Chapter Fifteen
Valentina Knox lived in a townhouse on the quiet end of the city, the kind of place old money retreats to once it has stopped needing to prove anything to anyone. Rafael had been there maybe a dozen times in his life, always for holidays, always surrounded by other relatives, never alone with her like this.
She opened the door herself, no housekeeper following, already dressed like she had been expecting this exact conversation for a lot longer than one phone call’s worth of notice.
“You look like your father did,” she said, by way of hello, “right before he asked me a question he already knew he didn’t want the answer to.”
“That is not comforting.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. Come in.”
She poured them both a drink neither of them touched and sat across from him in a living
