Chapter 99
Giorgio
Highway in Tuscany
We’d been on the road for nearly thirty minutes without a word from Emilia. I finally got sick of it and asked, “Are we going to talk about this?”
“What is there to talk about?” she answered coldly.
That pissed me off.
“How about why you’re acting like this?”
She leaned her head back against the seat and gave a short, ugly laugh, like she couldn’t believe what I’d said.
“Let’s see: I watched the building I work in get torched today… I heard you go in and shoot a bunch of people – ”
“It was two,” I snapped, “and I saved Lucia and Bianca’s lives.”
Emilia talked over me. “ – and I came out and saw you’d beat the shit out of another guy – ”
“A BAD guy – ”
“ – and then your mafia boss makes me get in a car and takes me to a warehouse where I see you all covered in blood – ”
Okay, I didn’t exactly have a comeback to that one.
“ – and then your boss takes me out to his mafia family’s palace in the middle of nowhere, where you pretty much tell me I can’t go home – ”
“Looks to me like I’m taking you home,” I said, my voice louder than it should’ve been.
“ – so you tell ME, Giorgio: do you understand why I’m acting like this?” she yelled.
I just fumed as I stared out at the road.
I waited a moment to cool down…
Then said, “Okay, I’ll admit, it wasn’t the best day – ”
“It wasn’t the best day?! IT WASN’T THE BEST DAY?!”
“What do you want me to say?! Yes, it sucked! Yes, I’m sorry you had to see that shit! YES, I’m sorry you got pulled into this! YES, I understand why you’re upset!”
Emilia sat there with her arms crossed over her chest.
When I glanced over, she wasn’t angry anymore –
She looked really upset, with tears trickling down her cheeks.
“Aw, come on, babe,” I said, feeling horrible. “Don’t cry.”
She sniffled and wiped her tears away.
“Look, I know things went all to hell,” I said, “but this was the worst thing that’s happened in…”
I couldn’t bring myself to lie.
“…in a really long time,” I finished lamely.
She looked at me in disbelief. “Are you saying this isn’t the worst day you’ve ever had working for them?”
I flashed back to Lorenzo, bleeding out on the ground on San Michele Island.
I saw Lazaro reeling from Adriano’s gunshot to the back of his head, then falling into the grave I’d just dug for him.
I remembered the firefight in the restaurant the night Mezzasalma’s men kidnapped Bianca.
“…one of the worst,” I muttered.
“What about when you got shot?” she snapped. “Was that the worst?”
“Yes,” I said nastily, “that was the worst.”
She turned and stared out the window again.
There was a long silence…
And then she whispered, “I can’t do this.”
My heart stopped in my chest.
“Can’t do what?” I asked.
“This,” she said, gesturing to me and her.
“You mean – be together?”
“YES.”
I drove for what seemed like an eternity in silence.
Then I said quietly, “I’ve been daydreaming a lot lately about asking you to marry me.”
She turned and looked at me in shock. “…what?!”
“I said, I’ve been daydreaming a lot lately – ”
“I heard what you said. What the hell are you thinking?!”
“I love you, Em. I love you more than any other woman I’ve ever been with. Way more. I never even knew what love was until I met you. You’re my favorite person in the world – my favorite person I’ve ever known in my entire life. I can’t imagine living without you.”
She started crying again, and wiped at her tears with her hands.
“Don’t you feel even a little bit the same way about me?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said, sobbing. “Yes – that’s why this is so horrible!”
“Because of what I do?”
“Because of who you work for, Giorgio!”
“But you met them, Emilia. They’re good people. I know you can see that.”
“They seem like good people, yeah, but the things they do – the things that happen to them – normal people don’t have strange men show up and burn their shops down!”
I almost said, In my line of work they do, but I stopped myself.
Instead I went with, “You talked to Don Rosolini’s wife, right? She’s a good person.”
“I know she’s a good person, because she was the one who told me I had to make the right decision for me.”
I nearly did a double-take.
HUH?!
Emilia kept talking. “And getting married to a mobster is not the right decision for – ”
“Wait – what did Don Rosolini’s wife tell you?!”
“She said she married her husband for love, and she thought she could learn to live with him being in the mafia, but it only worked because she ignored it. And then things started happening over and over where she couldn’t ignore it.
And now she’s scared to death that something horrible’s going to happen to her.
I can’t live like that, Giorgio! I was afraid the entire time Maurizio was stalking me – I can’t go back to that! ”
I was still reeling from what Alessandra had said to Emilia –
But I got back in the fight as soon as I heard Maurizio’s name.
“And I took care of him for you,” I said. “Me. I’m the one who made it so you didn’t have to be afraid anymore.”
“You made it so I didn’t have to be afraid of him, yes – but what about guys burning up the building I’m in? What about people showing up trying to kill you?!”
“…it’s not like that,” I said lamely, because I knew it was exactly like that.
“Say we did get married. Say we had kids. I’m supposed to worry every day when you walk out the door if you’re going to come back?”
“Of course I’d come back – ”
“Not if you’re dead. Not if somebody shoots you.”
