I PACE IN THE hotel lobby, chewing on my lower lip. What if he doesn't show up?

Nervous thoughts swarm my mind like a pack of pigeons begging for crumbs in St. Peter's Square. The thought of Italy makes me smile before the thought of Lucas makes the corners of my mouth sink again. My Louboutins click along the marble flooring, sounding too much like gunshots for my own taste. I should sit down. I don't want to look like I'm waiting for a guy to come along and solve my problems... which I am...

Calm down, Destiny. What's wrong with you?

The name I chose for myself cools me a little bit, at least. It reminds me of the confidence I always struggled to find growing up: unable to have faith that my mom would stick around for longer than a few weeks at a time. Always being dumped at Marco's place to play video games until the wee hours of the morning. Seeing bloodstains on the apartment walls. No, I always told myself that I was destined for something more. Something greater.

But now, I'm back at square one. Is this what I'm destined for? To return to this life of crime, over and over?

I take a seat in one of the comfy club chairs in the hotel lounge. The leather seat engulfs my petite frame, my feet barely touching the ground. It makes me feel like a child, which is not the image I want to portray when I meet my... What? What is Lucas to me? A friend? That is what you call someone when they do you the favour of letting you stay with them rent-free for six months in exchange for doing nothing more than ordering takeout and doing a few chores. Right?

Except, I left. Well, I was kidnapped, but still, I left him. After Christina left him over me. Then I left him, for my family. I open my purse and slide out a compact mirror, checking my lipstick. It's still perfect. In the reflection, I can make out Lucas's familiar stride, his black shoes, and I snap the mirror shut, standing up and turning around to face him. A wave of dizziness washes over me.

I stood up too fast. In heels. Damn, but this will not end well. I can make out the worry in his face as he rushes toward me, gripping my arm. "Are you okay?"

"You mean, women don't all swoon when they see you?" I say, trying to joke around. It doesn't seem to alleviate his concern.

"Only the really beautiful ones," he says. Is he... flirting with me? That's new. "You look... different."

I glance down at my outfit. I suppose he's used to seeing me wear hoodies and sweatpants around his house, or nothing at all. The black blazer and slacks combined with high heels probably make me look like a totally different person. "Thanks, Lucas. At least, I think."

My stomach curls up at the sight of his face. He's not smiling. And something behind his brown eyes is hard, cold. "Have a seat, Lucia."

A lump rises in my throat. He's mad at me. Of course, he's mad. Why wouldn't he be? I lied to him about who I was... about everything... "Lucas, come on."

"That's Agent Black to you," he says, his voice taking on a sharp edge. It pierces my heart and all my armour like a skillfully wielded dagger. "I can't believe I was stupid enough to trust you."

"Lucas, please." I feel pathetic. Like someone who cheated and is begging for a second chance. "I know I'm not who you thought I was. But I don't think you're the kind of person to point fingers when it comes to that."

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know I've made a huge mistake. His eyes narrow. I've struck him where it hurts men the most: his pride. "That was a low blow, Destiny. Even for you." Lucas's face hardens, his lips pursing.

"Even for me?" I repeat, crossing one leg over the other, the pointed tip of my pump almost kicking him in the shin as I do so. Looking away from him and over one of his hunched shoulders, I smooth out imaginary wrinkles in my black satin slacks. "What's that supposed to mean, Agent Black?"

"You know that saying, some girls see a low bar and use it as a stripper pole?" he says. There's this self-satisfied smug smirk on his face, as though he's just won some argument in court. Like he's a flashy, hotshot defence attorney who's gloating about his win to whoever the other lawyer is.

I wish I had ordered a drink right now, just so I could toss the glass in his face. My fists clench in my lap. "How dare you, Agent Black? How dare you throw that in my face? You have no idea what I've done to survive the Cavallis. You haven't got one iota of an idea. While you were sitting safe and sound in your fancy house eating good food and training for the FBI, I was struggling to survive. I have been through more than you could ever understand, so before you presume to lecture me on morality when you have made questionable decisions too... Before you judge me, look at the plank in your own eye."

The anger on his face suggests that now he's thinking one of those questionable decisions was me. Wait. That sounded wrong. I mean, letting me into his life. I've been going about this whole conversation in the completely wrong way, but I have no idea how to steer this train back onto its proper course. I don't even know if it's possible.

