Chapter 7
It was already dark by the time I made it home. At the dining room table, Piglet was typing on his laptop and drinking a milkshake, while Cora scribbled poetry in her notebook swinging in the hammock. Hugo came out, carrying two cookbooks under his arm:
“What happened?”
I opened a bottle of whiskey and helped myself to a generous pour.
There was no point in hiding anything from them.
They were my friends, after all. Even though my relationship with Hugo was rocky, I knew that behind that cold, egotistical facade there was still that fragile version of him in there, someone I could trust. I sat on the floor, leaning against the window, and recounted in detail my chaotic day: my meeting with Arthur, the pork tenderloin for lunch, stealing Umberto’s phone, and my message to Virgínia, the mystery woman.
The three of them listened attentively, respecting my occasional pauses to sip whiskey or suck on an ice cube.
When I’d finished, Piglet got up, slurping at the last drops from his empty milkshake cup.
He tossed it in the trash and let out a burp.
“I think you’ve been tricked, Dante,” he said.
“What?”
“The phone on the table, the woman at the Fasano, I think it was all an act…” Piglet continued. He took a glass and filled it with whiskey, no ice. “Some friends called me earlier. They’ve been helping me dig for Vladimir. It’s nearly impossible not to leave any digital records nowadays.”
“And what did they say?”
“Nobody found a thing, not a single thing on him.”
“Okay, so?”
“So either this guy really knows how to hide or Umberto’s tricking us,” Piglet said with a smirk, sipping his whiskey. “It’s a lie, a story that weird old man made up. Vladimir doesn’t exist.”