Chapter 14
Allie
The terrace was lovely, but a bit chilly. The view faced west toward the sea. The water was choppy and very few boats braved the rough water. But early almond blooms scented the air, and there were fresh roses in the vases gracing the side tables.
Mario placed me nearest the house, with a slightly obstructed view of the water. I didn’t mind. I was watching him. He was moving much easier today. No flinching, no protective covering of the wound site, except when he sat. That was good.
“No fever?”
He smiled and continued spreading a soft cheese on the bread in his hand. “None. No pain, except when I move certain ways, which you’d correct me for, so I don’t. And the site is…guarded well by your little plastic fortress.”
I shook my head. He was such a tough nut.
But I was cracking him. His smile was easy.
The moments when he’d glance up and his breath caught were my favorite.
And this home? I could live here. It was beautiful.
Rustic, rural enough to have gardens and grapevines, but strategically set into a steeply terraced hillside that must have been dug out centuries ago.
“How old is that city?” I pointed at the collection of houses below us.
He craned his head to look. “I would guess four centuries. It came with the fish.”
“Do you fish?”
He nodded. A small smile of memory lifted one side higher than the other. “We have a boat… I have a boat.”
Ringo. Every once in a while, Mario would slip up and refer to his friend as a part of him. He must be grieving the loss of friendship and worrying. Much like I was worrying about Ellie.
Perhaps thinking of her made me check my phone. Or maybe it was that odd quirk of twins. No matter the distance, sometimes we thought on the same wavelength. My phone lit up with a strange number. I hesitated to answer it at the breakfast table.
Mario however, didn’t mind. He circled his fingers in the air to let me know I should proceed.
“Allie?” My sister’s voice sounded clearer than I would have expected.
“Ellie, where are you?”
“I’m going to ask you the same damn thing. I went to Venice then Milan, and—”
“What happened to your phone?”
“Oh, that. It’s long-ass story. I guess you could say I dropped it in the canal, but more like it got knocked out of my hand and… well, that’s not all of it, but enough.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Your notes helped a little. Ringo helped more. He’s the one who got me this phone.”
“Ringo?” I asked. My eyes shot to Mario.
Suspiciously, he was not shocked by the news. How many men were named Ringo? My guess would be not many. And certainly not enough to overcome the massive odds against my twin sister hooking up with my husband’s… attempted murderer? Best friend?
Oh hell. That wasn’t coincidental at all. “You knew?”
Mario’s eyebrow lifted slightly. Behind him, Loppa studied the landscape, or at least pretended to in order to avoid my sharp glare.
“I knew what?” Ellie asked.
“Where are you now?” And more importantly, was she with him?
“Oh, I’m on this little hiking trail near some coastal town. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s pretty. We boated over from Portofino this morning.”
“We?”
“Ringo and I. Babe, what are you doing?”
The latter half of her conversation must have been directed at Ringo. I quickly covered the end of my phone with my hand to muffle my voice. “She’s with him, Ringo.”
“Who are you talking to, Allie?” Ellie asked.
“My husband.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute, you’re serious? You really married someone you just met? You can’t do that.”
“Why not? How long did you know Johnny Pornstash, a month?”
“It’s Porciello, and I didn’t marry him, so you’ve already slid down that slippery slope of matrimony, my little black teapot twinsie.”
I opened my mouth to bitch her out but got interrupted.
“Would you look at that?”
“What?” I asked Ellie.
“I can see you. You’re on a terrace with a couple of bruisers walking around the edges, and holy shit, is that It’s-a-me-Mar-ee-oh?”
“You can see me?” I stood up and started to walk to the edge, but Mario jumped out of his seat and got in front of me.”
Then the damnedest thing happened. Or should I say, a bunch of damned things happened.
“Ringo, what the hell?” Ellie’s voice rang in my ear as the ceramic pot near my head splintered and the crack of a bullet ricocheted off the pot into the tiled floor at our feet. Mario pushed me down and dragged me under the table.
Loppa and Firenze sprung into motion, Loppa landing on top of Mario, who was on top of me, and Firenze drawing a weapon to shoot at whoever was shooting at us.
I still had the phone in hand, and could hear my sister bitching up a storm at Ringo. “Who in the fuck are you shooting at?”
“He’s shooting at us,” I relayed to Mario. Another volley of shots peppered against the roof. One smacked into the wall near us and a chunk of masonry broke away at high speed. It hit Loppa in the shoulder and a piece of it cut his cheekbone too close to his eyes for me to do anything but scream.
Mario rolled off me, a gun in hand, his eyes trained on the hillside.
Before I could blink, he’d sprinted to the wall, braced a shoulder on it and sent two rapid-fire shots up the slope.
Another shot echoed against the hills and I reached out to Mario, hoping it wasn’t too late to hold him, or touch his skin, or perhaps even simply tell him how damn much he’d begun to mean to me.
But the rifle sound that answered came from almost directly equal with our terrace on the hillside.
“Allie?” Ellie screamed into the phone.
“I’m okay.”
“He shot him. I don’t believe it. He shot him!” My sister was rapidly becoming hysterical.
“Who did he shoot?” Mario and a bleeding Loppa peered over the wall. Firenze had already sprinted off to climb the terraces upward.
“I don’t know, but he shot him.” Ellie was sobbing now.
A man’s voice sounded harsh in my ear. “Is Valentine near you?”
“What?”
“Valentine. Tell him to get his head down.”