For some reason, my words hit their mark. And instead of inflaming him more, they seem to soften him, his shoulders slumping and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes smoothing out. "You're right, Destiny. I'm sorry."

"You... you are?" I grew up around stubborn, bull-headed men who would never dream of even thinking about apologizing to anyone, even if they're wrong, and least of all a woman who's just insulted them. It feels impossible to believe that Lucas would be saying the words, I'm sorry, now, after I've lied to him. "Really?"

"I shouldn't have spoken to you the way I did. It was wrong of me and it was hurtful," he says, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. "I overreacted."

"I... I suppose I accept your apology." The words flounder around in my mind, unable to surface and form a coherent sentence in my shock. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Lucas says, his brown eyes wide and sincere. It feels like he's gesturing me to walk across a bridge to the other side of a ravine, but it's unstable and creaky, held together by ropes and flimsy, splintery boards of wood. Can I really trust him? Can he ever trust me? "And, I forgot to say, thanks for meeting me."

"I was surprised that you agreed," I say, tilting my head to one side so that my blonde waves fall over one shoulder. "In fact, I'm still surprised. What did you want to talk about?"

"Well, you mentioned the Cavalli's," he said. "But I guess the thing i really want to know is, what were you really doing when we met?"

I shut my eyes, trying to drown out the memories of that cold, dark night. When I do speak, tears spring to my eyes and my voice is hoarse, as though I've been crying for hours. "I told you and the police the truth about that night."

Concern rises in his face at the sight of my tears. "You don't have to..."

I shake my head. "But I didn't tell you the whole truth. And I guess you deserve that much from me."

Or that little...

IT ALL STARTED WHEN I left the Cavalli's. Or rather, when I left my family. I packed my bags in the dead of the night and snuck out of the small apartment I shared with my mother. She wasn't home that night--she wasn't home a lot of nights, really--but it felt more fun, more dangerous, to sneak out. Especially with all the gossip surrounding me and my cousin, Monica... I took five hundred dollars from the piggy bank where I had been stashing allowances for the past decade, packed my favourite skinny jeans, a toothbrush, and a change of underwear.

With my backpack firmly on my back, at eighteen years old, I destroyed my cheap flip phone in the kitchen's garbage disposal, and ran away from home. The only person I left a note for was Marco, when I stuck a neon green Post-it to his door telling him that I was running away. My first mistake, because he found me at the bus depot the next day, haggard, scared, determined, and unkempt, looking for the quickest way out of New Jersey. He tried to convince me to come with him back home. "The city will eat you up and spit you out, Lucia," Marco had warned me. He hadn't been wrong. When he couldn't convince me, he passed me a can of Coors light, twenty bucks, and a pack of cigarettes.

I never smoked the cigarettes, and I knocked out a homeless guy with the beer when he tried to steal my money, but I did spend the twenty bucks at a youth hostel while I was getting on my feet. Eventually, I realized there weren't many jobs that could sustain a teenager with a high school education while also letting her pay rent in one of America's most expensive cities. One of the girls I crashed with in a five-person living situation told me about her stripping job, and I fell into that life.

When I first met Lucas Black, I thought he was a cop. I'd been taking a break, my first short one of what would most certainly be a very long night, and he'd caught my eye. He had seemed uncomfortable, stiff, likely to be a cheapskate, so I hadn't bothered with him. His spine was too ramrod straight for him to pull out his wallet, at least. One of the other girls had tried to entice him with a lap dance, but for some reason, he'd been fixated on me.

When it turned out that the manager of the strip club--a total jerk who felt up all the girls when he gave them their checks and helped himself to a hefty portion of our money too--was also running a drug cartel out the back of his club, I had contacted Marco. At that point, it was five years later and he'd risen the ranks to be just below capo, while I was stripping in a seedy club to get the bills paid. However, the strip club's drug business did infringe on Cavalli territory, so he had promised to tell Antonio about it. Whether or not he did, I had no idea, because the next day that I went to work, the manager was on the floor in a pool of blood.

The police were called in and so was the FBI. Lucas Black made a reappearance in my life. Our eyes locked over a dead body for the first time. I guess you could call it romantic.