Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
This is how life's been for the past twelve years, and I like it.
I know what I do isn't much. But I also know what I do matters. And if I do a really good job at it, there are more chances of the good guys winning over the bad guys, even if most days the good guys and the bad guys look like the same exhausted people in slightly different shirts.
At a quarter past five, Elliot sends me a text.
Ride home? Last chance to get out of dinner gracefully.
I send a text back, thanking him for the offer. But declining. Like always. And for more important reasons than he knows.
IT'S HALF PAST SIX when I get to my apartment building.
The guy at 4F, the unit across mine, pokes his head out as I unlock my door. He's eighty-three years old and a retired postman, and his cat is named Eppie.
"Hey, June."
"Good evening, Morris. How's Eppie?"
"Shedding. The man's a menace."
"Tell him I said hi."
"Tell him yourself, he's right here," Morris says, gesturing vaguely behind him at a cat I can't see. "He misses you."
"I'll come by tomorrow."
"He'll be devastated."
This is the building I've lived in for fourteen of the past eighteen years. It's neither the newest nor the nicest on this block, and honestly, the neighborhood isn't the nicest either. But my neighbors are the nicest, which is the kind of math I've come to believe matters more.
I let myself in, and the door clicks shut behind me. I toss my keys in the bowl on the entry table before walking into the living room. It’s all routine. Safe, familiar, and comfortable. Except...today isn’t.
Because there’s a man on my couch, and for one ridiculous second, my brain just...stalls.
Is it the plumber? A shadow? Am I seeing—
No, I’m not seeing things because the man on the couch has just moved, and so I know he’s real, and even worse—
I know...him.
He's sitting forward now, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped, and the hands themselves are the first thing my body recognizes before my mind does. Big. Square-knuckled. A faint white scar across the back of the right one that I used to trace with my thumb when we watched movies in his living room. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that we tried to watch, but often ended up distracted—
Strike that off the record, please.
My point is, the scar’s still there while the rest of him...
I mean, if I have to be honest...
I was hoping he’d turn into a monster as he ages, but it’s the exact opposite. His hair's still the same impossible raven-black, but there's grey at the temples now, threaded in with the kind of carelessness that suggests he's never colored it and never will. He was beautiful at twenty-seven, but in his forties, he’s more than that now. He didn’t age like fine wine. The way he’s changed—it’s more like leather, I’d say. Tougher. More scarred. But at the same time, it’s those imperfections that make him seem more powerful. Kingly. And so, so much more attractive that he even has me...
Me, the girl he married eighteen years ago, and betrayed with another woman, all in the same day—
He even has me thinking life’s so, so unfair because it’s not right.
It’s not right at all that a man without a heart can be this beautiful, and it’s so not fair either that he has me swallowing hard as he rises to his feet.
"Ciao, moglie mia."
Chapter Two
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY he's speaking Italian and I don't want to know.
All I care about is ending this nightmare right now.
My phone's already in my hand even though I don't remember pulling it out, and all it will take is just one little slide on the screen. Just one wrong move, one wrong word, and I don’t care if I’m overreacting.
"If you're not out of my apartment in five minutes I'm going to call the police."
"You can try, but it won't work."
I don't even bother answering him.
I just want to scare him a bit, show him I'm calling 911, but...
It's not working.
I don't have a signal.
Any kind of signal.
The bars at the top of my screen—four bars at their strongest, even in the bathroom—are gone. Not one bar. Not the flickering one I sometimes get during storms. Nothing. The little airplane icon isn't on. The wifi's connected to my router. The data's on. None of it's doing anything.
And when my incredulous gaze flies to him—
"Signal jammer,” Nate says simply.
“Excuse me?”
Why would someone start jamming signals in this building, and how does he even know that’s happening?
"Sit down, per favore."
Oh, the gall of this man to bark out orders at me!
“No, I won’t sit down,” I retort, “and anyway, why do you keep speaking in Italian—”
"I have always been Italian, Juniper—”