I didn’t know what to do, or who this man was. Was it Ringo?
“Allie? Your husband is a sitting fucking duck where he is. Give him the fucking phone right now. Or better yet, tell him this: ‘That’s two.’”
Mario was about to move. “Mario?”
“Cara mia, stay here.”
“No. Ringo says, ‘That’s two.’”
He looked at me strangely. For a heartbeat, I saw someone completely different staring out from my husband’s eyes. This man was cold, calculating, deadly. Definitely not the warm, caring man I’d slept with. A slither of fear tickled my spine right between my shoulder blades.
“Honey? He says you need to get your head down.”
Mario quickly crouched. “Where is he?”
“Where are you?” I could still hear my sister swearing in the background.
“On the south trail coming up from the beach, not the boat landing.”
I relayed that to Mario. He quickly got on his phone to Firenze and directed him to intercept Ringo. Firenze fired something back and an exchange of rapid Italian bounced between them.
Mario directed a question to me, “Ringo is on that call?”
I nodded.
Loppa cried out, “If you don’t kill him now, I will!”
“Quiet.” Mario stared at me and then glanced at the holes in the canopy above us.
“Boss?” Loppa tried again.
Mario ignored him. “Allie? Hold out the phone and put it on speaker, but do not come to me, understand?”
I nodded and stretched my arm to its full length and tried not to shiver too much as the conversation continued between Mario, Firenze, Ringo, and an irate Loppa, who’d crawled closer to me.
Blood trailed from his cheek, and he’d pressed a handkerchief to it, but his shoulder was also bleeding. I snatched one of the cloth napkins from the table and pressed it against that wound.
Eventually, Mario crawled to me and took the phone from my hand so I could tend to Loppa without impediment. Both wounds were superficial. The shoulder took the brunt of the force, but bled less thanks to the heavy coat he’d worn. His cheek only needed a couple of butterfly bandages.
However, he had difficulty raising his arm. I suggested he should get it examined, but he ignored me as Firenze escorted Ringo and my sister to Mario’s doorstep.
Ellie looked shell-shocked. Her skin was too pale even though she’d stopped screaming for now. In fact, she was uncharacteristically quiet.
We’d moved inside, with Firenze calling for reinforcements and more guards to sweep the slope. I handed Ellie a glass of orange juice I’d salvaged from the terrace, against orders, but she needed the sugar. Then I wrapped a blanket around her.
“Why are you covered in blood?” Her voice wobbled, but luckily she stayed conscious.
I looked down. This morning’s pretty ivory and rose dress was ruined. I’d skinned a knee, and Loppa’s blood had stained the bodice. “It’s Loppa’s.” I swept a coat off a nearby chair to cover it so she wouldn’t pass out.
“The big guy with no neck?” she clarified.
“He’s a teddy bear.”
“I am not.” Loppa passed through the house carrying a long rifle.
“Where are they getting these guns? Italy is really strict about it.”
I glanced at my sister. Her color was finally returning. Also, her characteristic chattiness was slowly resurfacing. “How do you know about their gun laws?”
“Pornstash.”
“I can’t believe you’re calling him that.”
Her cheek flinched slightly. “You were right.”
As much as I used to relish that sentence falling from her lips, I had a feeling I’d been very wrong lately. Ellie’s comment about guns was only one reason.
“Johnny’s a bad guy.” Although she was recovering, her blank stare betrayed her state of shock.
The hustle of men carrying guns in and out of the house was the only noise for a long time.
Unspoken was a judgment on the men surrounding us. Instead, she finally started with “So… you’re married?”
“I should have waited, right? Maybe get your lawyer to check him out?” I braced for her ‘What were you thinking’ tirade.
But it didn’t come.
Ellie stared out the window. Through it, I could see the profile of the man she’d been with.
He was that same good-looking rogue who’d vowed to kill Mario for stealing my ride share.
Yet, I knew those bullets bouncing off the patio came from the slope above, not the paths from the ocean.
But I had to be sure. “You hiked up the hill?”
“Oh my fucking God, yes. That was a killer. You were right about the tourist shoes, too. Damn you.”
“How far up the slope were you?”
“It felt like miles, but probably only halfway up. My thighs are killing me. How did you get in this mess, Allie?”
“I got married.”
Ellie’s face soured. “That’s not like you at all.”
No, it wasn’t. Nothing had been like me since walking into that wedding chapel.
“Mom and Dad were watching the live feed,” I mused.
Ellie bit her lip. She did that when she didn’t want to admit she was at fault for something.
“They would have loved your wedding to that…man. Probably not the divorce, but…”
“Are you going to divorce him?” Her eyes nudged toward the slope where Mario and his men hunted down whoever had been shooting at us.
That was a good question. I should. I should run for the hills, tuck tail, and fly home. I should do a lot of things. But mainly, I didn’t want to. Call me foolish, or just plain brainwashed, but I liked the people around Mario.
Well, maybe not his father, or that witch, Dianora, or her cousin.
And definitely not whoever was shooting at him.
And the jury was still a month or more out on Ringo because he’d hurt his best friend.
But overall, these people were… intense, protective, warm, humble…
I smiled. They were a family. I wanted that.
Probably since Mom and Dad fled to Arizona.
But I should divorce him. It would be the smart thing to do. Mario was a very dangerous man.
My sister asked the most important question of all. One I’d carefully avoided. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
Yes. I was.