Conquer Your Love

I thought about it for all of three seconds. “That’s not me.”

She smiled and brushed my hair off my face. “I know and I would never encourage you to do that. It would destroy you, haunt you for the rest of your life, and that’s a lot worse than the pain you’d feel if he let you down.”

Chapter 24

In the silence of the house, we heard the car pull outside and the doors slam shut. Figuring I was too shaken to face Jett, I hid inside the bathroom. Through the walls, I still could hear them downstairs, chatting and laughing. I pressed my feverish forehead against the cool wall tiles when a knock on my bathroom door made me flinch.

“Brooke?” It was Jett. The strained undertones in his voice betrayed his worry. “Sylvie said you’re in here.”

“Wait.” Jumping to my feet, I straightened my clothes and stepped out of the bathroom, closing the door behind me. I curled my lips into a smile, praying it looked genuine enough to fool him. My pulse leaped as he lifted me up in his arms, and my stomach began to flutter at the way his lips brushed against mine, exploring my mouth as though we hadn’t seen each other in weeks.

“Are you okay?” he said after putting me back down.

“Just a headache. That’s all.” It wasn’t even a lie. Ever since discovering my possible pregnancy, I felt physically sick and my head was a throbbing pulp.

“Where were you?” I tried to keep my tone casual in my attempt to steer the conversation to him.

“We had the license plate checked. It was a waste of time. It’s not registered and thus fake.” He smirked and grabbed my hand. His fingers interlaced with mine. On any other occasion, his touch would have pleased me, but today it only managed to make me feel even worse.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, baby. Kenny’s hacking into Lucazzone’s computer today. I’m confident if there’s something, Kenny will unearth it.”

He walked downstairs to join Kenny and Sylvie. I felt Sylvie scrutinizing me, watching my every move. I grimaced at her in the hope she’d get the hint to act normal. The last thing I needed was being examined like a bizarre specimen at the local zoo. Jett wasn’t stupid. He’d catch that something was wrong in a heartbeat.

“Did you tell her about the computer?” Kenny asked. At Jett’s nod Kenny turned to me. “Are you okay with it? The hard drive will be destroyed beyond repair and you’ll have to throw it away.”

Sylvie shot me a sideway glance. I could smell her fear in the air and gave her a noncommittal shrug. She had deleted the browser history so we had nothing to worry about.

“Sure, Kenny. Do whatever you need to do. It’s not like I intend to keep it.”

“Good.” He snatched his rucksack and headed out, calling over his shoulder, “Because it can go two ways: Either we get into his computer, retrieve the information, and destroy the disk in the process. Or we find nothing, but the hard drive’s done. Either way, what we do will leave a trail behind. A pro will be able to tell and there’s no going back.”

I swallowed hard. If Alessandro decided to check, he’d find out that his guests had been snooping around the place. Did I really want that?

“Brooke.” Jett nodded at me encouragingly. “We talked about this in the basement, remember? You have a right to know.”

“I know. I just—” I exhaled a slow breath. I could always tell Alessandro the computer broke down and I bought him a new one. “Okay.”

Kenny lay out all the tools, then started to disassemble the computer, explaining each step.

“If the hard drive was erased, a pro might take weeks, maybe even months to retrieve the data. If you use a good data destruction software, no one will ever recover anything.”

“We don’t have weeks or months,” Jett said.

Kenny shrugged. “I’m just saying, man. The fact that you used the internet means the hard drive’s not destroyed, so he probably performed a wipe-out. What was the guy’s name again?”

“Lucazzone,” I said. “So how long do you think you’ll take?”

“That depends. Maybe an hour.”

Kenny continued his chatter as he removed the hard drive and pushed it into what looked like a black box, which he called an enclosure, and connected it to his computer. It all looked so complicated and, judging from Sylvie’s expression, boring. All I could see was a black screen—until he opened a program and the data transfer began.

“The software’s doing its own rewriting during the data retrieval process. We’re burning the entire information as an ISO image on this disk to make sure we have a backup,” Kenny said, popping a mini CD-ROM into his computer.

I could see Sylvie was bored out of her mind from the way she suppressed a yawn, which made me laugh. She suffered from a short attention span, and in particular when a conversation involved sports, computers, or anything with no relation to fashion, men, or parties.

“So boring,” Sylvie mouthed. “Come on.”

I shook my head.

She grimaced and turned to Jett, gesturing at me. “Do you mind if I borrow her?”

“You have thirty minutes, then I want her back,” Jett said.

Sylvie pulled me into the kitchen and closed the door behind us.

“You okay?” she whispered.

I hated when people asked that question. The desired answer is yes, even when you don’t feel like it.

