Chapter 5
GIANNA
To say everything that happened in the last fifteen minutes or so happened without me…
or more like with me barely watching on…
would actually be an understatement. I’m in the front seat of a fancy sports car, Chiara in the back, and beside me is a guy I’ve never met driving so fast all the city lights are a blur.
I roll down the window to feel the fresh air on my face as I try to piece together the sequence of events that lead us here.
I remember getting ready and sneaking out just fine.
I also remember dancing for hours, making sure I didn’t drink too much, too fast, because I wanted to make the fun of the night last until morning.
I’m very good at managing my alcohol intake, been doing it for years.
I know how to drink just enough to take the edge off, make me loose and happy, not enough to get sick.
So I didn’t black out from the alcohol. Another thing I remember is that this guy driving way too fast now was watching me for most of the night.
And that he didn’t come and dance with me.
Which upset me a little because I wanted him to.
Then another guy did come, offering me a sip of his hot pink drink and then showing me some moves on the dance floor I’d never seen before.
All while laughing and telling me I’m the most beautiful woman he’d seen all year.
I found that hilarious and pretended to be offended that he only said a year and not something like his whole life.
I also found myself lighter than air, floating a few feet above the ground, as light and happy and carefree as I’d ever been.
So going with the guy to the back where we could hear each other talk, as he suggested, seemed like the best idea in the world.
Although I didn’t even find him attractive.
Even standing in that smelly alley out back, with him leaning over me, about to kiss me, seemed like exactly the place I wanted and needed to be.
Not until I heard Chiara screaming at the guy to get away from me and seeing the knife he aimed at my stomach, did I feel something might be off about the whole thing.
Seeing the guy Chiara was with beat up two guys, including the one with the knife, made me even more sure I’d done a really dumb thing coming out to the alley.
And now, as the cold air blows in my face, I feel like a total fool. So stupid I’m afraid to even look at the guy beside me, or my sister, who I feel seething in the back seat.
I glance back to confirm that she is in fact as angry at me as I feel her to be, and the way she’s glaring back does exactly that.
“You’re bleeding,” I say to the guy as I turn to face front again and see the gash in his shirt sleeve with blood bubbling through.
He glances at it, then into my eyes, and then back at the road, leaving me feeling like I’ve just been standing out in the sun. “It’s nothing, just a scratch. What’s your address and where is it?”
He doesn’t have the hard New York accent most of my friends and family do. There’s even something soft and expansive in the way he speaks, reminding me of wide-open roads and beaches and the ocean. I like it.
“It’s just up ahead,” Chiara says, giving him the address of our building. “You might want to slow down. We’re almost there.”
I know another little moment of panic when he doesn’t do as she told him to right away. But then he does slow down, and I point at the traffic light we’re heading towards. “Make a right there and our house is about halfway down on the left.”
“Point it out when we get to it,” he says.
A few moments later we’re rolling down the street where this night began for us.
I’m pretty sure the coats we left in the bushes are gone, but it’s hard to tell in the dark.
And the street is as empty as it usually is this early in the morning.
Or late at night, depending on how you want to look at it.
It’s almost three thirty. I’d planned to come home at dawn.
That way we’d sneak in with the maintenance staff and be in bed when anyone came looking for us.
I’m not even sure if the back door will be unlocked at this time of night.
If it isn’t we’ll have to go through the main lobby and that is not a good idea.
My dad’s guys have access to the security cameras in the building.
I just hope they’re not checking them too diligently at three in the morning.
“This is it,” I say, pointing at a black metal door we just passed.
“Here?” he says, eying the door and then me like maybe he thinks I’m not in my right mind.
I open the door. “This is just the side door. Don’t worry. Thanks for everything.”
I step out so Chiara can get out too. Then I have so much trouble putting the seat back upright, he comes out too, standing so close I can smell his expensive cologne mixed with his natural odor.
It’s an intoxicating mix—way more so than alcohol and whatever that guy slipped me.
Strong enough to make my knees very weak and images of things I’ll only ever be able to do with my husband rush to the top of my mind in vivid images and sensations that I’ve never felt for a man.
Sensations I’ve only felt on my own, thinking of men.
Imagining all the stuff I could do with a man I loved.
My head is spinning again, and it has nothing to do with the amount of alcohol I consumed—just him.
He even looks so damn good. About a head taller than me, built like one of those Michealangelo statues and a face that’s at once manly and gruff, and lips that look so damn kissable.
The bleeding wound on his arm, the one he got saving me, makes him even more desirable.
And the fact that his arms and hands are covered with tattoos isn’t helping either.
“What’s your name?” I hear myself ask. Chiara rolls her eyes at me.
“Matteo.”
Chiara slips her arm under mine and pulls me to the door. “Thanks for everything, Matteo. But we really have to go inside now.”
I’d really very much rather not leave him, but Chiara is relentless in dragging me towards the side entrance of the building.
The whole while, I’m staring back at Matteo who’s walking back to the driver’s side of his car, looking like maybe he’d rather stay and talk to me some more. Just like I’d like him to stay.
So I don’t even see the side door open. I just hear Chiara’s gasp and feel and hear my dad’s guys rush past us, Rafaelle in the lead.
Matteo does try to get in the car and speed off, but he’s too slow. Mostly because we’re still locking eyes. I don’t think either of us want to stop looking at each other.
But then they have him pinned to the ground and it’s all my fault. I yell for them to stop, to let him go.
But all I get is a curt, “Your father wants to talk to you,” from Rafaelle as he leads the pack dragging Matteo into the building.
The look in his eyes suggests he could take them all in a fight, and I believe it. He’s not pleading or asking any questions, his face hard with the kind of confidence I’m only used to seeing in my dad’s eyes, and in my brother’s back when he was still alive.
“I’ll clear this up. Don’t worry, Matteo,” I call after him anyway.
Michele, our other personal security guard, is waiting for us by the door.
“This was very irresponsible of you girls,” he says as he waits for us to enter the building.
Chiara tells him that we’re entitled to a little fun once in a while, but I just rush past him and towards the elevators. Matteo and the rest must already be riding up in one of them, because they’re nowhere to be seen.
I press the up button repeatedly, muttering, “Come on, come on, come on,” as if that’s going to make the elevator door open any sooner.
Chiara is telling me to calm down, but I barely hear her.
All I know is that I have to get to dad before he hurts Matteo. I have to let Dad know he saved me. And I hope that will be enough.
Because in some weird way, I feel like my life is directly tied to his now. Maybe because he saved me, maybe because of something else… but either way, I need him to live.