Chapter Forty-Three #2
She blew out a breath of relief. “Great, because I’m not really looking for a serious thing, and you seem like someone who wants a serious thing. I’m not even sure if I want another boyfriend after Giacomo, at least not so soon … I just really need a friend.”
“I can say the same.”
“Okay, that’s a relief. Thank you for coming today.”
“I’m glad I did,” I told her with a nod before going back to set the table.
Gran Louisa reappeared. “Ah, handsome, and know how to set table; your girlfriend very lucky.”
I suppressed a smile.
“Nonna,” Gemma’s voice warned.
“Shut it. You have girlfriend, Elio? You are fine man; you should have lover.”
I allowed a smile to slip onto my lips as I arranged the utensils beside the plates.
“Tell us,” Gran Louisa urged, excitement in her voice.
I caught Gemma’s curious stare on me, and I could tell she had grown very interested in the topic.
I cleared my throat. “It’s—I, yes, I have someone, but not a girlfriend, just—”
“A fuck friend,” Gran Louisa said.
“No,” I blurted immediately, and Gemma choked out a laugh. “She’s not a … that, Gran Louisa; she’s a friend that I—”
“Fuck?” Gran Louisa completed again.
“It is complicated.” I settled with that.
“Ahhhhh,” she and Gemma drawled at the same time.
I shook my head, setting the final plate and utensils while Gemma placed the covered bowl of food in the middle of the table, and from the look of it, they had made fried spaghetti; I could smell the hot sauce even from the covered bowl.
She placed a jug of water by the side of the fake plastic fruit bowl at the center of the table.
“Let us settle, say prayer, and ignore table manner as we talk about Elio fuck friend but complicated.”
Gemma chuckled as we three sat around the small table like a religious Italian family, saying our prayers before we ate.
The nostalgia hitting me from left to right when we finished praying had me soaking in this moment.
“I hope you have a warrior’s tongue,” Gemma said excitedly and worriedly.
“I don’t know yet,” I responded.
“No worries, it is only spaghetti,” Gran Louisa said as Gemma began plating the food.
“Yeah, Nonna, spaghetti all’assassina. With extra Nonna spicy ingredients. Nothing much.”
“What. You suppose to eat every meal like it is your last.”
“And that is why I never let you cook,” Gemma said, settling when she was done plating.
“Okay, children.” Gran Louisa grinned. “Dig into hell.”
We did dig in, and after three forkfuls, I couldn’t feel my tongue. Gemma’s face had gone red, and Gran Louisa’s lips trembled.
“Okay … I think … I think we stop now,” Gran Louisa said. “Too … hot.”
Gemma dropped her fork with a loud clank, getting off the chair and to the kitchen sink before a gurgling sound filled the space.
I refilled my glass of water for the third time and gulped it all down.
It still didn’t help because I was sweating like the spice was all over my body.
“I will … order pizza and increase air conditioner,” Gran Louisa said, getting up from the table and heading to the living room.
I blew out a breath, checking my phone to see that I’d spent close to an hour here, and I didn’t even want to leave yet.
Standing up, I decided to clear the table, even though my head felt woozy and my stomach was hot.
“I’ll help out,” Gemma said, and I almost laughed at how red her eyes were. “My grandmother is crazy.”
“I agree,” I admitted as we cleared the table together, and as time went by, the spice started to fade into a dull tingle, thanks to the change of temperature in the house and the fact that we had stopped very early into the meal.
As she washed the dishes and I rinsed and dried them, she asked, “So, this girl … how come you never mentioned her?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know how I felt.”
“And now you do?”
“Hm.”
“And this girl—”
“Zahra,” I told her.
“Zahra, do you know where she stands with it?”
“Yes.” I placed a plate in the holder, picking up another one to dry. “It is one-sided.”
She stopped washing for a second before continuing. “And you know this, how?”
“When you tell someone you like them … they are supposed to respond if they like you too; she didn’t.”
Gemma nodded. “Maybe she just wasn’t ready? You know it takes some people a lot of time to catch up to their feelings? Maybe it’s like that with her.”
I glanced over at her. “Are you saying that with certainty?”
She shrugged. “Not really, I’m just saying it based on what I think.
