Chapter 155

• Serafina
• As soon as I was in the car, I reached around to the back seat and dragged my coat over my lap. Heart racing like I'd just sprinted the Olympic hundred-meter dash, I dropped the porcelain crucifix I'd swiped off the oldfashioned desk into one of the pockets just as Enzo joined me. He glanced over, saw the coat on my lap and the way I was shivering, and cranked the ignition and turned the heat on.
• I was glad it was chilly enough to have the coat. And I would return the cross the first chance I could. Taking it had been an automatic reaction to the rise of panic I'd experienced when I saw the others who were attending the wedding dinner. Something I'd had no control over. A self-defense mechanism, if you will, that comes on whenever I get too nervous in a situation. Or too emotional in any form, really. At least that's what my therapists told me. I'd been doing it ever since I was a kid, and after years of doctor's visits and behavioral therapy, I still had no idea why or how to stop myself from stealing.