Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
STEVIE
The GPS chirps:
You have arrived at your destination.
No I haven’t.
I’ve arrived at the moment my life jumps the tracks and explodes in a blaze of Tupperware, emotional instability, and felony intent. Destination? Federal prison or Dario’s mouth. Unclear which would be more dangerous.
I park across the street from Carmine’s and stare at the restaurant through my windshield.
Same brick facade. Same green awning. Same restaurant where I watched a man bleed out on the floor while Dario Marchetti stood over him adjusting his cuffs.
Cool. Great. Love that for me.
The Tupperware on my passenger seat radiates judgment.
I shove the containers into my purse and check my reflection in the rearview mirror.
Blonde hair tucked under a hat. Sunglasses. The general appearance of someone who is either avoiding an ex or planning a crime. Both accurate, honestly.
“Okay,” I tell my reflection. “You’re just going to go in there. Eat some food. See if he shows up. If he doesn’t, you leave. If he does, you... figure it out.”
I get out of the car.
The smell hits me the second I walk through the door.
Garlic. Tomato sauce. Fresh bread.
My body panics. My stomach votes for pasta.
A hostess appears, menus in hand, smile bright and professional. “Just one?”
Just one. Just me. Just a dangerously undercaffeinated disaster who drove four and a half hours to maybe-maybe-not see a man she legally shouldn’t be anywhere near.
“Yes, please.”
She leads me to a back table with a clear sightline of the entire restaurant. Perfect.
Ideal for passive stalking.
I casually scan the room for one very specific Italian man in a very specific suit while pretending to read the menu like it doesn’t just say ‘Pasta’ a hundred different ways.
I’m subtle. I’m casual.
I’m the human equivalent of a red blinking light.
I order water and the chicken parm because apparently I’m on a nostalgia-fueled reenactment tour of my worst moments.
The server leaves and I’m alone with my racing heart and the aggressive normalcy of a Tuesday lunch rush.
No sign of Dario.
I check my phone. Check the door. Check my phone again.
Maybe I should just leave the containers with the hostess like a normal person dropping off a gift and not a federal witness violating approximately seventeen laws.
Hi, can you give these to Dario Marchetti? Tell him they’re from the woman he definitely remembers, the one who pointed at him in court and said his name like it was a death sentence. She made him cookies. Again. Because she’s not weird at all.
Yeah. That’ll go great.
The door opens.
My nervous system flatlines.
There he is.
Dario Marchetti.
In the flesh. In a suit. In my direct line of sight and my body reacts like I’ve been shocked with a defibrillator.
My pussy wakes up, stretches, and says ‘oh there you are.’
He moves through the restaurant like he owns it.
He probably does own it.
Oh God, he probably owns it.
I’m stalking a man in his own restaurant. That’s a new low. That’s a low I didn’t even know existed until right now.
My heart forgets its job, stops, then slams back to life and tries to climb out of my throat.
He’s real. He’s here.
He exists outside my memory and the grainy news photo I stared at for an embarrassing amount of time last night.
And God, God, he’s even more beautiful than I remembered. How is that possible? Is that allowed? Is it legal to get hotter post-indictment?
How does one man violate this many laws and basic laws of attraction?
My body reacts like he’s magnetic and I’m just a dumb, desperate paperclip.
He heads toward a table in the middle of the restaurant.
And sits.
At that table.
Of course.
The Scene-of-the-Crime Table.
The one where he committed the egregious sin of eating pasta so beautifully I forgot how to breathe.
Of course it’s his table. Of course he has a table. He’s a mobster. Mobsters have tables. I’ve seen movies.
A server appears instantly, not my server, a different one, one who clearly knows him, and sets down water without being asked. Dario says something that makes the server smile. Comfortable. Easy.
This is his domain. He belongs here. Like the espresso machine or the overpriced balsamic.
And me? I’m in the corner seat, dressed like suburban espionage Barbie with a purse full of smuggled snacks and a stress rash blooming under my bra.
Cool. This is going well.
I should look away.
I should pretend to give a shit about my lukewarm chicken parm. Act like a woman who isn’t conducting a full psychological analysis based on the way he twirls linguine.