I don’t know her, so I might not know what could really be going on in her head, but I think if you really like her, don’t stop doing what you do.
Sometimes, some people want you to give them a reason to show that they like you too. ”
I paused. “That … makes sense.”
“I know.” She smiled. “And it’s cute,” she added after a pause.
“What is?”
“The fact that you like her. The tips of your ears are redder than my face right now.”
I raised a brow at her, keeping a plate. “If I don’t see it, then it never happened.”
She laughed, proceeding to inform me of the different shades of skin flushing and what they meant.
About thirty minutes later, we were settled in the living room, the pizza had arrived, and Gran Louisa had popped open a whiskey bottle.
“Sorry about food, Elio,” she said.
“It’s okay—it was spicy, but I enjoyed it,” I told her, now recovered from the attack of the meal.
“My dead husband like spice. He always say it is real men food. That is why he die early.”
“Nonna,” Gemma chided.
“What. I cannot speak truth?”
“It is always advisable to speak the truth,” I supported, and Gemma pinned me with a look as she changed the channels on the TV.
“So, Elio, how come no family? Cousins. Uncle. Aunty, no one?”
I drank from the glass in my grip, about to give the usual response I delivered to anyone who asked me that question. “Actually,” I started instead, “I have a brother, half-brother.”
“You do?” That caught Gemma’s interest.
“Hm,” I said.
“Why didn’t you say?” she asked.
“We aren’t close. He doesn’t see me as family.”
“Ah … bad relationship,” Gran Louisa pointed out.
I nodded. “I abandoned him. Although he is closer to where I am now, but—”
“You’re not his favorite person,” Gemma completed as if she understood what I was saying.
“Yes.”
“So, what are you doing to fix problem?” Gran Louisa asked. “What is plan to make you his favorite person?”
I blinked. “Plan…”
“Yes, foolish boy, you think relationship will fix by itself. You have to draw him back to you. Life is not two, is one. You have to make peace with family because you don’t know when death come and take them from you,” Gran Louisa said.
“Or you from them. You see, the same thing I always tell Maurice before he die. Make peace with family. He never listen; now they cut us off because of Maurice. All of them in France, living rich, happy life. While we are here, making do with what we can,” Gran Louisa said, a hint of sadness in her voice.
My gaze went to Gemma, and she offered me a sad but encouraging smile before turning her attention back to the TV screen.
“So, make peace with brother. Do not allow pride make you regret it. Okay?”
“Okay,” I responded with a nod, placing it in my mind that I would try to talk to him when I—
“Oh my God.” Gemma’s worried voice got our attention.
She increased the volume of the news station. A news anchor was standing in front of a school with reporters all around, a little bit of chaos outside the school.
“… Information reaching us is that there are three military mercenaries inside the school bus, trying to defuse the bomb; surveillance footage from the school was sent to local authorities, showing how these mercenaries were handcuffed by some unknown gunmen and escorted onto the school bus holding a total of twenty-three debate students who had just returned from a successful educational debate. This is Elena Colombo from Direct Regional News.” The screen cut to parents around the school building.
“Holy Mary, Mother, what this world has come to,” Gran Louisa said.
Gemma changed the channel to another news station. They were airing the same news, but this showed footage of the school bus driving down a main road, cars stopping and changing directions via a mass announcement from police cars behind the bus, urging other drivers to give the bus space.
A male news anchor from a helicopter filled the screen.
“The school bus can now be seen driving on the main road of Monte Napoleone. The mercenaries are said to be communicating with outside help, trying to defuse the bomb and make sure it doesn’t go off.
The authorities are organizing help a few kilometers from the bus, clearing the roads, and creating a safe corridor—”
Channel change.
“… Parents are camping outside the school waiting for updates on their children—”
Channel change.
“… Milan, Italy, has never seen a crisis this massive, and prayers are being said all around the city and the world, seeking a safe return of the children and heroes trying to stop the bomb and bring the children home, now showing you direct footage of the school bus. Evelyn Arrow, BBC World News.”
Gran Louisa stood up. “I will go pray for their safety, poor children,” she said before disappearing down the hallway.
Channel change.
