Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
STEVIE
Day twenty-eight, I see his face on the news.
Marchetti Case Dismissed Due to Evidence Handling Error
The headline loads and my brain immediately files a missing persons report for my remaining sanity.
There’s a photo. Dario outside the courthouse. Flanked by lawyers. Wearing a charcoal gray suit that probably costs more than my car. Looking calm and composed and completely unruffled by the minor inconvenience of almost going to prison.
Free.
He walked.
I gave up my name. My hair. My apartment with the kitchen that smelled like butter.
And he walked anyway.
Because someone fucked up the evidence chain and his lawyers were expensive enough to notice.
Oh, fuck no.
He’s out there. Living his life. Eating pasta. Existing in the world like a normal person.
And I’m here entering medical billing codes in blonde hair. A witness protection Barbie who’s lost her dream house and her will to live.
Absolutely not.
Nope.
This is unacceptable.
I’m on my feet before I consciously decide to stand. In the kitchen before I remember walking there. Flour in my hands, butter on the counter, eggs already cracked into the bowl.
My body knows what it’s doing even if my brain is having a full systems failure.
I’m making his cookies.
Peanut butter chocolate chip. The ones I made him before. The ones Enzo delivered with that look on his face like he knew I was insane but respected the hustle.
My hands move on autopilot. The rhythm is familiar, soothing, the only thing keeping me from climbing out of my skin.
He’s free.
And I haven’t seen him in almost a month and his face is already getting fuzzy in my memory and that’s bullshit. I can’t remember the shade of his eyes anymore and that’s…
No.
Absolutely fucking not.
I’m not losing him.
I fold in chocolate chips with more aggression than the recipe requires. The dough looks right. Feels right. Tastes right when I lick the spoon.
He walks free and I’m making him cookies.
This is fine. This is normal. This is exactly what stable people do when they find out their testimony was worthless.
Scoop. Bake. Timer set.
While they’re in the oven, I make the crockpot candy. Peanut butter and chocolate melted together, the kind that takes hours and tastes like obsession.
The kind you make when you want someone to know you were thinking about them at 3 AM while your entire life unraveled.
By the time the cookies are cooling and the candy is setting, it’s 5 AM and I’m staring at two containers of baked goods like they’re going to tell me what the fuck I’m doing.
Does he still go to the restaurant?
He must. It’s Tuesday. Well, it will be Tuesday in two hours. No wait, Wednesday. Shit. What day is it?
I pull out my phone. Check the calendar.
Thursday.
It’s Thursday.
He goes on Tuesdays. I know this. I have data.
Maybe his schedule changed. Maybe he goes every day. Maybe he never goes at all anymore because that restaurant is a crime scene and a bad memory.
Maybe I’m about to drive four and a half hours for nothing.
I should call Saul.
I should absolutely call Saul and tell him I’m having a mental health crisis and need him to talk me down from doing something catastrophically stupid.
I don’t call Saul.
I shower. Dress. Jeans, plain shirt, nothing memorable. Find a hat. Add sunglasses even though the sun isn’t up yet.
There. Disguised. I look like a suburban mom avoiding someone from PTA, not a federal witness about to violate literally every rule of witness protection.
I grab my keys. My phone. The containers of cookies and candy. Stand in my kitchen surrounded by the smell of butter and bad decisions.
This is insane. This is genuinely unhinged behavior.
I’m going anyway.
I get in my car. Set the containers carefully on the passenger seat like they’re precious cargo and not evidence of my complete psychological collapse.
GPS: Carmine’s Restaurant, Fifth Street.
4 hours 32 minutes.
It’s not even Tuesday. It’ll only be lunchtime when I get there. He probably won’t even be there. This is a four-and-a-half-hour drive to stalk a restaurant on the wrong day of the week.
I pull out of the parking lot anyway.
The highway is empty at this hour. Just me and a handful of long-haul truckers who’ve made better life choices.
My brain tries to catch up with what my body already decided.
You’re driving to see Dario.
You’re violating witness protection.
Saul is going to find out.
You’re going to get caught and relocated again and this time you’ll be blonde in Nebraska.
But my hands stay steady on the wheel. My foot stays on the gas.
Because Dario is out there.
And I’m not.
I’m Beth Taylor, entering medical billing codes in a beige apartment, slowly fading into nothing.
And he’s Dario Marchetti, eating pasta and living his life and walking free.
And I just need to see him.
Once.
Just to prove he’s real. That I was real. That the restaurant actually happened and I didn’t hallucinate the moment someone finally looked at me and stayed.
Then I’ll come back.
I’ll be Beth Taylor again.
I’ll enter my codes and drink my good coffee and water my succulent and be fine.
But first, I need to see him.
Even if it’s Thursday.
Even if he’s not there.
Even if this is the worst decision I’ve made since I smiled at him across a restaurant and he smiled back.
The sun comes up somewhere around hour two. I don’t really notice. I’m too busy having a mental breakdown in my rearview mirror.
“This is fine,” I tell my reflection. “This is a perfectly normal thing to do. People drive four and a half hours to deliver cookies to mobsters all the time. It’s a hobby. Like scrapbooking. Or murder.”
My reflection doesn’t look convinced.
She looks like someone who’s about to make a series of choices that will definitely require explaining to a federal marshal with kind eyes and excellent forearms.
“I’ll be back before Saul checks in,” I tell her. “He won’t even know. It’s fine.”
It’s not fine. Nothing about this is fine. But I keep driving.
Mile marker after mile marker. Town after town. Each one taking me further from Beth Taylor and closer to whoever I was before.
I’m almost there when I realize I don’t have a plan.
Like, at all.
I’m just going to... what? Walk into the restaurant? Leave cookies on his table? Wait in the parking lot like a deranged Girl Scout?
“I’ll figure it out. I’m very good at impulsive decisions with no backup plan. It’s my signature move,” I whisper.
I pull off the highway.
Ten more minutes to the restaurant.
I’m sweating in places that don’t even have names in medical textbooks.
I’m really doing this.
I’m really about to stalk a mobster in broad daylight, wearing a disguise that wouldn’t fool a parking meter.
Saul is going to kill me.
Or relocate me.
Or both.
But Dario is somewhere in this city.
And I’m about to find him.