Grazii, I plan to. Anything transpire from our conversation with our little cokehead friend?
Nope. But our heads remain on a swivel.
Good.
I tossed my phone away and discarded my glass in favour of drinking straight from the bottle. Admitting I wanted to get drunk as quickly as possible to fill the stupid ache inside felt even more pathetic. But did I stop? Nah.
And when the familiar haze descended, I was far too eager to embrace it. Even though I suspected the reprieve would be woefully short.
I’m not sure exactly what woke me.
It was still night. And with minimal light filtering through from the living room, the blanket of stars above my head waseven more spectacular. The kind poets wrote reams about. I was no fucking poet. And my head throbbed like a motherfucker. Joining the ache that was still… yep… gnawing at my middle.
I sighed, dropped my feet to the cool polished wood and stood. The haze had cleared, leaving dry-mouth and regret behind.
Striding inside, I grabbed a bottle of water, downed half, and sipped at the remainder. The prospect of going downstairs to the glass underwater bedroom – the pricey as fuck novelty which made this particular overwater bungalow eye-wateringly pricey but which had drawn sexy little appreciative gasps of delight from Maddelena – now annoyed the hell out of me. But sleeping on the sofa seemed like something a pathetic chump would do. So I headed back out to the terrace.
And saw her.
I froze, wondering what the hell I was seeing. The water bottle halfway to my lips slowly lowered to my side as first bewilderment, then fury, resurged.
Her lingerie, clinging to the dangerous curves and valleys of her body, was the sort of lace and debauchery concoction filthy men like me paid fortunes for the chance to rip off a woman’s body, desperate for the treasure underneath. The kind that should sure as fuck not be on display for public consumption.
Yet there she was, right in the open. Doing what exactly?
She was staring into the distance as she walked towards the edge of the deck next door.
‘Maddelena?’ Savagery, naked and primal, bled through my voice.
She didn’t answer.
Was this a fucking joke?
I tossed the bottle away and stalked closer. There was no way to get to her from here without jumping in the water and swimming over. In that time any waiter, butler or guest outwalking could set eyes on what was mine. Like hell that was happening.
‘Maddelena.’
Her lips moved but I couldn’t hear her. And why the hell was she ignoring me?
Her pacing hastened and her hand shot out, as if warding off an invisible attack. As I watched, her movements grew more agitated, her lips moving faster. She bumped into the railing and about-faced, rushing towards the other end,awayfrom me.
What the fuck? ‘Maddelena!’
I was moving as I called out, dropping into the cool ocean beneath the deck and striking out towards hers. With powerful strokes, I reached her deck in less than a minute. Water sluiced off my body as I clambered up the steps.
She’d reached the end and had turned, coming right at me.
Looking straight at me… and yet… not.
‘Giada, no! What did you do? No! Oh God, is that… that’sIsabella Salvatore!’
My blood ran cold, my feet turning to ice. A roar started in my head and I couldn’t breathe. Could only watch as her shins bumped the nearest lounger, slowing her down for a moment. But the terror-glazed conversation she was replaying, lost in her sleepwalking nightmare, continued.
‘Giada, did you…? Oh please, God, no. No, no, no!’ Her hands, trembling like leaves in a tornado, cupped her mouth, her eyes wide with the horror that had unfolded one random Tuesday afternoon five years ago, when my mother decided to go for confession at our local parish church before shopping in Manhattan.
Not knowing it would be her last.
Not knowing that Ivanovski, furious with our fucking up his months-long attempts to encroach on our New York territory, with the full backing of the Mancinellis, was intent on revenge.The unscrupulous fucker had targeted the innocent, striking down my mother and the handful of wives and cousins she’d been out with that day in a deadly and cowardly attack.
