paige managed to say. “I understand.” She scrubbed her hands over her face and sucked in a breath and tried one last time. “Giancarlo—”

                But he was already gone.

                It was over.

                * * *

                The slippery December roads were treacherous but the wind outside was even worse, rattling his SUV and shaking the skeletons of the trees on either side of the New England country roads.

                And inside him, Giancarlo knew, it was colder and darker still.

                He had not been in a good mood to begin with when he’d left Logan International Airport in Boston more than two hours earlier on this latest quest to find Paige. It was fair to say he’d been in a black mood for the past three months.

                The tiny, lonely little Maine town a hundred miles from anywhere sat under a fresh coat of snow, lights twinkling as the December evening fell sudden and fast in the middle of what other places might still consider the afternoon, and he felt the stirrings of adrenaline as he navigated through the very few streets that comprised the village to the small, white clapboard house that was his destination.

                He’d hired detectives. He’d scoured half of the West Coast and a good part of the East Coast himself. This was the last place on earth he’d have thought to look for her—which was, he could admit, why it had no doubt made such a perfect hiding place.

                This time, he knew she was here. He’d seen the photo on his mobile when he’d landed in Boston from Italy, taken this very morning. But he wouldn’t believe it until he saw her with his own eyes.

                He could admit the place held a certain desolate charm, Giancarlo thought grimly as he climbed from the car, the boots he only ever wore at ski resorts in places like Vail or St. Moritz crunching into the snow beneath him. The drive from Boston into the remote state of Maine had reminded him of the books he’d had to read while in his American high school. Lonely barns in barren fields and the low winter sky pressing down, gray and sullen. Here and there a hint of the wild, rocky Atlantic coast, lighthouses the only bit of faint cheer against the coming dark.

                It felt like living inside his own bleak soul, in the great mess he’d made.

                Giancarlo navigated his way over the salted sidewalk and up the old front steps to the clapboard house’s front door, able to hear the faint sound of piano music from inside. DANCE LESSONS, read the sign on the door, making his chest feel tight.