I winced and tried to argue my way out. “Soldiers’ wives are in the exact same situation. Cops’ wives, firemen’s wives – ”
“But you’re not a cop or a fireman,” she snapped.
“I’m a soldier,” I said, and I meant it.
“For the wrong people.”
“They’re my family.”
Emilia gave a single laugh of shock and disbelief. “They’re not your family! I MET your family! Your REAL family!”
“The Rosolinis are just as much my real family as my brothers and sisters,” I said coldly.
Emilia laughed bitterly. “Would you say that if they weren’t paying you?”
“Yes. I would.”
“Would you stay if they weren’t paying you?”
I remembered so many things in that moment:
Lorenzo dying in the gravel.
Lars in the speed boat with us, firing the rocket launcher at the Russians.
Adriano diving in front of the church on San Michele, willing to take a bullet if that meant he could draw the sniper’s fire.
Massimo roaring like a madman and fighting his way into the bell tower so he could rescue Lucia.
“We fought side by side,” I said angrily. “We bled together.”
Emilia grabbed my arm. Now her voice was pleading.
“I’m not saying you didn’t. I know it means a lot to you – that it’s really important.
But eventually, people stop being soldiers.
They retire. They leave. If you really want to marry me, then quit your job.
Let’s go somewhere and build a life together.
We can get that quiet place out in the country and start a family. ”
It sounded beautiful.
And I wanted it. Desperately.
There was just one problem.
“You don’t just get to walk away from the sort of thing I do,” I muttered.
“Then they’re not really your family, are they?” she asked sadly. “Not if they won’t let you leave.”
“I don’t want to leave, Emilia,” I said angrily. “And you shouldn’t be asking me to.”
“I’m not asking you to leave them. I’m saying – ”
“You’re saying, ‘It’s me or them.’ That’s what you’re doing.”
Silent tears rolled down her cheeks. “You can’t ask me to marry you, Giorgio, and have children with you, when I’m afraid of the people you work for.”
“They would never hurt you!”
“The fact that you even have to say that – the fact that we even have to have this conversation – is proof of everything I’m afraid about.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nobody in a normal job gets killed by their employers if they decide to quit.”
“They wouldn’t kill me!” I shouted angrily.
“You just said, ‘You don’t get to walk away from the sort of thing I do!’”
“Yeah, but they wouldn’t kill me!”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Yes!”
“You’re absolutely positive?”
“YES!”
“Then quit your job,” she begged me, “and let’s go start a new life somewhere else. We can stay with your family – ”
“I left my family for a reason,” I snapped.
“Then it’ll just be you and me. A little place out in the middle of nowhere.”
“What the hell will we do for money?” I griped.
“I don’t know – we could start our own coffee shop – open a bed and breakfast – ”
I scoffed. “You want me to help you run a bed and breakfast?”
“I don’t care what we do for money!” she cried out. “Don’t you get it?! That’s the whole problem!”
“What, money?”
“No, what you do for money!”
“I’m sorry you hate what I do so much,” I said bitterly.
“I don’t hate it – I’m terrified of it! And if I have to share you with them for the rest of my life – ”
She faltered, and all the fight seemed to go out of her.
Her shoulders sagged, and she whispered, “…I can’t do it.”
“Well, I’m not leaving the people who trusted me – who bled with me – just because you’re scared.”
“…okay,” she said quietly.
“What do you mean, ‘okay’?”
“You have to decide what’s more important to you – me or them. And it sounds like you’ve already decided.”
I sat there, stunned.
We had reached the outskirts of Florence –
And I was terrified of what would happen when we got to her place.
“So, what… we’re through?” I asked in disbelief.
“I didn’t say that,” she said dully.
“But if you won’t marry me if I stay with them, and if I won’t leave them – then this is it.”
She stared out at the road ahead of us. “…I guess it is.”
“Jesus.” I shook my head. “And to think, just this morning I was so happy we might get married someday – ”
“We still can,” she said, desperation in her voice.
“Yeah, if I change everything about me.”
“Not about you. All I need is for you to quit a job. That’s it.”
“And I’m not going to,” I said. “I can’t.”
She started to cry.
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.
“Please stop and let me out,” she said between sobs.
“Em, we’re nowhere near your apartment – ”
“Giorgio, please stop and let me out.”
There were shops on the street around us. It wasn’t unsafe –
And yet, all I could think about was the face of Cesare Caproni in that mugshot on the TV.
“Emilia – ”
“GIORGIO, PLEASE STOP AND LET ME OUT!” she cried, her voice panicked.
I knew her fear wasn’t about me.
It was about Maurizio…
And the Rosolinis…
But I realized, if I didn’t let her go, then her fear really was about me.
I pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car.
“Thank you,” she said as she wiped away her tears.
“Emilia,” I said, my heart breaking, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
“Please don’t go. I would do anything for you – ”
“Except the one thing I’m asking for,” she said, her voice miserable. “The one thing I need.”
Tears blurred my eyes.
She leaned over and kissed my cheek.
“Goodbye,” she whispered –
And then she got out of the car, closed the door –
And was gone.