Chapter 10 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
I can’t stop Meggie from coming with me, but I don’t want her to see me like this.
My jaw is clenched so tightly I could grind my back teeth to dust. Someone’s head will roll for this, and first in line will be Ric.
I pay him to protect me and the people I care about; I don’t pay him to look away for a moment and lose a vulnerable five-year-old in the middle of a city teeming with people, some of whom won’t have a child’s best interests at heart.
“Where did you last see her?”
We meet Ric outside the hotel on the busy sidewalk. Pedestrians sidestep around us. A man in a cheap gray suit growls something under his breath, too fucking cowardly to say it to my face, and dashes across the road when he sees the rage in my eyes.
“She was right next to me.” He points to the other side of the street.
To be fair, he looks like a man facing execution on Death Row, his skin pallid, dark eyes darting all over the place, but I don’t have time for sympathy.
“What the fuck were you doing out here? Where the fuck is the rest of the team?”
I scan the busy street, daring someone to ask me to move. A young lad crosses the road in front of the slow-moving traffic, and a yellow cab’s horn blasts the air in his wake. Too many sounds. Too many fucking people. Amber will be terrified.
“They’re looking for her.” Ric drags his hand across his stubble.
“Ric.” Meggie steps between us. “Show me exactly where you were the last time you saw her.”
Ric grabs her hand and guides her along the sidewalk, away from my hotel building.
I don’t move. I turn three-sixty, searching for a glimpse of strawberry-blond curls, pale cheeks, and Meggie’s smile.
If her father has followed her here and snatched her from under the noses of my security team in broad daylight, I will tear this city apart until I find her.
Then, once she’s safe, I’ll cut off the fucking Fish’s dick and shove it down his throat until he chokes on it.
How did he do it? How did he get past my men without any of them spotting him? Ric has been with me a long time, and I trust him more than anyone else I know, but perhaps he’s going soft as he ages.
I watch Meggie standing in the last spot where Amber was seen. She turns around to face me, and the despair in her eyes cracks my chest wide open. For a moment, I’m winded, then I snap back to reality and close the distance between us in a few manic strides.
“Where did she go, Gio?” she whispers.
“We’ll find her. I promise.”
Her eyes grow large with tears, and I hug her close to my chest as Ric looks away. I bury my hand in her hair and breathe in the smell of her.
“We’ll find her.”
Meggie wriggles out of my embrace, staring at the window of the small boutique café outside which we’re standing. “Amber?” Her voice cracks.
I follow her gaze, but Meggie is already pushing her way through the small group of tourists trying to leave the café. Ric is one step behind her.
Meggie navigates the occupied tables inside the premises and stops with her back to me.
I don’t wait around. Inside, the air is cool, and I’m greeted by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and the sickly-sweet tang of caramel. I keep my eyes on Meggie’s back as I approach and hear a woman’s voice that sounds strangely familiar.
“Please forgive me. I came outside to look for you, but you were gone, and I thought the best thing to do would be to keep her safe with me. I realize now that I should’ve brought her straight back to the hotel, I’m sorry.”
I recognize the speaker. But I can’t recall her name.
Meggie crouches beside Amber, who is sitting at the woman’s table, a small dog in her lap. At least I think it’s a dog. It’s wearing a diamante encrusted collar, and snarling at Ric, revealing tiny fangs that wouldn’t harm a spider.
“Amber, you scared us, disappearing like that,” Meggie says.
Amber’s bottom lip rolls out, and she keeps her eyes on the dog when she speaks. “I spotted Orion through the window. You said that he was leaving, and I wanted to say goodbye.”
“My trip got delayed by twenty-four hours,” the woman explains. “I don’t even know how she spotted us, but Orion was pleased to see her, as you can tell.” She goes to fondle the top of the dog’s head, and it snaps at her.
“You can’t just run off like that though, Amber.” Meggie tries to keep her tone firm, but I hear the tremor in her voice. “You’ll get Ric into trouble.”
The child’s lips quiver when she peers up at Ric.
“Hey.” He pulls a seat out from under the table and sits facing her, lowering his gaze to her level. “Where’s my favorite smile?” He tries to smooth Amber’s hair away from her forehead and receives a nip from the tiny teeth in return.
