My fingers play with the thin gold band on my thumb. How different would our lives be if my dad was still here? Or if my mom’s attention span was long enough to see between the lies that stole the settlement money right from under her nose?
“How far behind are you?”
“Just a few months,” she says like it’s nothing.
But it’s more than nothing. It means I’ll have to move money around to figure out how to cover the unexpected expense. It also means I’m stuck wearing this atrocious outfit.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, sweetie. I owe you.”
That’s always how it goes. I love her, but she’s always going to be one unpaid bill away from a first-name basis with debt collectors.
I hang up and fork over ninety-eight euros for the tracksuit and walk out of the store with my pride slightly more impoverished than my bank account. Any hope I had of flying under the radar in this outfit dies the moment I step outside.
An old man with thick eyebrows and no sense of boundaries wolf-whistles. I lift my chin and try to channel Kardashian energy. “I’m confident. I am cool. I am—oof!”
I’m crashing into a line of rental bikes. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, three of them fall noisily to the ground.
“Sorry,” I say to the teen who comes to help.
“You want bike?”
“Absolutely not,” I say—just as I spot Ben across the piazza.
He’s seated at a café table with a man who at first glance I thought was Rook. But moving around the bikes, I get a better look. And it’s not Ramirez’s lawyer. This man is tall. Expensive looking. Mafia vibes. His hair is slicked back, his suit sharp, and those eyes? Cold. Calculating. And tracking the movement around him like he’s watching for someone.
I inch toward a rack of masks strung up in front of a gift shop and duck behind it. My heart’s thudding so loud I worry he’ll hear it across the street. Ben turns his head.
“Signora?” I spin and face the shop owner, a man with a bright smile and wearing a bright red Ferrari shirt. He waves a feathered mask at my face. “Maschera?”
“Uh, no, grazie.”
“It’s okay.” The owner picks up another mask with bright ribbons and lace. “You try?”
Ben’s back to speaking to the man, but I don’t want to take a chance of him catching me watching him. So I take the mask from the store owner.
“Okay,” I say, slipping it over my face.
From behind the mask, I take a couple of photos with my phone, trying to zoom in as much as I can, and send them to Athena. I continue to observe Ben and the man talking. They’re looking at papers, but I’m too far away to see anything.
Is Ben really financing money for criminals? I don’twantto believe it. But it’s hard not to let my imagination put the pieces together.
My phone pings with a message from Athena.
Alessandro Moretti. President of Italia Sovereign Bank. Suspected ties to multiple criminal organizations.
I knew he was mafia. My smug satisfaction at being right is short-lived. This isn’t some random person meeting with a mafia banker—it’s Ben.
Get as much information as you can.
Ben and Moretti stand. A sleek black car pulls up. Another man gets out and shakes Ben’s hand. Who’s that? I lower the mask, setting it back on the rack, and then slip into the crowd. It’s much thicker now, the pre-festival events filling the streets with vendors and tourists. I try to push my way through, but before I can get a good look or take another photo, the car is gone.
“Bike?” the teen from earlier asks again, holding out a neon pink number with a basket.
I’m about to tell him no when I see the car with Ben inside stopped by a parade. Maybe I’m not too late. I shove a crumple of euros into the boy’s hand and hop on the bike. He says something in Italian as he hands me a helmet, but I’m already pedaling after the car.
Except this isn’t a normal bike.
