Chapter 8: Six Digits

The man with the screwdriver finished in ten minutes.

He closed the gray box, nodded to Sandro, and left with the two guards behind him.

The hall emptied out.

The portraits watched us from the walls, and the new keypad glowed green at the study door.

"You've been looking at that door all week," Sandro said.

"I live here."

"You've looked at it more than you've looked at me."

"That's not true."

"No?" He stepped closer, until I felt the wall at my back.

"Why change the code tonight?"

"Because someone in my house is nervous," he said. "I'd like to know who."

My mouth went dry.

"It's not me."

"I didn't say it was."

"You said no lies in bed."

"We aren't in bed." He put one hand flat on the wall beside my head. "And you aren't answering."

I met his eyes.

"You said no questions about the years before you," I said. "That's what you promised me. That includes the ones you're asking with your face."

He stared at me.

Then he laughed, low and short, and it shook through his chest and into mine.

"God, you're good."

"I'm not good. I'm angry."

"That's even better."

He kissed me.

It was nothing like the kiss at the church, or the one in the dark.

It was hot and rough and a little cruel, his hand in my hair and his teeth on my lower lip.

I kissed him back as hard as he gave it.

I shoved his jacket off his shoulders, and he caught my wrists and pinned them above my head against the plaster.

"Say it again," he said against my jaw.

"Say what?"

"That you're angry at me."

"I'm angry at you."

"Tell me why."

"Because you changed the lock," I breathed, "and you don't trust me, and you want me anyway."

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