Time to step in; I want to get Amber out of here and back into the secluded safety of my apartment. “No harm done.” Perhaps I’m going soft too. The child is safe. The Fish didn’t take her. But there’s still the small matter of my security team letting me down to deal with.
My conversation with Emiliano has unsettled me more than I allowed myself to believe. Amber’s father is dangerous, but I will not allow him to consume my life this way; if that happens, he has already won, and I didn’t get to where I am today playing by other people’s rules.
“Sorry, Ric,” Amber whispers. “I won’t do it again.”
“Shall we go?” Meggie stands up and glances at me, her eyes glittering with relief. “Are you hungry, Amber? I made cakes, and I want to hear all about the ferry.”
She tries to take Amber’s hand, but the dog snaps at her too.
“Can we take Orion back with us?” The child watches the dog’s owner with wide eyes.
“No.” Meggie shakes her head at the woman, who completely ignores the gesture.
“You can take him for a short while if it will make her happy.” I notice that she keeps her hands tucked safely in her lap; perhaps I should set the dog on The Fish and see what happens. “You know where to find me when you’re ready to bring him back.”
“Roma, we can’t take your dog.” Meggie’s gaze flits between Ric and the woman, hoping that one of them will take the dog away from her sister and allow us to leave.
Then I process the name, and I realize who the woman is. Roma Fielding, the actress. And here’s Meggie addressing her by her first name as if they’ve known each other all their lives.
“Nonsense.” The woman dabs her lips with a napkin. “I think Orion loves your sister more than he loves me. Fickle creature.”
Amber stands up, clutching the dog to her chest, and the dog responds by eyeing up Roma as if warning her not to try stopping him from getting away.
“He’s an affection addict,” Roma says. “He’ll go wherever the cuddles are.”
She waves us away. A woman who is used to getting what she wants, and bizarrely, we all go along with it.
Meggie thanks her, and we head back outside where my security team is waiting to escort us to my apartment building.
I don’t say a word until we are inside. With Meggie and Amber firmly ensconced in my living room where the tiny chihuahua is holding court like a royal prince, Ric follows me down to my office and closes the door behind us.
We remain standing. I don’t even pour drinks.
“Before you say anything,” he begins, “I know I fucked up.”
I let him speak.
“I don’t even know how it happened. She moved like lightning. She must’ve spotted the chihuahua, and that was it. She was gone.”
“Children are not like adults, Ric. They see something that they know or want, and it triggers an instant reaction in them. They have no self-awareness, no concept of consequences. They’re fearless.”
“I’m sorry, boss. If anything had happened to her…”
Nothing happened to her. Ric’s response to an attempted abduction by Amber’s father would’ve been a whole different ball game. Bullets would’ve been fired. Blood would’ve been shed. And Amber would’ve been traumatized for the rest of her life.
“Are you finished?”
“I understand that you’ll want to let me go.” He raises both hands, palms facing outward. “You won’t get an argument from me.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
The adrenaline is fading, and uneasiness is crawling back in. Now more than ever, I need people around me I can trust, and using Ric as a scapegoat wouldn’t be discipline. It would be suicide.
“But if you ever fucking let me down again, you’ll wish you’d never met me. Do I make myself clear?”
“Crystal, boss.”
It isn’t an idle threat. He knows that I would see it through, even if it hurt me as much as it hurt him.
“Have you ever heard of The Fish?”
His eyes narrow. It’s all the response I need.
This was the easy part. I realize now that Meggie needs to know the truth.
She needs to understand what we’re dealing with so that she can help me protect Amber; keeping the information from her would be selfish of me.
If she’d known about The Fish… Her little sister wouldn’t be upstairs now teaching a spoiled chihuahua to raise a precious paw on command.
Because she wouldn’t have let Amber out of her sight.
I park the conversation until the chihuahua has gone home, and Amber is in bed. Then, I grab two glasses and a bottle of wine from the rack, take Meggie’s hand, and go up to the rooftop.
It’s another warm clammy evening. Summer is rapidly approaching, and people will relocate from the Upper East Side to the Hamptons, while everyone else stays behind and simmers their way through July and August.
It has been a few years since I’ve considered spending summer in Sicily, but my recent visit has dislodged a ball of homesickness somewhere deep inside my chest. I can still feel the dry heat on my face.
