Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Giovanna
I stared disbelievingly at the small phone in my hand. It was antiquated compared to today’s models, but I’d kept it beside me daily for the past few years.
‘I’ve no idea why?’ I knew I’d spoken out loud when an older woman, with a backpack and hiking boots on who was on the same walking tour as me, turned her head to look at me a little strangely. Homing in on what our guide was talking about, I quickly understood that she thought I was being rude. I smiled at her and wiggled my phone as a brief explanation that I wasn’t making a comment on the guide, but talking on my phone. When she frowned in response, I childishly grimaced at the side of her face as she once again removed her glare away to face front.
‘Seriously?’ I spoke again shaking my head a little. Although I knew I wasn’t really speaking about the judgemental woman in front of me, but questioning why after all these years he’d finally spoken to me, and then cut me off so abruptly.
Maybe everything Salvatore had explained to me after our marriage had been true after all?
Pain gripped me as I remembered the same conversation I had played over every single day of my life since. My stomach suddenly began to hurt, as it always did when I relived the anguish I’d been left with, causing me to move my free arm and to place my hand against it, as I attempted to soothe it. Our tour guide raised the closed umbrella she was holding in her hand, signalling to those of us nearer to the back that she was once again moving. Following her lead, I placed one foot down after the other, feeling more and more apprehensive with each step. I was so lost in my own head that after a few minutes of me following and walking, but paying absolutely no attention whatsoever, we came to a stop again and I nearly bumped into the backpack woman in front of me.
This was a mistake.
I shouldn’t have come.
Worry after worry swept through my mind. But it was all futile. I had come, and he knew I was here, so there was no backing out. Looking at it from the outside in, I understood how it could be construed that I had manipulated nearly everyone in my path, in order to be walking the same streets as him.
Because there was no doubt that I had. Even choosing the walking tour that I had worked out would end close to the building he worked in.
Slowly, I shook my head at myself.
I needed answers. I needed closure and, if I was strong enough to admit it, I still wanted him. I wasn’t sure where admitting that to myself would get me, but I comprehended that I had to try to obtain all those things. And if we had a conversation and the answers weren’t what I wanted to hear, then I would have to find a way to move forward without Dante. Because I wasn’t strong enough to live inside the bubble of hope that I had wrapped around myself for the past seven years, anymore. If what Salvatore had spoken was true, then I needed to hear it from Dante’s mouth just the once. Understanding that he was happy with how things had worked out, and that what had gone down between us had been a mistake and had merely been the only way he had to seek his revenge on Salvatore, it would be all the answer I needed. I’d call him all the names under the sun, but would walk away to start my life anew with my head held high. Pushing the pain and memories far away from my thoughts, and the pleasure from my heart just as soon as I could, I swore to myself as I walked over the cobbled streets of Malta with my hands tightly balled into fists, that if that happened then I would set a date for my impending marriage and swear before God to be a good wife to a man I knew I would probably never love.
I will be content with that. I resolutely nodded once at that thought. as I tried to add the conviction I wasn’t feeling.
As we carried on walking, turning corner after street corner to the next destination on our list, and I packed away the arguments in my head and came to terms with what I knew I had to do to save my own sanity, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I inhaled deeply and then stopped breathing, as I honed all my senses onto what I knew without question I could feel.
‘Dante,’ I whispered, hoping to God that he couldn’t lip read.
Raising my arm, I rubbed at the back of my neck beneath my hair to soothe it. My body was now precariously balanced on the precipice of somewhere terrifying, and I convinced myself to draw in a lungful of the warm, still air that surrounded us in an attempt to calm my heartrate down.
Is he here?
Has he got eyes on me already?
As we came to another stop outside of yet another beautiful building, with architecture that I knew any other day would have my mouth gaping open in awe, I began to turn around very slowly on the spot. Only, I wasn’t trying to look at the buildings around me. I was studying the busy pedestrian area in which our walking group found ourselves. Truthfully, and more importantly, I was looking at each man who came into focus from behind the dark sunglasses I had put on to shield my eyes the second I’d stepped onto the deck of Peter Ariti’s boat.
I had no idea why I was so certain—call it intuition, but I was convinced that my eyes hadn’t swept over him. I knew I had to be wrong, because I was equally convinced I could feel him watching me, raking his eyes over me, although he wasn’t visible. Again, I started turning in the same slow circle, and again I came up with nothing.
Show yourself, Dante!
He’s here. I know it.
I reached up high and placed a hand onto the back of my neck as I checked within myself exactly what I was feeling.
‘Did you have a question?’
I felt all eyes turn to me, as my body righted itself to face forward, and my eyes opened wider in response. I had no idea if I’d spoken out loud again and felt a red-hot blush hit my cheeks when nearly every single head turned in my direction.
