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Chapter 2

G R A C E

My eyes are still following my feet, carefully watching the soft marks they leave on the sand when I see it and immediately jump back. But the damage is done, my footstep has been printed across the bigger, older footprint and though it is no big deal I feel guilty for ruining it. I bite my lip, my eyes follow the trail created by the bigger prints, as they almost diagonally cross the beach toward the beach house at the very end of the line, the biggest one, almost half the size of the mansion.

It’s weird those are the only other set of clear prints on the otherwise undisturbed beach, it is almost like they have just been left.

The thought seeps in my head slowly at first and then all at once and I gasp and duck to the ground. My knees come to my chest, covering all there is to hide. My eyes run around the beach but there is no one else to spot, no other pair of footsteps to track. Just those, first mildly distant in strides and then suddenly spread much wider, almost like a half-hearted run. I turn to my left and I find the rest of them, sprinkled over the sand, one shoe print after the other, placed in a light jog. They come all the way to the spot I am now standing at, and then they stop, the two shoes, placed closely together as if for a moment he stands, and faces the sea. Faces me.

Shit.

I don’t have to tell my feet to move after that. I reach my clothes faster than physically possible, my hands covering my body are replaced by my ‘You are Kenough’ hoodie as I pull it over me in a swift movement. I don’t wait to put the shorts on, there is too much light on the beach now for me to stay there and not get booked for public indecency.

By the time I cross the span of the very huge beach, I have put my shorts on–though I am almost sure I have them on inside out–and my hair has lost most of its water, less by evaporation and more by dripping into my hoodie. That, with the wetness from swimming, makes the fabric stick to my skin, making it painfully obvious that I am not wearing any lingerie. That or I am being a little too paranoid.

I mean, I am twenty-four, on a private island in Italy for my best friend’s birthday vacation. Skinny-dipping is no big deal, right?

Even if I was positively spotted by a tall, big footed man who decided to stand and enjoy the show instead of closing his eyes and leaving like a decent human being.

My run turns into a light jog when I get closer to the line of beach houses. The waves are too far to break the silence for me up here, making me aware of my unusually loud breathing and the heat of adrenaline pumping through my veins. I’ve never seen so many beautiful houses together and to think that they are all owned by Sophia's family- it is baffling but at the same time exciting.

They’re apparently very rich. So much so that that sentence in itself is an understatement. I have never asked Sophia more about it, for the simple reason that it will be awkward and also because deep down I know the answer won’t be something I’ll like. Construction is a big business, but whatever it that the Morettis are doing is surely bigger.

Nothing that big is ever completely legal, and I am not ready to lose my only friend over that information, nor would I want to take away Sophia’s only friend from her. Living a few weeks over possibly criminal money isn’t going to push me any deeper in hell than I’m already headed for. If it is real at all, that is.

I'm rooming with Sophia, the beach house only has one bedroom, but that alone is bigger than any space I’ve ever spent a night at. If you include the rest of the house, it's more than enough for ten Grace Millers’. I step on to the stone pavement that runs in front of all the houses and turn to look back at the spot where I was swimming. It's far, very far, if someone looked through the man-sized windows, I’d appear the size of a cat nothing more, so honestly there isn’t much to worry about in that department, only the big shoes.

I can still see his shoe prints in the sand till I’m only a few meters away from the steps that connect the pavement to Sophia’s house, and then they seem to have switched to the pavement too. There is only one house after Sophia’s so that is probably where he was headed, the biggest on the curb.

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