I can smell the lemons and olives and sea.
Perhaps Meggie and Amber would be safer there with people like Emiliano looking out for them.
Then I remember my encounter with Bianca, and Enzo’s surprise visit to Meggie, and the homesickness shrinks a little. I’m not sure if a summer spent with my siblings will do any of us any good.
I pop the cork from the wine bottle and pour, handing a glass to Meggie.
She looks comfortable up here, like this is where she belongs, and I don’t know how or when this transition took place.
When I first saw her on the film set, something ignited inside me.
Attraction, of course. But it was more than that.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her; it was like a magnetic pull, sucking me in.
Irresistible.
There was an innocence to her beauty, a naivety, an unopened rosebud basking in the sunshine. And now… Now, she is no longer innocent, thanks to me. Now her beauty carries the promise of carnal pleasure, of the fierce creature that exists beneath the gentle exterior.
She is both a wolf and a flower.
And she recognizes neither in herself.
“Gio, I’m sorry about what happened earlier.”
I sip my wine. “You have no reason to be sorry.”
“I do.” She slumps back against the couch and stares at the violet sky. “If I hadn’t let her go out with Ric, she would never have seen Orion, and well…” She chews her bottom lip. “Don’t be too hard on Ric. It wasn’t his fault.”
“I trusted him with your safety. Both of you.”
“And we are both safe,” she says softly.
“We need to talk, Meggie.”
She places her untouched glass of wine on the low table and curls her legs beneath her to give me her full attention. “Gio, I know about Elisabetta. I’m so sorry. What happened to her and your parents… You must’ve been heartbroken.”
She covers my hand gently with her own, and for the first time since the accident, I consider letting it go.
Fifteen years ago, I allowed it to consume me.
It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning, and the last thing I thought about before I slept.
Investigating who killed my fiancée, and my parents, was easier than dealing with the pain, but now…
Now, I have other demands on my time and my energy.
I have Meggie and Amber, and I will not allow anything bad to happen to them.
Perhaps it is in my nature to be obsessive, but if so, then I will use that obsession to protect them. I will use it to keep them safe. I will use it to make sure that they are loved.
“It was hard to come to terms with.” I suck in a deep breath, missing the Sicilian air. “She was so young. So full of life.”
Meggie chews her bottom lip to stop herself from prying further.
“I saw her parents while I was in Sicily.”
“H-her parents?” Faint lines appear between her eyes, and I lean in and kiss them, smoothing them away.
“I have known them my whole life, fiore. It would be wrong of me to avoid them, no matter how painful it might be.”
She nods.
“Elisabetta’s father is a powerful man.” I hold her gaze.
She has no idea what I do or who I really am, and I wonder if she would still be sitting here if she did.
“I showed him a picture of Amber’s father.”
At the mention of him, Meggie snatches her hand away and stares at the sky. “How did you find…” The question hangs between us. “You’ve been looking for him.”
I shuffle closer on the couch and hold her chin, tilting her face towards me. “I won’t let him hurt you or Amber. You believe me, don’t you?”
She squeezes her eyes shut, and tears spill over her bottom lashes. “I believe you, but I don’t want you to find him.”
“Why? What are you afraid of?”
“That he’ll hurt you and take Amber away from me.”
I catch her tears on my fingertip. I came up to the rooftop with the intention of telling her the truth, but I can’t. This is my problem because I have made it so, and Meggie has lived with fear for too long.
I pull her into my arms and kiss her on the lips.
Her eyes are sparkling again when I finally release her.
“I told Elisabetta’s father about you.”
Her eyes widen. “What did you say?”
“That you had come into my life rather unexpectedly, and that I’ve promised to keep you and Amber safe.”
She smiles, but I’m not sure if she understands what I’m trying to say.
“He gave me his blessing to move on, fiore.”
“His blessing?”
“Si. To move on with you. If you’ll have me.”
Her entire face lights up. “If I’ll have you?” She shakes her head. “I-I don’t understand.”
“Ti amo, Meggie. I don’t know what you’ve done to me since I met you, but he asked me a question yesterday. He asked me if I could imagine life without you, and the answer is no. I can’t imagine life without you.”
“Ti amo? Does that mean what I think it means?”
“What do you think it means?”
“I love you?”
“I love you too, Meggie.”