Page 168 of Marcello

What the fuck?

That’s weird…

A hundred feet away, I could hear Luciano calling out to his father. “Papa!”

I knew the shooting would start soon. I didn’t want to freak out the poor girl any more than necessary, so I grasped the brass knob, turned it…

And slowly opened the door.

The room was pitch black, but with my night vision goggles, everything was visible in a sickly shade of green –

Including the frightened young woman sitting upright in her canopy bed.

Because of the angle of the bed and the gauzy curtains, I couldn’t see her face – only her body and the silk negligee she wore.

I didn’t know how she knew I was there, but she did.

“Who’s there?!” she asked in a frantic voice –

And suddenly I was filled with horror.

I knew that voice.

No –

That’s impossible!

A few steps more, and I could see past the curtains.

The woman’s face, a sickly green in my goggles, stared up at me in terror.

OH FUCK –

PLEASE, GOD, NO!

It wasn’t Laura Amato I was looking at –

Or rather, I guess it was.

But that’s not how I knew her.

I knew her as the woman I loved:

Giulietta.

PART III

LAURA

50

Laura Amato

Iwas born in Naples, but I only got to see it at a distance.

I loved the beauty of it. The sparkling bay, the hills of the city, the peaks of Mt. Vesuvius –

But I never got to see any of it up close, because I grew up in a prison.