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My pulse is still pounding in my ears, but I know the noise is coming from the suite across the hall by the time I settle down and listen harder.
Creeping up and looking around to make sure I really am alone, I press my ear to the door.
Rocco’s voice is impossible to miss, so I know he’s in there.
But he sounds calm, like he’s talking with people he knows so I can relax.
I think.
Straining some more, I realize how dumb it feels to listen harder for something I’m not gonna hear any clearer.
These hotel doors and walls are thick because people like their privacy.
But it’s the sound of the elevator pinging open and the sound of new, clearer voices from around the corner that shocks me.
I turn to duck back into our suite, pulling the handle to get in.
But it’s locked. And I don’t have a key to get back in.
I’m also standing in the middle of the dead-end of the corridor, wearing nothing but a hotel robe. And my mobster hero is in another locked suite behind me.
In a literal moment of sheer panic, I could scream. But when I see the older woman coming around the corner, taking her long dress gloves off before she spots me, I feel a little relieved.
It’s the same woman I saw driving.
The same older woman who was supposedly following us in the mall as well.
If nothing else, I’d be relieved to hear she’s a guest in the hotel and that all this has been a huge coincidence.
Her mouth creases into a frown when she sees me, and I’m struck at once by her high-end perfume and then by how she’s looking me up and down.
“Maria Portello, is it?” she asks dryly, not expecting a reply and stifling a little laugh to herself when I don’t.
I feel my jaw loosen, and my mouth hangs open as she steps past me, almost like she’s stepping over a corpse, and raps firmly on the opposite suite’s door.
There’s a slight pause, then Rocco opens the door. He’s wearing only the new jeans he bought.
The only clothes he could grab before he went over there, I’m guessing.
But damn, if I don’t mind watching him wear those and nothing else.
His eyes fix on the woman’s for a long time before they gradually shift to mine.
“Rocco,” the woman says in a low, smoky voice. Thickly accented too.
If she was any younger, I’d be emerald green with envy right now.
But there’s just something else about her….
“Mama,” Rocco says quietly, moving aside as she saunters into the suite.
Rocco’s eyes beg me not to say a word but to get in there with him as well.
Did he just say Mama? Like…as in his mom?
He didn’t say it in a childish way, not like a baby. No.
He saidMamathe same way I know he’d address his father,Papa.
