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From behind her, Hugo put a hand on her shoulder to calm her down and cleared his throat.
“Brother,” he said in his husky voice, “something is not good with you.”
“You can tell, huh?”
“Yes. You said you need something from me?”
“I do. I need you to hunt someone down.” I took a deep breath. “And bring her here.”
“Her?”
There was no point in keeping it from myself anymore, so I just fought through the bitter taste that lingered on my tongue and just spat the words.
“Salvatrice never showed. She left me.” It wasn’t any easier to say it now then it was a few days ago when I realized what was going on. “She left me again and this time she left Romina too. I’m done playing catch and release. This time I want you to catch her, Hugo, and bring her here in the trunk of your car if you have to.”
Catherinelle came next to me, to put a hand on my shoulder.
“Roman, I’m so sorry. Ugh, Gino was right, she is a bitch. Are you holding up ok?”
“I’m holding up the best I can, Cat. I can’t show my feelings in front of Romina. She still expects her mom to come back any minute.” Starting to feel suffocated by the mush of feelings, I squeezed my eyes and pinched my nose to regain control. “She asked me about it today over breakfast. I keep lying to her, but she’s not a stupid child. It’s a matter of time.”
“Can I help?” She said in her sweet voice. Catherinelle Mustafa was too good for the world she was raised into.
“Can you go watch Romina until I talk things over with Hugo? She’s in the living room playing with Maximus.”
“Sure, yeah.” She started digging in her bag before pulling out a Barbie doll. “I got her something.”
She went to find the girl while I asked Hugo to follow me into my office and poured two glasses of whiskey.
“Can you drink, big man?”
“Yeah. Cat will drive us back. Let me know what you want me to do.”
“I’m desperate, Hugo. I’m at the end of my rope.”
“She just abandoned the child?”
“Seems like it. She wasn’t on the fucking plane when I went to pick her up. Her name wasn’t even in the passenger list. It makes no fucking sense. She let me take her kid, man.”
“If I said something, would you bite my head off?”
“Go ahead.” I already knew what he was about to say.
“Maybe she wanted to get rid of her responsibility, man, and you came at the right time. Some women do that. They leave their kids and go.”
“Salvatrice loves her child, man. I know it doesn’t look like it now, but she does. She looks at Romina like she was sent from heaven, but I’m not saying it’s not possible for her to just give her up to get rid of me. I told you the story before and how she hates the world that we live in.”
“Yes.”
“Still, a part of me is worried sick. She came to my bed when we were in Portofino. I didn’t ask her to, I didn’t pursue her, but she came to me. Why, if she planned on blowing me off the entire time?”
“I wish I could help you, brother, but I’m shit at reading women. I barely can figure out what’s going on with Cat most of the time and she’s my fucking heart.”
“Whatever. I need you to go to Italy and find her. If something happened, I’m asking you to help the mother of my child, and if she walked out on me, on our daughter, bring her here.” I didn’t need to explain to Hugo that I didn’t care if he had to drag Salvatrice all the way to the States. I was so fucking selfish that I hoped that maybe something bad had happened, that she didn’t choose to walk away. But why wasn’t her name on the passenger list, then? She never had that ticket in the first place. She pushed me to go with Romina when we could have all just waited for another day. Bullshit.
“I see.”
I opened a drawer and pulled up a manila envelope to give it to him.
“This is all her information. I have copies of her passport, the address of her bakery, the name of that bitch, Francesca Carrara, her friend. Everything you need to know. I doubt that she’s still in Portofino, because that would be pretty fucking stupid, but I think that’s where you should start.”
“I can leave tomorrow night. We have a shipment from Venezuela coming in tomorrow, early in the morning, and Gino wants eyes there.”
“Yeah, that works. Hugo, brother, I’m sorry. I know the last thing you need now is a hunting mission. I know you didn’t have the chance to take Cat on a honeymoon yet and she’s starting school soon.”
“Don’t worry about that shit now. This needs to be done.” He took the envelope without further question because this was what he was trained to do. The Assassin, The Albanian Monster – Hugo Mustafa was a hunter and a killer. If there was one person who could bring Salva back to me and fast, it was him, because people don’t escape Hugo. Ever.
