Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
STEVIE
I’ve never tailed someone before.
In hindsight, I should’ve done some light training. Watched a CIA recruitment video. Read Stalking for Dummies. Subscribed to a mob wife’s burner TikTok.
Too late now.
Dario’s black car pulls out of the parking lot and I follow at what I think is a reasonable distance. Far enough to not be obvious. Close enough to not lose him.
Except I have no idea what a reasonable distance actually is.
Am I too close? I feel too close. He’s going to look in his rearview mirror and see me and know immediately that the unhinged cookie woman is following him home like a stray cat who’s decided he’s her new owner.
I drop back. Way back. Too far back.
The light ahead turns yellow.
His car slips through like a smug criminal with diplomatic immunity. Mine hits red like divine punishment for unmedicated impulsivity.
“No no no no.”
I slam on the brakes. And watch his car disappear around a corner while I sit at a red light having a small cardiac event.
This is fine. I’ll find him. How many black cars can there be in this city?
The answer, it turns out, is many. So many. An unreasonable number of black cars, all of which look exactly the same, none of which contain the mobster I’m trying to stalk.
The light turns green. I gun it through the intersection, take the corner too fast, and, there…
His car. Two blocks ahead. Thank God.
I ease up on the gas. Try to look casual. Just a normal woman driving normally through a neighborhood she’s never been to, definitely not following anyone, nothing to see here.
We drive for fifteen minutes.
The neighborhood gets progressively nicer as we go. Smaller houses give way to bigger ones. Chain-link fences become wrought iron. The cars parked on the street go from functional to costs more than my yearly salary.
I’m extremely out of place here.
My car is a twelve-year-old sedan with a dent in the passenger door and an air freshener shaped like a tree that stopped smelling like anything two weeks ago.
Dario’s car turns into a driveway.
I slow down. Creep past. Watch in my rearview mirror as he parks in front of a house that is... nice.
Really nice.
Not a mansion, I don’t know what I expected, maybe something with columns and a fountain and hired goons patrolling the perimeter, but definitely the kind of house that says I have money and taste and probably a wine collection.
Two stories. Brick. Well-maintained lawn. Landscaping with actual flowers that someone actually takes care of.
I wonder what his bedroom looks like. Second floor, probably. That window with the curtains. Does he sleep in pajamas or nothing? Does he bring women here?
Stop it. You’re having a breakdown, not planning interior decorating.
He gets out of his car. Carries the containers inside.
My containers.
My cookies are going into his house. My little sugar-coded love confession. My flour-dusted war crime.
I circle the block because I don’t know what else to do. Come back around. Park down the street under a tree that offers exactly zero cover but the illusion of moral superiority. Like the branches are gonna vouch for me in court.
This is his home.
Dario Marchetti lives here.
I stare at the house like it’s going to reveal his secrets.
What his life looks like. Whether he’s happy.
Whether he eats my cookies standing at his kitchen counter or sitting at a table like a civilized person.
Whether he thinks about me at all, ever, or if I’m just a weird footnote in the story of his trial.
The witness who sent me cookies twice. Came under oath. Strange girl. Anyway.
I should leave.
This is insane. This is stalking. This is exactly the kind of behavior that got my old high school friend Delilah a restraining order and court-mandated therapy.
I wonder if she ever found someone who appreciated her particular brand of devotion.
I’m becoming Delilah. I’m sitting outside a man’s house memorizing the color of his front door, dark blue, almost navy, and the type of tree in his front yard, oak, I think, and the pattern of the bricks on his walkway like any of this information matters.
Dark blue door. Like Saul’s pillows. Why am I collecting men who come in shades of blue? Is that my type now? Emotionally unavailable and color-coordinated?
But I can’t make myself start the car.
I just sit here. Engine off. Windows up. Watching his house like something might happen if I wait long enough.
Maybe he’ll come outside. Maybe he’ll eat a cookie on his porch and I’ll see his face when he tastes it. Maybe he’ll look down the street and somehow know I’m here, and he’ll walk toward my car, and he’ll tap on the window, and he’ll say, what?
What would he even say?
“Hi, I’ve been waiting. Did you bring cookies again?”
And then I’ll explode like a can of Pillsbury dough and ascend directly to horny stalker heaven.
Or, he’ll say, “Hi, I see you followed me home. That’s not creepy at all. Want to come inside and explain why you keep leaving me baked goods?”
Actually, yes. Yes, I would like that very much.
My uterus is writing fanfiction in real-time.
Chapter one: Dario opens the door shirtless.
Chapter two: I stop being able to form sentences.
Chapter three: [REDACTED FOR CONTENT].
But that’s not going to happen.
Because we exist in completely different universes that only overlap when I do something criminally stupid.
I should really, really go.
