Chapter 4 Tell Me When You're Back

Danny drove her home a little after 11. Neither of them said much.

At the gate, he cleared his throat. "He'll be back tomorrow. Bianca was a big deal to him, back in the day. It'll blow over."

"I know, Danny."

She showered and was asleep within minutes.

Julian came home the next afternoon.

He pushed open the bedroom door and stopped dead. Her big suitcase lay open on the floor, half full. Two boxes stood taped shut by the closet.

For one second, his heart stopped. She was leaving him.

He crossed the room in three strides and caught her wrist. "What is this? Where are you going?"

Elena looked down at his hand, then up at him. "Home. For a while."

"Home?"

"New York."

His grip loosened. Home. Not gone. Just home.

"Jesus, Elena." He let out a breath and dragged a hand through his hair. "You scared me."

She went back to folding. Two years in this house added up. Some of it she'd ship. The rest she'd throw out. When she left, nothing of hers would stay behind.

Julian sat down on the edge of the bed, and she saw it. A faint red mark on the side of his neck, right above his collar.

She looked at it for one second. Then she looked away.

Whatever he'd done last night, and whoever he'd done it with, wasn't her problem anymore.

"Going home all of a sudden?" Julian frowned. "Is this about last night? You're running off to New York to get away from me?"

"No. I miss my dad."

His face eased. "Okay. Seeing family's good."

In three years, she'd never gone home once. Not even at Christmas. She'd spent the holidays on call while Julian went to his mother's. He'd never asked her to come along. They both knew why.

"I'm slammed right now," he said. "I can't go with you. What day's your flight? I'll have a driver take you."

"Don't bother. I've got a ride."

Julian's shoulders came down half an inch.

He'd been afraid she would ask him to come. To meet her father. Three years in, that was what normal couples did. They met the parents. They started talking about rings.

But Julian wasn't a normal man. He was the Don of the Costa family. A Don's wife came from a family with a name, with connections that meant something to men like him. Elena came with a resident's paycheck and a father in New York she hardly ever mentioned.

The one time he'd brought her up with his mother, Marisa had set down her wine glass. "A resident, Julian? Who are her people?"

He hadn't had an answer.

He'd always known they had no future. He'd just never had to look straight at it.

And Elena seemed to understand that. She wasn't begging him to come. She never checked his phone, never made a scene when he came home at three in the morning.

She loved him too much to leave. He'd known that for a long time.

End it with her? He'd never once thought about it. He couldn't have told you why.

He'd gone after her because she looked like Bianca. Now, watching her fold a sweater with her hair falling in her face, he couldn't see Bianca in her at all.

He reached out and ruffled her hair.

"Text me when you land," he said. "And tell me when you're coming back. I'll pick you up at the airport myself."

Elena kept her eyes on the sweater. "Okay."

She wasn't coming back.

His phone rang. He stepped into the hall to take it. When he came back, he had his keys in his hand.

"I have to run out," he said. "I shouldn't have left you there last night. I got you something. Danny will bring it by."

He kissed the top of her head, and then he was gone.

An hour later, Danny rang the bell with a white Dior shopping bag. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was the Lady Dior from the shop window.

That was Julian's answer to everything. A resident on a resident's salary, he figured, and a bag like that would make her forget anything. He had no idea she'd grown up with a closet full of them. When she was six, her mother had let her play dress-up with Birkins.

Elena didn't even unwrap the tissue.

"Just put it in the closet, Danny."

Danny looked at the bag, then at her face, and did what she asked without a word.

Her phone buzzed a minute later. A text from a number she didn't know.

"Dante. Save this number."

She saved it. A second message came right after the first.

"I've ordered your ring. It's waiting at the Maison Delaunay boutique in the Design District. Pick it up today."

Elena stared at the screen.

She'd said yes two days ago. A custom piece from Maison Delaunay took months. She knew, because three of the pieces her mother left her had come from there.

He'd had it flown to Miami, ten minutes from her door.

She wasn't going anywhere. She'd already said yes. So why was he in such a hurry?

She typed back one word. "Okay."

The boutique was cool and quiet inside, all white marble and glass cases. A saleswoman in a black dress met her at the door.

"Ms. Rossi? We've been expecting you."

She brought out a small velvet box and opened it on the counter.

The center stone was a five-carat blue diamond, clear and deep. A row of small pink diamonds circled it, and a row of white ones circled those. Under the lights, it was hard to look at anything else.

"Mr. Valenti designed it with our atelier in Paris," the saleswoman said. "There's an engraving inside the band."

Elena tilted the ring toward the light. Tiny letters ran along the inside. D.V. & E.R.

She slid it onto her finger. It fit exactly.

She'd never told anyone her ring size. Not even her father.

"Mr. Valenti asked us to tell you that if anything isn't right, the atelier will remake it," the saleswoman said. "The stone, the setting, anything at all."

"It's perfect," Elena said.

A man she had never met had picked this out for her, and he'd gotten every detail right.

"Elena."

The voice came from right behind her, sharp and flat.

"What the hell is this?" Julian said.