"Tell me who you spoke to before the attack."
I looked up from where I sat in Dante's study, and something in his tone stopped me before I could answer easily. This wasn't the man who'd argued with me over locked files or offered dry observations about my stubbornness. This was someone colder, more precise, every question weighted with purpose.
"I was in the garden," I said. "Then the kitchen, briefly, before dinner."
"Who did you speak to?"
I understood, watching him, that he wasn't accusing me. He was testing the shape of my memory, checking it against whatever timeline his people were assembling. The realization unsettled me more than an accusation would have. Someone inside his own house had tried to kill him, and he'd become a man who trusted nothing, not even the woman who'd stop
