“I didn’t think he would go to your place.” Traffic now. Car tires on snow. He went outside. “I can come back. Are you still home? I can be there in forty-five—”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“What the fuck would I want you here for?”
He’s silent, and I feel a stab of guilt. Sin is one of two people on the planet who knows me at all, as much as I hate to admit it.
“Okay,” he says finally. “I’ll call Will. Let him know.”
“You do that,” I say, and then I hang up on him. There’s nothing more to discuss.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Daphne
“I’m a prisoner in my own life,” I tell Eva.
She laughs at me over the phone. “Prison is an art supply store?”
“I mean, yeah, if you can’t move about freely.” I’m on the second floor of my favorite place to buy paint and canvas, and honestly, I don’t need this long to pick out canvas. I’m here for the moment of peace. “They’re everywhere.”
“The security?”
“Yes. I didn’t realize buying paint was such a high-stakes mission that it required two bodyguards. They’re constantly breathing down my neck.”
“Literally? Like right now?”
I sigh. “Not literally. They’re downstairs. If you tell Leo I left them on a separate floor—”
“I would never betray you like that. You know, you have to tell him if you don’t like the guys. He’ll get—”
“He’ll get new ones,” I finish for her. “But I don’t want guards, Eva. I want to buy paint.”
“They’re not going to stop you from buying paint,” she soothes. “You just moved back into your place. The guards are only temporary.”
I snort. “They are not temporary. There are even more of them in the apartment across the street.”
“It’s because—”
“Because I had a stalker.” I make air quotes with my free hand even though Eva can’t see me. “Now I shall forever pay the price.”
“He hasn’t come back into your apartment, has he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Daphne! That’s not funny. Has he been there?”
“No,” I promise. I turn a corner onto another row of canvases.
That’s when I feel someone watching.
The hair on the back of my neck rises before I can fully register the sensation, but that’s what it is—someone is watching. Goose bumps flare between my shoulder blades. I whip my head around, looking over the aisles.
Nothing is out of place. An old lady with shaky hands compares two canvases at the other end of the shop. A couple has a hushed debate over which size to buy. A store employee carries a box out from a storage area in the back.
“Daphne?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you still hear me?”
“I can.” My heart pounds.
“Did something happen?”
“I thought someone was looking at me. It’s probably the security assholes creeping up from downstairs to make sure I’m safe from this old lady and all this canvas.” I turn back around and hunch over, dropping my voice. “I can’t live like this forever. I can’t have people constantly watching me because Leo’s paranoid.”
“I’ll talk to him.” Eva’s decisive. A problem-solver. “See if you can go back to the way things were. As long as nothing shady has happened, it should be—”
“No, don’t do that. It’s fine.” I don’t want Leo to think I’m being an ungrateful brat. I also don’t want him to think I’m not capable of speaking up for myself. “Just vent.”
“You want to come over when you’re done at the store?”
I’m about to say no when all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “What about lunch? I know it’s kind of late, but…”
“Late lunch is perfect.” She names a restaurant not far from the art supply store, and I agree. I leave the canvases and buy some paints. My two shadows are posted at the exit in their suits. One of them opens the door for me and I push past while the other hurries out ahead of me. Two bodyguards and a separate driver, all to buy a little paint.
“Did you come up to the second floor to check on me?” I ask the one who’s closing the car door.
He blinks. “No, ma’am. Was someone bothering you?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No one bothered me.”
But someone watched me. I felt it. Twice.
Eva and I have lunch together at a corner table that the security guards choose for us. They don’t like for me to sit by the window.
“See?” I whisper to her as we sit down. “This is way over the top. Is something happening I don’t know about?”
“If something’s happening, I don’t know about it either,” she reassures me.
“You would tell me?”
“Yes.” My suspicion must show in my eyes. “I’m serious, Daph. I would tell you if I’d heard anything. Are you okay?”
I feel it again—that unmistakable sensation of being watched. If I turn to look, to search, Eva’s going to know.
She narrows her eyes. Clearly I haven’t been as stealthy as I thought. “Would you tell me if something was happening?”
“Of course I would.”
“You know…” Eva drums her fingers on the white linen tablecloth, her expression thoughtful. She looks just like Leo, except more beautiful. More regal. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Daph. It’s up to you what you share, or don’t share. I’m only asking because I care about you and I want you to be happy.”
“Leo says the same thing. Did you guys coordinate your message?”
“Nope, no message coordination going on.” Eva laughs. “Surprisingly, we didn’t spend a lot of time chatting while he and Haley were on their honeymoon.”
“I wonder if bodyguards followed them around the entire time,” I grumble, softening it with a smile.
“They did.”
“Oh, stop.”
Eva widens her eyes. “I’m serious. He even had people on a ship circling the private island.”
I laugh out loud. “A ship? Those people are never going to let him take a vacation there again.”
“They don’t own the island anymore. He bought it.”
“Wow.” I lean back in my seat. “So what you’re saying is, stop complaining about the two bodyguards.”
“I know it’s not much consolation, but Leo’s not doing this because he’s paranoid. That’s when you think people are out to get you and you don’t have any proof. People are out to get him.”
It’s annoyingly reasonable. “Yeah, but I’m nobody.”
“You are Daphne Morelli,” Eva says, lifting her wine glass in my direction. “You might want to be no one, but you’re not. You won the genetic lottery. You’re one of us.”
“And that means bodyguards.”
“It means paying attention.” Eva sips her wine. “It means knowing who’s paying attention to you.”