“… The mayor of Milan has been asked for a sitting with the president regarding a possible terrorist attack after viral footage of military mercenaries entering a school bus caught the media—”
Channel change.
“… Just in, authorities have raided a small private sock-producing company just by the school after an employee suspiciously fled the area; a couple of paintings of a chihuahua were found in this raid.” A photo of the painting was shown on the screen alongside the employee who was trying to flee.
“Locals are astonished after the employee revealed that the company was put in place to ship these paintings all around the world.”
I shook my head, knowing the disaster this was about to cause.
Channel change, this time with a frown on Gemma’s face.
“… ro Garza, a popular philanthropist and art collector in Mexico City, being the owner of the painting; a secret source says it is all part of an art quest that quickly turned criminal in the span of a few years.” A picture of Arturo and the painting was displayed on the screen.
“Hold on a second,” Gemma said. “I think I’ve seen that painting before. I don’t know, but … I have seen this same painting and heard that name…”
My gaze snapped to her. “What do you mean.”
She quickly fished for her phone by her side, her hand tapping and scrolling as she got to her feet and made her way over to me, settling on the armchair as she brought her phone into my view, scrolling through pictures of dogs in an album called “dogs.” “I dog-sit from time to time, and I love dogs so I always take pictures of them, and here…” She stopped on the painting. “There it is,” she said.
I took the phone from her hand, zooming in on the painting.
I couldn’t find the tell. The little stroke that had been in every fake was missing, and I was genuinely impressed when the realization dawned on me that I was staring at the original painting of the chihuahua.
“Where did you take this?” I asked, understanding why my gut feeling had pushed me towards her.
“Mexico,” she said, getting to her feet again as she paced the living room.
“Where in Mexico?”
“It was a year ago. Uncle Rod had sent for me, and Giacomo and I took a road trip to the manor in Mexico where Uncle Rod and Luigi worked in maintenance … shit.” She stopped.
“That’s the name! Garza! Arturo Garza, the dead guy who owns the manor.
Luigi was being a prick, and I was mad, but then, Giacomo told me that I should take a tour of the manor to cool off while he talked to Luigi, and I was just roaming around when I saw the painting, just sitting there, peeking out from behind a shelf in some abandoned storeroom.
It was covered in dust. I cleaned it and took a picture because it was very peculiar, but I never got to post it. ”
Arturo, you mad mastermind.
The original painting never left the manor.
“Where did you leave the painting afterward?”
“I covered it and slipped it back behind the shelf. I don’t think anyone goes in there.”
“Hm.”
“Do you think we should contact the authorities? Maybe it would help in some way?”
“No. Don’t get involved. Send this picture to me. I’ll handle it.”
She frowned. “What would you do?”
“Problem-solving.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I brought it out. Angelo’s name was plastered on the screen. I handed Gemma her phone, getting to my feet. “Excuse me; I’ll take this.”
She nodded, eyeing me suspiciously but choosing to trust me, as she returned to her seat and watched the news.
I answered the call. “Significant emergencies, Angelo; when will you learn?”
“This is significant. The mayor has reached out; he needs your help. I don’t know where the fuck you are, but everybody’s looking for you.” His voice was frantic.
“That so?”
“Marino, there’s a school bus—”
“I am aware of the school bus and the chaos and the quest going live—”
“Are you also aware that the so-called military mercenaries are Devil, Dog, and Zahra?”
I stopped. My breathing halted for about a second or two, slow panic ensuing gradually. “Elia…” I whispered.
“We are doing damage control over that, but the mayor is seeking your help smoothing things out with the president. We don’t have fucking time on our hands, okay?
Zahra, Devil, and Dog’s lives are on the line, and the bomb is not fucking stopping.
” He breathed. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I know who Devil is to you, and I know you probably don’t give a fuck about the kids, or Dog, or Zahra, but your brother might die today, Elio.
That should be a significant emergency.”
A wave of blinding anger overtook my mind to the point that I couldn’t get a breath out properly.
“Who led the operation.”
“What?”
I grabbed my jacket and cap from the hanger. “Who led the operation for Street. Who led the fucking operation, Mancini!”
I heard him sigh and hesitate. “It was Zahra.”
“That fucking—I’m on my way.”