Infinite Bliss || Volturi Kings

|16| APOLOGIES

The rest of their stay seemed to go pretty smoothly, and by the rest she meant the next few hours. She'd left the house as she did every day, only to arrive back to a note left by her door and all three of her mates gone without a trace.

It wasn't like she was exactly shocked — to say they were important and thus busy people would've been an understatement, and they'd never exactly specified the duration of their stay — but she couldn't say it hadn't stung that she'd received literally no warning whatsoever beforehand.

Not only that, but she hated how she'd left things off with them. Eliana wasn't nearly ready to forgive them, and they knew that, but she wanted to at least get to a point where they could move past what they'd done, but the remaining stiffness and awkwardness in their conversations hadn't even been completely lifted.

She turned her gaze back down to the note in her hand, written very neatly in Caius' cursive handwriting, a handwriting style she was certain anyone would seriously struggle to replicate.

Carina,

I apologise, but we are needed in Volterra much sooner than we anticipated. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that we will meet again until the summer. Grazie for allowing us to visit you.

Until then.

Ti vogliamo bene.

With a heavy sigh, she trudged up her stairs reluctantly into her room and tossed her bag aside. She tucked the note away into one of her desk drawers and slowly closed it-

"Hey."

Eliana screamed in fear and tripped forward as she crawled away from the window. It was only once she looked up and saw Santiago that she steadily released the breath she'd been holding. He was reclined pretty comfortably across her windowsill, a magazine open on his lap.

"What the fuck was that for?!" she demanded. "You gave me the fright of my life!"

"I was looking for something more along the lines of, "Santiago, I've missed your glorious presence in my life!" but I guess that'll do," he quipped.

Her eyebrows were drawn together. "But if you wanted to let yourself in, couldn't you have just used the front door? It's not like I locked it."

"For your reaction, I'd do this again any day," he retorted. "By the way," He held up the front cover of the magazine, "what the fuck am I looking at?"

"A magazine."

"Yeah, well no shit," he snorted a laugh, "but that doesn't answer my question."

Eliana looked away from him in a useless attempt at concealing her embarrassment. ". . . 2006 Girl's Life Magazine. I was going through a thing."

"Apparently so. But I understand why. I mean, look at this headline. "Is he into you? How to tell for sure!" Damn." He nodded his head in mocking interest. "Now I'm intrigued."

"Don't be an ass," she snapped. "Anyway, where did you get that from?"

Santiago nodded towards her wardrobe. "There's a box of them at the back with your maid dress-"

"Why are you snooping through my things?! Give me that!" Eliana didn't hesitate to snatch the magazine from him, but the moment she did so, he had another open in front of him.

"My dude, trying to beat me is like playing whack-a-mole," he replied with a shrug. He opened the first page and his eyebrows rose theatrically. "Oh, a "Super Quiz Special". And look at these. "Get your dating rating! Are you for real? What's your friendship style?""