‘Sorry, no.’ I shook my head at her, pulling my hand away from my neck as I did so. I grimaced once again with the embarrassment of it all.
‘I do.’ A voice sounded behind me, and his English intonation captured me, instantly catapulting me back into my past. Shouldering the large bag I’d been carrying around, I grabbed onto my bare forearm with one hand and squeezed it tightly, as I understood that she hadn’t been speaking to me after all, but instead to the man I hadn’t shared the same air with for years. The same one I’d just been searching for and hadn’t found, who had done exactly what he’d said he would do and had found me instead. Trying to keep my body from betraying me, I dug my newly manicured fingernails into the skin I was holding on to.
He spoke his question, and I closed my eyes against the onslaught of pain just hearing his voice created inside me. Then, in response, I dug my nails into my skin just a bit deeper as I attempted to drown out the pain of being this close to him, but equally so far away, with a different sort of pain.
Minutes passed as our tour guide answered him. She must have recognised he wasn’t a paying member of our group, but he’d asked another question and she answered him again, this time though she added a bigger smile and I was convinced she’d even fluttered her lashes. I pushed my nails ever deeper into my arm in response.
‘Anymore questions?’ The tour guide asked, with an added lightness to her voice.
As a rippled murmur went around the group, and people shook their heads at her, once again we were walking and I fell into step, not daring to turn around to face what I knew without question was Dante now walking behind me. The group around us began their own chatter to each other, and I’d just talked myself down from the level of high alert his presence seemed to have put me on, when I heard the slap of skin on skin. Then feeling the sting on the back of my hand, I released my own flesh that I’d been hurting so overenthusiastically.
‘Ouch.’ I cursed as I withdrew my hand. ‘What the…’
‘Do not mark your flesh.’ His voice and breath collided with the shell of my ear at the same time. Surprisingly, a faint smell of tobacco also found me, and I absorbed the extra information about him. It was strange to discover that it seemed he smoked, but I’d always loved the smell of cigars on Nonno, and I was instantly comfortable with the aroma. Instinctively, I turned my head to the side to find him, but found him gone.
‘Dante,’ I called out and hated just how weak my voice sounded.
‘I’m here.’ They were two simple words, but my heart sang in response. ‘Keep walking with the group and do not turn around. Your detail is following less than one hundred yards behind us.’
‘Okay,’ I whispered, as I rubbed at the sore skin on my forearm and then at the slapped skin on the back of my hand, while cursing my anxiety for needing the outlet of pain to balance it.
‘Why are you here?’ he began, using a tone that sounded as though he couldn’t care one way or another.
‘I… well…’ Just as I started to respond our group turned a corner and a light breeze was all at once at our backs. Strains of his recognisable cologne, mixed with an aroma that was pure Dante, enveloped me. Memories that I nearly always managed to keep at arm’s length, captured me, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Luckily, two steps later, so did the walking group.
‘Well?’ he impatiently questioned.
‘I wanted to talk to you.’ Instinctively, I began to turn.
‘Look at the guide!’ he angrily reprimanded.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What do you want to talk about, Giovanna?’ His warm breath once again rushed past the sensitive skin on my ear.
‘I need to know…’
‘What?’ he asked quickly, making me aware that his body hadn’t moved away from mine since he’d last spoken. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the feel of him surrounding me. I felt at peace, as if I’d found the harbour I knew would protect me. Hanging an arm down at my side, I reached out backwards with my fingers to close the few centimetres between us. But I didn’t attempt to actually come into contact with him, as that would have surely broken the spell between us. And if I never felt like this again for the rest of my life, I needed to linger in it for as long as I was allowed. We weren’t touching, not at all. But I could feel him all over me. Every single hair on my skin was standing on end as my body wordlessly spoke to him, calling him ever closer. We were surrounded by people, but it felt so sensuous we could have been naked and alone.
‘Tell me?’ he demanded.
‘Did you ever love me?’ As I asked the question tears flooded my eyes, making the view in front of me blurred. I couldn’t believe the words had fallen out. It was the one thing I had decided I would never ask of him, and the very first time he’d questioned me I’d gone back on my word to myself.
His body reacted to my question as though I’d sucker punched him. I heard him inhale sharply, and his head snapped away as though he was experiencing whiplash.
‘My boat is moored about four to five boats left of your stepfather’s. I’ll be on her tonight.’
‘How will I get off his boat, with the bodyguards?’
‘No idea, Giovanna. But you’ve got this far. I’m sure you can come up with something.’
‘How will I know which boat?’ I shook my head at the thought of sneaking out and wandering around the many boats in Valletta.
‘You’ll know… you’ll recognise the name.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because I am… but in case I’m wrong and you’ve forgotten, her name is “Amore Mio”.’
‘My love,’ I whispered to no one, as without turning I could feel that Dante had already left.