Chapter 31
As we walked out of the café, I went over to the Mercedes and opened up the passenger side door.
“What are you doing?” Emilia asked in confusion.
“Driving you home.”
“We can just walk. It’s only six blocks.”
“…oh… okay,” I agreed, and shut the door.
I walked next to her in awkward silence.
We turned down a cobblestone street and went thirty feet before she finally asked, “Why are you making this weird?”
“Because I promised I wouldn’t see you again!”
“Do you not want to see me again?” she asked.
“What?! No! This is great!”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I thought you wouldn’t want to see me again!”
“No,” she said, then blushed. “I… I missed you.”
My heart swelled. “Really?”
“Yes.”
For the first time in days, I felt happy again.
“I see you’re wearing the necklace.”
She touched it with her fingers and smiled. “Yes.”
“So,” I said, “I have to ask…”
She looked at me warily. “What?”
“You didn’t want to go out with me because of what I do for a living, right?”
“…yeah.”
I jerked my thumb back behind us. “You know who they’re married to, right?”
“It’s a little different,” she shot back indignantly.
I laughed. “How is it different?!”
“They’re not trying to get into my pants.”
“I’m not trying to get into your pants!”
She gave me a look like Bullshit.
“Okay, yeah – eventually!” I said. “I’m not gay!”
She laughed out loud – a gorgeous sound. I’d missed it so much.
“But I wasn’t immediately trying to get you into bed!” I protested.
She looked at me strangely, with her eyes heavily lidded and her lips open.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t – nothing,” she said, and went back to staring straight ahead.
“What?!” I demanded.
“It was just – it sounded really sexy when you said it,” she muttered.
“Thank God for that!” I said, relieved.
She laughed out loud again.
“Okay, but seriously – what, you’re friends with them now?” I asked, confused.
“They were nice to me!” she said in a voice like Stop picking on me!
“Okay, okay.”
“And I got to try on some really beautiful dresses.”
“I saw!” I said, like WOOF!
She looked at me with a big grin. “Who’s not trying to get into my pants?”
“Me trying to get into your pants seems to be an open secret now, so there’s no use denying it.”
“Well, good. I’m glad.”
I grinned. “You’re glad I’m trying to get into your pants?”
“NO, I’m glad you’re not denying it!”
“Fair enough.”
Emilia paused, then said, “I’m 99.9% positive Bianca was trying to set us up.”
“I didn’t put her up to it – I swear!”
“I know, I know,” Emilia said. “But it was so cute. And obvious. They didn’t mention you at first, but when they did, it was like, ‘Giorgio is SO nice’ and ‘Giorgio is SUCH a great guy.’”
“Well, I mean, I am,” I joked.
Emilia laughed. “There’s one thing they didn’t say: ‘Giorgio is SO modest.’”
“Nobody’s perfect.”
“Why does Lucia keep calling you Gorgeous George?” she asked, then added impishly, “Other than the obvious reason?”
“Ah,” I said happily, “so you think I’m gorgeous?”
“Don’t fish for compliments.”
I laughed.
“So?” Emilia prodded. “Why does she call you that?”
“It was a joke one of my bosses made. The pope who retired – the one before Pope Francis – ”
“Pope Benedict.”
“Right, him. Some cardinal used to hang out with him after he retired, and the cardinal’s nickname was ‘Gorgeous George’… and now that’s what everybody calls me.”
“That’s cute.”
“Lucia says it’s better than being called ‘Curious George.’”
“Oh, the monkey!”
“You know him?” I asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“I didn’t know who it was.”
“Well, he’s very cute. So that would have been an okay nickname, too.”
“I think I’ll take being ‘gorgeous’ over being ‘cute.’”
“Well, that’s what I’ll call you, then.”
I paused. Then I asked, “I’ve got to know – what changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first you didn’t want to go out with me, and now I’m walking you home. What changed?”
Emilia stiffened a little, and her smile faded away.
I said hurriedly, “I could stop halfway so I don’t see where you live, if that’s what you want – ”
“No, it’s… it’s fine.”
“So… is it just the things Lucia and Bianca said about me? Is that what changed your mind?”
She was silent for a moment, then finally said, “There was something else.”
“What?”
“I showed up to the photo shoot yesterday kind of freaked out.”
I frowned. “What happened?”
“I left Milan for a reason.”
“You had a run-in with someone in the mafia, right?”
She looked at me in surprise.
“You said you left Milan to ‘get away from that sort of thing,’” I reminded her.
“I did?”
“The second time I saw you, when you said that men didn’t take ‘no’ from women, only from other men.”
