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Chapter Eight
-Noemi-
ASTUPID IMPULSE LUREDme from my room, but thirst wasn’t really stupid. I wanted something to drink so I went in search of tea, a bottle of water, anything! The maze of bungalows and gazebos connected by more flowered walkways was confusing, especially when you hadn’t been given a tour.
As soon as the tender arrived at the island’s shore, introductions were minimal. Dante and Michael rushed me to my room, and then closed the door on me like I was a child who couldn’t listen to the big boys talk. It took about ten minutes to take the items out of my suitcase and put them away. After that, I wanted a cold drink, something to wash away the heat and the uneasy feeling I’d experienced since meeting Michael.
Michael Bianchin, I assumed, was a business associate of Dante’s. He was nearly as tall as Dante, but much more... rugged. He was handsome, with copper streaks in his dark brown hair that complemented the green of his eyes. He was polite, but there was something about him that made me uncomfortable. Maybe it was the way he looked at me, like he could see through me. Or maybe it was witnessing the immediate bond he shared with Dante? One that I struggled to build. I’d never seen Dante act so familiar with anyone who wasn’t part of his family. As soon as the two shook hands when Dante and I stepped off the tender, I was practically forgotten. Whatever the two needed to discuss so urgently, it trumped being social.
“Stay, unpack,” Dante had murmured as he kissed my cheek. “I’ll come back to get you.”
But Dante wasn’t serious, was he? I just wanted a glass of tea or lemonade. It really wasn’t the same as saying, “Stay in this room. Don’t leave until I come back to get you.” But his exact words were lost. My mind was in a million other places. Maybe I heard what I wanted to hear. Maybe I blocked out yet another of Dante’s unreasonable demands.
Unreasonable? No. If I thought that when I left my room, I changed my mind. His demand was perfectly reasonable if he wanted to make sure I didn’t hear their conversation.
A chill snaked down my spine, wrapping every nerve in my body in its icy grip. My heartbeat hammered; my blood pounded; the hair raised on my skin. Everything happened at one time. I was in flight or fight mode, but I didn’t want to do either one. What I wanted was to understand what I’d just heard.
Dante killed five men in two days. Possibly six. I wasn’t sure about the man from the cafe. Maybe Dante had lied about finding him. Maybe that man was dead, too.
“Dante—” I started to confront him, but he put a finger over his lips. He strode toward me, pulled me further into the room, and closed the door.
“There’s been enough eavesdropping for one day,bambina,” he said, his voice deceptively soft as he closed the door.
Bambina.... This was the Dante who had given me a ride home from his mother’s birthday party.
This was the cold, distant man who said goodbye to me at the airport.
While the man I had spent the last few days with was certainly not warm and friendly, he was not the same man who stood before me. And the man I had been intimate with, the man who’d touched me and shown me what physical pleasure was? That man was nowhere to be found in Dante’s narrowed eyes and cold demeanor.
“We need to talk,” I insisted when he remained quiet.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door. Was he blocking me in? He was angry, yes. I got it. He was furious about what I’d overheard, but he wasn’t going to hurt me. Was he? He said he wouldn’t. He’d promised me several times that he’d never hurt me. I tried to give him some time. Maybe he needed to gather his thoughts. But he was crazy if he thought I was just going to shrug this off and then go eat dinner with him later as if nothing had happened.
Finally, he spoke. The tone in his voice matched the void in his eyes. I couldn’t take his detachment. I preferred his angry hostility over the black hole where his emotions should have been.
“You have questions. I understand that.”
I started to talk, but he silenced me with one finger. “You shouldn’t have listened at the door, Noemi. But you know that don’t you?”
“Can I answer that or are you going to shush me again?”
His brow rose. “It was meant to be rhetorical, but if you have something to say...”
“Something to say?” I lost it then. My voice rose, trying to pull something out of him, something he’d buried deep. I wasn’t going to stand there and be made to feel like I was the one in the wrong. Not when it had been revealed that he was a... what exactly was he?
“Of course, I have something to say, but are you actually going to let me ask questions?”
He shrugged. “You can ask.”
“You said you wouldn’t lie to me.”
I was stalling. I had questions, plenty of them. I just had to decide which ones I really needed to know. Which answers could I hear and not get scared? Despite his aloofness, I didn’t fear Dante. Something told me that could change with a few ill-thought out questions.Ill-thought out questions?The man just admitted to being a hired killer! My emotions went into hyperdrive, making me dizzy from confusion.
“And I won’t,” Dante replied. “I was part of the conversation you should never have heard, so I am aware of what you now know. I won’t insult you by trying to lie about anything, but neither will I tell you things that you don’t need to know.” Dante responded as if he was talking to a stranger. “Go ahead. Where would you like to start?”
Where would I like to start.WherewouldI like to start?
“That’s what you do? Who you are? You’re not a stockbroker like Lilly said. You’re a hit man?”
