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“Il solo e unico,” he said in Italian, then switched to English. “The one and only. I believe in English they simply say, ‘the One.’”
“…yes. She is.”
Dario grinned and waggled his finger at me. “I can tell – I can see it in your eyes.” He shook his head like he envied me. “I would give my right arm to feel for a woman how you feel about her.”
“I was going to propose to her before all this happened,” I said, gesturing around us.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I bought a ring, but we had a fight, so I waited… and then I left town and wound up here.”
Dario winced. “Ah. You still have the ring?”
“I had it on me when I got arrested,” I said bitterly. “Now it’s sitting in prison storage… if somebody didn’t steal it yet.”
“They put it with the rest of your belongings when you came to San Vittore?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll have a word with the prison staff. No one will take it – and if they have, they’ll put it back.”
I frowned. “Why would they listen to you?”
“Don’t worry. Just know that once you leave, it will still be there.” Dario chuckled. “We have to make sure you can propose to her as soon as you get out!”
“I doubt she’ll wait for me.”
“If she’s the One, she’ll wait.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Why not?” he asked. He almost sounded incensed that I was doubting Rachel.
“Because she doesn’t know I’m in here.”
Dario stared at me in shock. “What?! How is that even possible?!”
“There are some things I can’t go into, but… she had to change her phone number, and I didn’t have it when I got arrested. So I wasn’t able to call her to tell her.”
He looked at me like I was absolutely insane. “What about her email?!”
“That got changed, too.”
“Didn’t you write her, then?!”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
The look of utter disbelief he gave me was almost comical. “What the fuck, man?! This girl is the One, and you don’t know her phone number, email, or where she lives?!”
“I know, I know,” I said gruffly.
He heard the implicit warning in my voice not to go any further, so he backed off – but he still shook his head. “You’re a very complicated man, Lars. And I say that coming from a long line of complicated men myself.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
“Rachel Bauer. Although that’s not her real last name.”