“Oh,” she said, and winced. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said lightly. “You kind of had a point.”
I was joking about me –
But she didn’t laugh.
Instead, she looked worried.
“What happened in Milan?” I asked seriously.
“I had a stalker. A guy in the mafia.”
“How do you know he was in the mafia?”
“For one, the way he dressed. Like you – all-black suit, really expensive. He also said just about everything except that he worked for the mafia. ‘I’ve got powerful friends’… ‘My boss runs the entire city’… stuff like that.”
I frowned. What a fucking idiot…
“He came into the coffee shop where I worked. As soon as he saw me, he started flirting with me. He said his name was Maurizio. He wasn’t my type, so I just smiled politely and didn’t say anything to encourage him.
“But he stayed forever. It got so bad that he was interfering with me taking orders from other customers, and I had to say, ‘I’m at work.’ He said something like, ‘You go out with me, you’ll never have to work again.
’ The other customers were too afraid of him to say anything, but he finally took the hint and left.
“But he kept coming back. Every time he showed up, he asked me out. He told me he would take me to the best restaurants, buy me whatever I wanted, set me up in a fancy apartment…
“I told him I had a boyfriend, even though I didn’t. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him’ in a sinister way and laughed like it was funny.
“I finally told him point-blank I wasn’t interested.
That’s when he flipped out on me. He told me I was a stuck-up bitch and that I’d be lucky to be with him.
He cursed me out and called me a whore until my manager came over and told him to leave.
Maurizio yelled at him, ‘Keep your nose out of this, or they’ll never find your fucking body.
’ My boss immediately called the cops. That must’ve scared him off, because he left.
“I didn’t go to the café for an entire week. I was too afraid. My boss told me Maurizio hadn’t come back in, so I finally went back to work.
“I didn’t see him at the café again… but I got this feeling like I was being followed.
“A couple of days later, I started catching little glimpses of him. Near the corner market where I bought my groceries… in the park where I took walks… everywhere.
“At first he would duck out of sight, but after a while, he got bolder. He wouldn’t even hide. He’d just leer at me like there was nothing I could do.
“I went to the cops, but I only knew his first name, so they couldn’t look him up. They told me that until they knew who he was, or until he actually did something, there was nothing they could do.”
My blood was boiling by this point.
I was pretty sure the cops could have figured out who he was. If Maurizio was one of Don Camerota’s men, and he shot off at the mouth as much as Emilia said, he’d probably fucked up somewhere along the way and was on the cops’ radar.
My guess was that whoever took Emilia’s complaint was bought and paid for by the Camerotas.
If this Maurizio fucker was around right now, I would’ve made sure the stronzo never looked at Emilia again.
“Did you tell your father?” I asked angrily. “Or your brothers?”
Emilia smiled sadly. “I lost both my parents during the pandemic.”
“Oh shit,” I said, shocked. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. And I only have an older sister. No brothers.”
“I see…”
She continued her story. “When the cops said they couldn’t do anything, I was terrified. I was certain he knew where I lived. I couldn’t sleep at night. Every noise I heard made me think he was inside the apartment.
“I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I called my sister to see if I could come stay with her, but as soon as she heard why, she said no. She has two little kids and didn’t want me bringing my problems to her doorstep.”
“But you’re family,” I said, incensed that her sister wouldn’t help.
“We were never close. I was an accident; my parents had me a year before my sister moved out of their house. I only saw her during holidays growing up, and even less after my parents died.”
“What about other family? No aunts or uncles?”
“Nobody I felt like I could impose on. So I took everything I could stuff into two suitcases, left one morning at 5 AM when I figured Maurizio wouldn’t be up, and caught a train to Florence.
“On the way, I called my landlord and boss and explained. They were both really nice about it. My landlord knew what I was going through, and she said she wouldn’t keep the deposit. My boss promised to give me any recommendations I needed for a new job.
“Once I got to Florence, I stayed in a hostel for a week. I found a new apartment, got a new job, and everything was going great – ”
“Until another idiot in the mafia started bugging you,” I said, finally understanding everything that had happened between us.
She smiled. “Until a very friendly, very handsome guy started showing up at my shop.”
That made me feel better – at least for a second.
“But after everything I’d been through,” she said, “I hope you can understand why I reacted the way I did.”
“Of course,” I replied. “I am so sorry – I would have never come on that strong if I’d known.”
“But you didn’t know. How could you? Besides, you were very charming.”
“Yeah?” I grinned.
“Yes,” she smiled back… but it faded. “Except… I think he’s found me again.”
I stopped in shock. “What?”