I’m reaching for the ignition when a curtain moves in the upstairs window.
My whole body freezes.
Someone’s there. Looking out. A shadow behind the fabric, the shape of a person.
Is it him? Can he see me?
Oh God oh fuck oh no.
This is how I die. Not from witness protection violation. Not from Saul’s disappointment. From being spotted by a mobster while cosplaying as a deranged real estate agent.
I start the car. Too fast. The engine revs louder than it should because I’ve slammed my foot on the gas.
Subtle, Stevie. Very subtle. Nothing says “I’m not stalking you” like peeling away from the curb like you’re fleeing a crime scene.
Because I am. I am fleeing a crime scene.
The crime is me. I’m the crime.
Book me under aggravated yearning and throw away the key.
I drive three blocks before I pull over.
What am I doing?
I violated witness protection. Drove four and a half hours. Left him cookies. Stole his pen. Followed him home. Sat outside his house memorizing his landscaping like a deranged real estate appraiser.
And now someone, maybe him, probably him, saw me.
Or saw my car. Or saw something.
I press my forehead against the steering wheel.
This is insane. This is dangerous.
This is the most alive I’ve felt since I became Beth Taylor.
The drive home feels longer.
The adrenaline that carried me through the restaurant, through tailing his car like an unhinged amateur detective, is gone now. Burned off somewhere around hour two.
What’s left is exhaustion and a creeping sense of what the fuck did I just do.
I could have been caught. By him. By someone who works for him. By law enforcement who would report back to Saul.
Saul. God. If he knew what I did today, he’d…
I don’t know what he’d do. Be disappointed, probably. That quiet, steady disappointment that’s worse than anger because it means he expected better from you.
He brought me pillows. Curtains. A plant that’s supposed to be impossible to kill.
And I repaid him by driving four hundred miles to stalk the man he’s supposed to be protecting me from.
Great job, Stevie. Really excellent life choices all around.
I pull into my apartment complex as the sun is setting. Drag myself upstairs on legs that feel like they belong to someone else. Unlock the door.
The beige hits like a body check. A reminder that no matter how far I drove, I still live in a room the color of despair and unseasoned chicken.
I drop my purse on the counter. Kick off my shoes. Stand in the middle of the living room trying to remember how to be a person who lives here.
I need to do something. Anything. Need to move, to bake, to channel whatever is happening inside me into something productive before I vibrate out of my own skin.
I head to the kitchen. Pull out mixing bowls.
Reach for the flour.
The container is empty.
“Fuck.”
I slump against the counter. Close my eyes.
Of course I’m out of flour. Of course the one coping mechanism I have is unavailable at the exact moment I need it most.
The universe has a sick sense of humor.
I’ll unpack my purse. Put things away. Be organized, responsible, the kind of person who doesn’t drive across state lines to commit light stalking.
I dump the contents onto the counter.
Wallet. Keys. Sunglasses. Chapstick. Hair tie. Receipt from the restaurant. $47.83 for emotional pasta and a side of delusion. Five stars, would commit another felony.
And a pen.
Black. Heavy. The kind of pen someone buys because they use it every day, not the cheap ones you grab in bulk from office supply stores.
I pick it up slowly.
There’s a small engraving near the clip. Letters I didn’t notice before, couldn’t have noticed in the chaos of the restaurant.
D.M.
Dario Marchetti.
Oh no. Oh shit.
It’s not just any pen. His personal, engraved pen.
Physical evidence that I was there. At his table. Touching his things.
I should throw it away. Should drive to a dumpster three towns over and dispose of it like the incriminating evidence it is.
Instead, I run my thumb over the engraving.
D.M.
His initials under my fingers. Cool metal warming against my skin.
This is insane. I’m insane.
I just committed multiple felonies against a man who could have me killed with a phone call. And now I’m standing in my kitchen holding his pen like it’s a love letter. Like it means something. Like keeping it is anything other than deeply, profoundly deranged.
I set it carefully on the counter.
Evidence that for one day, I wasn’t Beth Taylor.
I stare at the pen for a long time.
D.M.
And I know, with the bone-deep certainty of someone who has completely lost control of her own life, that I’m going back.
Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon.
Because Dario smiled when he read my note. Because someone in that house looked out the window, maybe hoping to see me. Because I have his pen now, and that feels like the beginning of something instead of the end.
I pick it up again. Hold it against my chest.
D.M.
I wonder if he’s noticed it’s missing yet. If he’s looking for it. If he knows I have it.
I sleep with it on my nightstand. Right next to the lamp. Right where I’ll see it every morning when I wake up.
I turn off the lamp.
In the dark, I reach out and touch the pen one more time.
Cool metal. Solid weight. Evidence that I was there. That I existed. That someone saw me.