But I can’t.
To be fair he’s made me come with eye contact and a twitch of his lips. Not even a real smile.
My pussy remembers in inconvenient detail.
And here I am. Watching him eat. Again.
His hands. Jesus Christ, his hands. I forgot how big they are. The way his fingers wrap around the fork, controlled and precise.
I’m watching him eat and remembering those hands on my arm. Wondering how they’d feel wrapped around my throat. My hips.
His mouth. The way his lips close around the fork.
He’s right there. Twenty feet away. And I can’t breathe.
One look at Dario and I remember what I actually want. What I’ve always wanted.
To be seen by someone dangerous
He’s eating lunch in his own restaurant, making notes on papers that probably involve money laundering or racketeering or whatever it is crime families actually do. He’s free and healthy and completely unaffected by the testimony that cost me everything.
He’s okay.
That’s all I needed. Just to see it. Just to know the chocolates weren’t a lie, that the note meant what it said, that I didn’t destroy him.
Dario Marchetti is alive and well and eating with mechanical precision. I can go back to my beige apartment and my beige life and…
He looks up.
Not at me. At the server approaching his table.
But for a second, just a second, his gaze sweeps the room.
And I feel it like a physical touch. Like electricity. Like every nerve in my body lighting up at once.
He doesn’t see me. I’m in the back corner, hat on, sunglasses pushed up on my head now because wearing sunglasses indoors is suspicious and I’m trying to be not suspicious.
I’m failing at not suspicious.
But he doesn’t see me. And that’s worse.
He finishes his lunch. Checks his phone. Makes one more note on his papers. Drains the last of his espresso.
Then he stands. Heads toward the back of the restaurant. Bathrooms, maybe. Or kitchen. Secret mafia portal?
I don’t know. I just know this is my shot.
My moment.
To do... what, exactly?
Leave cookies on his table like a deranged tooth fairy? Write a note on a napkin like a teenager passing messages in class? This isn’t a plan, this is a mental breakdown.
I should go. Back to Saul’s gentle check-ins and coffee recommendations. Back to the man who only knows the faded version of me. And can’t ever be more because his job says so.
But Dario is right there.
And he knew me at full brightness. Unhinged and obsessive.
I can’t go back without doing something.
I grab my purse, which clanks audibly because it’s full of fucking Tupperware, and stand up too fast. My chair scrapes against the floor. The businessman next to me gives me a look like, ma’am, are you okay?
No, sir. No I am not.
But I walk. Cool. Calm. Just a woman going about her absolutely not suspicious business.
I glide, read: stumble, toward his table, hands trembling, sweat blooming in unmentionable places.
His table’s empty. Papers stacked neatly. Pen sitting beside them. Water glass half-full.
I fumble the containers out of my purse. Nearly drop one. Catch it. Set them down next to his papers with all the grace of a feral Girl Scout mid-manic episode.
Okay. Payload deployed. Mission nearly complete.
Except he has no idea they’re from me.
As it stands, it’s just: Unlabeled baked goods, do not eat unless you want to die.
Which is fair. But I need him to know it’s me.
His weirdo.
I grab his pen, sleek, black, sinister in that ‘I close million-dollar deals and maybe order hits’ kind of way.
Rip a napkin from the dispenser.
My hand is shaking so hard I can barely write. The letters come out jagged, desperate, like a ransom note from someone having a medical emergency.
You said you’d be okay. Are you? - S
I shove the napkin under the lid of the cookie container.
And then I realize I’m still holding his pen.
His expensive pen.
Put it back. Put the pen back. You cannot steal a pen from Dario Marchetti. That’s not romantic, that’s larceny. That’s the kind of thing that ends up in your FBI file under “additional evidence of instability.”
I hear footsteps coming from the back. I shove the pen in my purse.
I just stole a pen from a mobster.
I’m going to get whacked over a Montblanc.
My obituary will read: Died as she lived, making terrible decisions over office supplies.
I pivot hard, and speed-walk toward the exit like I’ve just remembered a dentist appointment in another state.
