+ walked along the boarded pathway to the beach with #Evan, my arm linked in his. He was going off on some tangent about how rude the +

+ black girl was to him and how he hated it here.] Then you can leave. [I put it bluntly. He scoffed. Reassuring him previously hadn’t +

+ really worked, hence why I had talked him into leaving the room for a while. We were all confined there and even a leisurely stroll was +

+ forbidden. But Renata Giuliani and Caius Benetti didn’t have a dedicated person on us, so it was easy enough to slip through the cracks. +

+ /Quite/ literally. The building itself was nice, good job on Caius Benetti and Renata Giuliani’s parts, but it had the integrity of the +

+ Volterrean castle. Little side doors, windows too close to the ground (like jumping from a higher window mattered, anyways)… It was +

+ cute. It was like they were inviting us to go prowling around. Or they weren’t exactly expecting houseguests-turned-prisoners.] +

+ [“Renata Giuliani is always soaking wet when she shows up… doesn’t she have anything better to do?” Evan was irritated, but she didn’t +

+ know Renata Giuliani very well. If we had still been in Italy, in the castle, he would have understood why Renata Giuliani opted to “get +

+ wet” instead of attending to her duties as… leader?... of this bunch. She grew up in a “wet” country and didn’t get a lot of that in +

+ Italy…. Well, at least it made sense to me. A couple hundred years ago, Renata Giuliani and I had a falling out and – obviously – we +

+ hadn’t really made amends.] She likes to swim. Or bathe. Either really, I don’t have much of a problem with as long as she doesn’t try +

+ to /kill/ us. [“One less worry…”] I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. [“Why do you continue to try to protect us, Cor? You said it +

+ yourself, we’re stronger than them and-“] Thousands of years of training and hand-to-hand combat, #Evan. Your strength may outweigh +

+ theirs, even mine, but have one or two /others/ against one or two /of you/…. [I shook my head. No doubt, if the lackeys around here +

+ wanted to try me plus one of my companions, they wouldn’t stand a chance. But toss Caius Benetti or Renata Giuliani in there, or the one +

+ that looked straight out of World War One…. Well, I wasn’t taking any chances.] [Once we had arrived at the edge of the beach, I dipped +

+ my toes into the water, and let out a quiet sigh. #Evan wrapped his arm around my waist; even disheveled, he was still cute as hell.] +

+ I’ll try to talk to Renata Giuliani about you getting into training, if that’s what you want. Fight it out, honey. [I offered a small +

+ smile and looked up at him. Granted, I wanted to talk to Renata Giuliani about other things – Heidi in particular – but it could wait.]