“Don’t ask,” I said.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.” I groaned inwardly at her skeptical expression. “Please, Sylvie, I don’t want to think about anything anymore. Please?”

“Sure.” Pouting, she sat down and regarded me. I grabbed the opportunity to change the subject.

“Remember when I told you a private investigator found a diary in the chapel?” I waited until she nodded before I continued. “I’ve always wanted to locate it.”

Her eyes narrowed conspiratorially. “Do you want to—” She trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid.

I looked out the window at the lush green scenery and the dense woods stretching as far as I could see. “It’s stopped raining. I say we go check out the chapel.”

“Is it far?”

“No. Come on. I’ll show you.”

Our flip-flops sank into the damp earth and the grass and fallen twigs scratched our feet as we made our way down the staircase and through the bushes.

“It’s nice,” Sylvie remarked as we finally reached the chapel. I walked around the tiny building and tried to peer through the small window. The glass was too dirty to make out much but the wild rosebushes near the door told me at some point someone must have cared enough to plant them.

Sylvie pushed the rosebushes aside and moved past them, barely paying attention to their fragile beauty and the way they seemed to huddle together to protect themselves from nature’s unpredictable forces.

We split up as we circled the chapel and finally found what we were looking for: a small door with a tiny but intricate cross engraved into the wood. I tried the door and to my surprise it wasn’t locked.

“I’m going in,” I said. Sylvie stared at me with an expression that screamed sheer dread. As if the thought unnerved her, she took a step back.

“No way. I’m not going in there. Sorry, you’re on your own.”

“It’s in the middle of the day. What do you think could possibly happen to you?” Her face made me smile. “Okay, stay here.”

I pried the heavy door open and stepped into the semi dark room. It was bigger than it looked from outside—maybe the size of a bathroom—and accommodated two benches set up in front of an altar. The walls were covered in religious paintings. At the front of the altar was the sculpture of a sitting angel, his eyes cast on the concrete floor, appearing to be in deep thought, his face a mask of melancholy. I wondered whether Maria had felt that way during her marriage. I didn’t know a lot about the woman, but I had a strong feeling the chapel hadn’t been just a place of worship; it had also doubled as a refuge.

Kneeling, I made a cross sign and sat down on a bench, my gaze scanning the dirty window—the only source of light. Branches scratched against the glass and the unnerving sound carried over like a silent warning. In that instant I felt something in the air—a shiver of sadness. This place was filled with hopelessness, just like the woman who had come here to seek spiritual comfort. Maybe something terrible happened and she was ashamed of Alessandro’s actions, and this was the only place of peace she could find.

“Found anything?” Sylvie called, jerking me out of my thoughts. I turned to see her standing in the doorway with her arms crossed over her chest and a frown darkening her features.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Hurry up. This place gives me the creeps.”

Jett’s report specifically mentioned the diary had been buried, but the floor and walls were made of stone. I commenced my investigation by searching under the benches and altar for any hiding place large enough to fit a book or a diary, then brushed my hands over the stonewalls to make sure I wasn’t missing a loose stone. I checked the religious paintings twice before I returned to Sylvie, convinced whoever removed the diary never put it back in its hiding place.

“If you wanted to hide something personal, where would you put it?” I asked.

Sylvie shrugged. “I’d do what normal people do and get a safe.”

I laughed. “That’s not exactly hiding. Anyone could force you into giving away the lock combination.”

“I guess.” She paused. “You could always bury a hole in the ground.”

“That’s a good one.” I scanned the yard and the overgrown thicket. Maria could have buried her diary anywhere on the estate, including under the rosebushes leading from the chapel to the backyard and around the house.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Sylvie asked. “I mean, even if we find the original hiding spot, the diary isn’t there.”

“You’re right.” I bent down and ran my hand through the damp earth, letting it crumble between my fingers. Jett told me the PI took the diary and then one day it was lost.

How could I explain to Sylvie that I was trying to find out what kind of life my great aunt had once led?

“I was hoping I might find something—anything that would help me visualize her life.” I smiled, realizing just how ridiculous I sounded. Human life’s so much more complex than a few diary entries. Even if the diary was still buried here somewhere and I found it, I couldn’t possibly read her emotions and the kind of person she was from a few words strung together. Judging from Sylvie’s skeptical look, she thought the same.

A strong wind rustled the leaves and raindrops began to drizzle down on us.

“Let’s get back inside. I’m cold.” Sylvie said. “We’ll dig up the whole place another day.”

I was about to follow her, when a movement in my peripheral vision caught my attention. I scanned the woods. All I could see were trees, their wide crowns casting ominous shadows, and yet I couldn’t shake off the overwhelming feeling of being watched.