Vittorio slipped off the bed. “I’m going to lower the bed for you, gattina bella.”
Grace was grateful that he noticed she was getting tired. She didn’t like bringing attention to herself in any way. She made certain she could fade into the background and not be noticed. She’d discovered that if she kept to the shadows, the darkness helped to hide her. Haydon had colored her life in so many ways.
“In school, Haydon didn’t want me to have other friends. I made a girlfriend the first day at our new school and he was furious when we were walking home, telling me I was a sellout and wanted to be popular, that after all he’d done for me, I was going to be like everyone else and ignore him. I defended myself, but the next day, my new friend didn’t come to school. Someone had hung her cat in her doorway.”
She pulled her hand away from Vittorio and pressed her fingers against her lip, choking for a moment, trying not to think she was responsible. “He was sweet to me all that day, walking me to my classes. I kept my head down and let him.”
Vittorio fixed her pillows as if knowing she was uncomfortable. He pulled the cover up. “I know it must be hard for you to relive these things.” His long fingers slipped into her hair, massaging her scalp. “Mia bella ragazza, sei cosi coraggiosa,” he murmured.
“What does that mean?”
“Only that you’re very brave.”
She didn’t think of herself as brave. “I didn’t know how to stop Haydon,” she felt compelled to confess. “He was considered a nerd and a few members of the football team shoved him around one day in school. One by one, accidents happened to them. One nearly broke his neck because his skateboard broke in half on a dangerous hill he’d bragged to everyone he could skate. As it was, he had a broken femur and knee. It was the end of his playing football because the leg was so screwed up. Another one of the players had this car he loved more than anything. He’d saved for it for years, souped it up himself in his dad’s garage. Then one day, after he shoved Haydon at school, the brakes went out. He totaled the car and was lucky he survived.”
“Could these accidents have been coincidences?”
Grace shook her head and then winced when her shoulder reacted to the movement with a wave of pain. “The cops said he must’ve made a mistake when he installed new brakes, but this guy was a total gearhead. He wouldn’t have made that sort of mistake. I tried to tell myself that, but I knew better.”
“Do you want to stop and go to sleep? We can talk later.”
His voice was so gentle, almost a caress of velvet stroking over her skin. Caring. Tender even. She’d never heard a voice quite like his. She should have known he would notice the way the color drained from her face when the pain hit. She hated moving, but she had to finish telling him about Haydon. If her foster brother managed to get to her, someone had to know and believe her. Vittorio Ferraro was a man everyone would listen to.
“I want you to hear this before I lose my courage,” she said. His hand pressed hers to his thigh and once again, his thumb started that soothing rhythm that somehow relaxed the tension that was cramping her muscles.
“Haydon got mad at Kyle for insisting that he do his own chores when Julie told him I was doing all the laundry and cleaning his room. They had a beautiful lab that went missing. Kyle loved that dog. They looked for weeks for it. Someone found its remains in a park—it had been tortured.”
“Grace, it’s clear this man is fixated on you. Is it about money? Did he try to take your relationship to a romantic level?”
His voice remained the same, gentle and low, but something made her gaze jump to his when she’d been closing her eyes because her lids had suddenly gotten so heavy. Just his saying it aloud made her heart go crazy.
“He never so much as tried to kiss me, but he doesn’t like anyone close to me at all. I don’t go out with friends, not even Katie. She suspects I have a stalker, but I always act as if Haydon is my friend. I never let on that I’m afraid of