Chapter 10
Flora
While Enzo is gone, I work fast on the word processer, reeling out the story. With each word I type, the memories from last night and the days before come back to me. This makes it a difficult task.
However, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with my emotions while putting together a story. The only difference is the worrying thought that keeps gnawing at me. Where has Enzo gone to?
That dangerous look from last night was back in his eyes as he holstered his gun before leaving the house. If I know the mafia well and how they work, I’d say he’s definitely going after Jacob Slattery and his cohorts.
It worries me for two reasons. The first is my fear for his safety.
However, that fear wanes when I consider the possibility that his crew will be with him to even out the odds.
That brings the next disturbing thought into question: the fact that they’re probably out this morning to take the lives of three sworn officers of the law.
It’s with difficulty that I push the thought out of my mind and channel my thoughts toward the task at hand. Four hours fly by as I organize the facts in the word document and hammer them into fine prose.
I’m tying up the final parts when I hear keys in the lock. Enzo comes in carrying Chinese takeout and drinks.
“I thought you might be hungry after all that hard work,” he says with a smile.
There’s not a single scratch on him, and his suit still looks like he just threw it on, freshly laundered and ironed.
I get up from the desk and dash across the room to throw myself into his arms. In his embrace, I realize just how much I’d been worried. It was the kind of fear you fight hard not to acknowledge, the kind that still forces its way to the surface at the end, after events unfold.
“I missed you,” I tell him.
“So what we had last night means something after all,” he says, chuckling.
I pull away from his arms immediately and hit his shoulder. “I didn’t say that!”
“But that’s what I heard,” he counters.
“Maybe that’s because it’s what you want to say.”
He takes my hand and leads me over to the sofas. After setting the food down on the coffee table, he pulls me down on the sofa with him. “What if it’s what I want to say?” he asks.
“Well, is it?”
“Yes, it is.” Now there’s no humor on his face. He’s dead serious.
I shouldn’t say yes. We’re on opposite sides of the fence: an investigative journalist and a mafia family member. There shouldn’t be any plausible way we can work. On the other hand, this is the first powerful man who has ever given me my flowers without attempting to take out a petal or two.
All my days in the journalism industry and the city’s political circles are spent fighting men who try to discredit me because I’m a woman.
“I want to have you in my life, Flora,” he says. “I’ve known you for a while now and watched you from afar.”
“You have?” I ask, incredulous.
“The Camorra story you broke piqued my interest at first,” he says. “Then you blew open the serial murders case and dug deeper than every other journalist into the council hall scandal.”
“Everybody seemed to believe that was a conspiracy theory,” I explain.
He chuckles. “Only because the story touched some powerful members of the state government inappropriately. They hired the best PR machines to discredit you.”
I heave a sigh. “And they succeeded.”
“Well, I saw through it all. It’s easier for people to see a pretty blonde as a sex object, to believe salacious stories about her than to accept that she’s capable of critical thinking or covering the kind of stories you do.”
“So, you want me because I cover the tough stories?” I ask.
“That and many other things.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Like last night,” he says.
“Ooouuu.” I make a face at him.
He pulls me in, close enough to kiss me. “Well?”
“I think I’ve wanted you right from the moment you walked into that motel room,” I tell him. “I just didn’t know it then.”
Now he claims my lips in a kiss that dispels all my worries.
It doesn’t matter right now what I think of Enzo Agnelli’s family ties.
All I know at the moment is that he’s the first man in a long time that has seen past my looks and believed in my capabilities.
It’s unbelievable because he is the most unlikely person to do that.
Letting such a man slip through my fingers would be insanity, no matter what I may think of him.
His kiss deepens now, draining my mind of all thoughts. I lean into his body, surrendering everything I am in this moment to him. This is where I want to be at the end of each day, in his arms.
THE END