“I have a headache.” Her throat was so tight, words barely fought their way through it. “Can we go?”
“Of course.” He waited until they were in the back of the car, then said sharply, “You’re white as a ghost. Should we go to the hospital?”
“No. Read your email.” Isidora had sent it to both of them. There was no use trying to hide from this degradation. She stared out the side window, the darkened Milan streets a blur through her tear-filled eyes.
Henri said nothing, but she heard a couple of taps and a phone call being placed.
“Avery Benson,” he requested.
She swung her head around. “How do you have his number?”
Henri covered her hand on the seat between them and squeezed a signal for quiet. “I don’t care if he’s having tea with the queen. Tell him it’s Henri Sauveterre.”
“Don’t make it worse.” Cinnia reached for his phone.
Henri fended her off, giving her a dark glower. “No, this is not a joke,” he told his caller. “Retract your story.”
“He won’t,” Cinnia warned.
“No, you listen,” Henri said in a voice that made her sit back and hold very still.
She hadn’t thought he could sound more deadly than he had the day he had railed about paparazzi. He could. He definitely could. Ice formed somewhere between her heart and her stomach, deep against her spine.
“You were on my watch list and have now been elevated to my red list. I take the security of my family very seriously—why were you on my watch list? Because you’re a known opportunist who can’t be trusted. I had a dossier prepared with your contact details for just this possibility. If you had remained in the background, I wouldn’t have given you another thought, but now you’ve shown yourself willing to profit off my family. That makes you a threat so I must neutralize. No, I don’t intend to kill you!”
Henri cast her an impatient look.
“I wouldn’t call you to warn you, would I? You would be at the bottom of the ocean with an explanation for your disappearance concocted. No, I prefer you alive to see how I dismantle everything you’ve acquired after Cinnia gave you a leg up... Oh, she did. You had her convince your parents to sell and stole half her savings on your way out the door. Now if you value your house and your job, you will retract your story and never speak of us again.”
Henri paused briefly, then sighed.
“Say you were drunk, on drugs, owed gambling debts. I don’t care how you explain it, just retract it. Prove to me you are not intending harm to my family or I will push you to my blacklist and I can assure you, your prospects for a promotion, or refinancing your mortgage, or for buying that boat you’re looking at, will evaporate. I will sue you into obscurity. Cinnia is not a tool you can use. Ever. Not even just this once.”
Henri listened again.
“You will not do that. I’ve just explained what it means to be on my blacklist and that’s where I’ll put you if you do anything but retract your story. No, she didn’t put me up to this. You poked the bear. This is the consequence. Be smart or lose everything.”
Henri ended the call.
“I can fight my own battles,” Cinnia muttered, mortified.
Henri kept his gaze on his phone as he tapped out a text. “I’ll have Isidora help him. He really does need to be spoon-fed, doesn’t he? What did you ever see in him?”
Cheeks stinging, Cinnia looked out the side window again, listening to his phone ping a few times with an exchange of messages, presumably with Isidora.
“Hmm?” Henri prompted a moment later. “I’m curious. What drew you to such a weak man? You’re far too smart to be taken advantage of. Why did you let him use you?”
She shifted, uncomfortable. “You didn’t have to be such a sledgehammer. We could have talked first and I could have called him.”
“You want to protect him?” Henri asked, astounded.
“No. But you didn’t even... I can fight my own battles,” she repeated.
“This isn’t your battle. It’s ours.”
“It was about me. He wasn’t really intending—”
“Do not ever be naive about people’s intentions, Cinnia,” he interrupted, sharp and severe. “Promise me that. Trusting someone who seems harmless is a mistake.”
Like a math tutor.
She swallowed and nodded. “Fine. But you could have let me do it. You didn’t have to make it seem like I was...”
“What?” he prompted.
“I don’t know. Not capable or something.”
Henri swore under his breath. “This is about your precious independence? You know, when Trella was four, she went through an annoying phase where she wouldn’t let me tie her shoes or zip her jacket. You don’t have to do every single thing yourself.”