Chapter 17: The Gold Links

I looked at the photograph on Gemma's phone for a long time.

A dark bar. A man in a grey jacket with his head turned away. A woman in a red dress, laughing, sitting across his knees.

The caption under it said: *Nico's stag night. The groom's brother pays for everything.*

It had gone to every Tessaro cousin and every Ferrante aunt on the list. It had gone to Nonna.

"That isn't me," I said.

"I know it isn't you." Gemma pulled the phone back and spread two fingers over the picture. "Look at his hand."

She zoomed in.

On the man's wrist, below the grey cuff, was a pair of gold links with a small dark stone.

"I gave him those," she said. "At our engagement dinner, because my father told me to give him something. They're engraved on the back. R.T."

"Renzo."

"Renzo in your jacket." She said it flatly. "The grey one from the Villa coat room, which your father took with the keys."

"He wants the family to think I'm a cheat the day before Sunday dinner."

"He wants my father to think so. He wants me to come crawling back." Her mouth twisted. "He's never once understood that I read."

"Where is he now?"

She scrolled to a second message, a group chat from one of his friends.

*Brunch at the Gaslight. Renzo's buying. Noon.*

I looked at my watch. It was eleven forty.

"Get in the car," I said.

The Gaslight was a long brick room with a bar down one side, and on a Saturday at noon it held twenty men in good shirts.

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