My hip clips a chair.
It skitters across the tile, loud enough to startle the dead.
Every head turns.
Yup. Just me. Definitely not doing anything weird.
The hostess looks up as I pass, her smile flickering with confusion. “Everything okay?”
“Fine! Great! Just need to pay!”
My voice is approximately three octaves too high.
She directs me to the register. I pull out cash. Hand over way too much because I can’t do math right now, I can’t do anything right now except try not to have a full panic attack in front of the decorative olive oil display.
“Keep the change,” I say, already moving toward the door.
“Ma’am, this is…”
“Thank you have a nice day!”
It comes out as one word. One long, desperate word that I’m shouting over my shoulder as I shove through the door into the afternoon sun.
I don’t run to my car.
But only because running would be suspicious.
I speed-walk. Aggressively. The kind of speed-walking that says I have somewhere to be and that somewhere is far away from the crime I just committed.
I slide into the driver’s seat. Lock the doors. Grip the steering wheel.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
What did I just do? What the fuck did I just do?
I left baked goods and an emotional napkin for a literal mobster.
And then I casually boosted his $200 pen like I was in a rom-com directed by the FBI.
I’m a federal witness who just committed a felony. Is pen theft a felony? It felt like a felony, against the man I’m supposed to be hiding from.
This is it. This is rock bottom. There is no lower place to go.
I pull out the pen.
It’s heavy. Serious. The kind of pen that says I close murder deals before lunch.
I stare at it like it’s cursed. Then gently return it to the padded cell that is my purse, where it belongs with all the other crimes I’m pretending didn’t happen.
I’m about to start the car when the restaurant door opens.
Dario steps out.
My lungs forget how to be lungs.
He’s holding one of the containers. Looking around the parking lot. Scanning faces, cars, searching.
Looking for me.
He’s looking for me.
I slouch down in my seat. Hat pulled low. Sunglasses on even though I’m in a car and that’s exactly the kind of thing suspicious people do.
He stands there for a long moment. The container in his hands. His expression unreadable from this distance, but I’m translating, suddenly fluent in “Mobster Who Just Got Surprise Cookies From His Former Snitch.”
Then he opens it.
Even from across the street, I can see the moment recognition hits.
The cookies. The specific cookies. The same ones I sent him through Enzo, the ones I made at 2 AM while crying, the ones that taste like apology and obsession and something I don’t want to think about.
He pulls out the napkin, reads it, and smiles.
Not in a smug, ‘I knew she’d crack’ way. Not even in a ‘this chick is unwell’ way.
It’s soft. It’s fond. It’s doing things to my internal organs that should require medical intervention.
Saul would be so disappointed in me.
Saul would use his kind, steady voice and say something about safety and making good choices.
Saul isn’t here.
And Dario is smiling like I’m exactly the kind of chaos he’s been missing.
He looks around again. Slower this time. More careful.
He’s looking for me. He wants to find me.
I hold my breath. Press myself back against the seat. Try to become one with the upholstery.
His gaze sweeps past my car.
Doesn’t stop. Doesn’t register me as anything worth noticing.
Good.
Bad.
I don’t know which.
A traitorous part of me wants him to spot me. To walk over like we’re in a noir film and say, “I knew you’d come back.”
And I’d melt. Or combust. Or spontaneously turn into steam.
But he doesn’t.
Because this isn’t a movie. It’s my life. And I fucked it up.
He looks at the cookies one more time. That small smile still playing at his mouth.
And he goes back inside.
I sit in the car like I’ve just survived a near-death experience.
Which I have. Emotional death counts.
And yet, he smiled.
At my note. My cookies. Me.
Like he missed me too. Like maybe I’m not the only idiot who remembers fifteen minutes of shared space like it was a lifetime.
The door opens again. Dario comes out. Gets into a black car parked near the entrance.
He’s leaving.
I should go back to the apartment with the blue pillows and the succulent and the blackout curtains.
But Dario just smiled at my cookies.
And I’m not Beth Taylor.
I never was.
I start the car.
And when he drives off like nothing’s changed, I follow like everything has.