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I know where he lives. I’ve looked it up online. The Bianchi Famiglia have a mansion up on the hill that overlooks the city. If he’s not in, someone there will know where I can find him.
I get a cab out that way. The cabbie talks non-stop about last night’s ballgame. I grunt in the right places but I’m not really listening, I’m rehearsing what I’m going to say.
The house is gorgeous, better than the online pictures. There’s a set of wrought iron gates blocking the place from the street but they’re open. The cabbie drops me outside and when he drives off, I get the sudden urge to call him back. Three men who were talking at the gate are staring at me, saying nothing. There’s an air of tension that I don’t like as I walk toward them.
“I’m here to see Don Bianchi,” I say, trying to sound braver than I feel. “It’s urgent.”
“One minute,” the nearest one to me says, muttering into his earpiece. He looks at me, his eyes narrowing. “What’s your name?”
“Kelly Fletcher.”
“The Don expecting you?”
“No, but he’ll want to see me. Trust me on that.”
He talks into his earpiece again before stepping aside. “Head on up. They’re waiting for you.”
The three of them watch me go. I crunch up the gravel drive to the front of the house. It’s a huge building, made of white stone with enormous windows on all three floors. A gentle set of steps lead up to a wide open front door where a woman is waiting for me. She’s in her fifties, dressed in a tidy business suit, hair in better shape than mine. She nods as I approach her. “If you’d like to accompany me to the drawing room,” she says, turning and heading inside. “Don Bianchi is in the middle of a call but he’ll be with you shortly.”
I walk along a broad corridor filled with gorgeous paintings of Italian landscapes. I shudder to think how much they might be worth but I’m guessing the Roman statues dotted about are worth far more. They don’t look like copies.
Inside the drawing room, I’m shown to an armchair that’s next to a sleek black piano. “Can I get you a drink?” the woman asks.
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“As you wish.”
She walks out, closing the door after her. I look at the nearby bookcase. Dickens. Shakespeare. Then more modern stuff. I find Ben Elton. I pick out Stark and flick through it.
It’s the same anywhere I go. I always pick out the books I already own, like I’m wondering if they’re any different to my own copies. Never known why I do it but I do.
I’m at the end of the first chapter when I get bored. I turn to the piano, hitting a couple of notes, singing an old gospel hit, liking the acoustics in the room.
“Not bad,” a voice says behind me when I finish.
I turn around and Ricardo is there, looking even more handsome than last time I saw him. I try to ignore the image in my mind of him in a suit just like that, only with his cock sticking obscenely out of his pants, jutting toward me, ready to enter me.
“How long were you watching me?” I snap, hating that I didn’t notice him coming in.
“Good morning,” he says in that deep voice that hits me right in the pit of my stomach, making it flip over twice before he’s even entered the room. He ignores my question and asks one of his own. “How’s your Wordle streak, Miss Fletcher?”
“Seventeen in a row since I started with crane.”
“And your parents? Are they recovering well?”
“My dad’s home but mom’s still in hospital. On the mend though.”
“Good to hear though I assume you didn’t come here to make small talk. What can I do for you?”
“I’m pregnant,” I say, watching closely to see how he reacts.
His face gives nothing away. “Congratulations.”
“It’s your baby.”
A slight wrinkle furrows his brow.
“I can show you the tests if you don’t believe me.”
