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He was hiding something by behaving as if he was tough and mean. He might have been all those things, but I knew when he fell in love, it would be forever and that was what I’d been looking for, someone to be with me and devoted as I had planned on devoting my life to him. I felt something honest and caring inside of him, or he wouldn’t have warned me about Nico.
However, I wasn’t sure, I was going on instincts. I didn’t know him that well, and I hadn’t had enough experience with different kinds of men to really trust myself, yet to me he was worth giving him a try.
I did realize it would be a large undertaking to make Dante forget who he was, and I understood when I looked into his eyes, I had gazed into his heart, and it was pure. It would take more than him having his first gay experience to erase all the things in his past, or that woman he was involved with. Therefore, I made up my mind that I didn’t care how long it took, I was going to be there when he crossed the Rubicon.
I climbed out of bed, and dressed. He told me to wait for him. He said he would take me to the basement. And that’s when my common sense kicked in, and my whimsical feelings and ideas took over and I began to think, For what?
Was he now going to rid himself of me because he enjoyed my body too much? Was he going to hide me there until he could get me out of here before Nico’s men returned and realized that he hadn’t taken care of the inconvenient boy they thought Nico had had sex with, and now he wanted to erase me from his mind and sight.
I stood still in the middle of the room facing the door, then I turned in a circle.
It wouldn’t be the first time this had happened to me. Maybe not as Nico had planned, but then how many men had I met that were capable of murder like Nico and perhaps Dante, unless it was murder of the heart?
I’d fallen madly in love with a man once when I was eighteen who was a famous writer. I wasn’t aware he was married because I’d never heard of him, and I didn’t bother to google. He’d come down from Manhattan and stayed at a cabin on the outskirts of our town on the lake where he’d go to be alone and write. We met in a small cafe where he’d stop to get his coffee and have breakfast and dinner.
I had a waiter’s job there, and we discovered we had things in common, and he invited me to his cabin one day to go fishing where he had a boat, and suggested we could go out on it and fish, then come back and clean them and he’d cook them for me.
We did that and much more. I fell in love with him because I was eighteen at the time and believed in fairytales and happy endings and no serious relationships. I still did believe in happy endings, but when he left without a goodbye, it shook my little world and I thought that was the day I grew up.
After my heartache, after my heart breaking to the point where I couldn’t eat or sleep that horrendous pain left me one day as if it was never there. That experience didn’t stop me from dreaming that one day I’d find that one man, and I did in Dante, but like the first time I’d invested my heart into a man by trying to make him mine, I realized it would not work out with Dante.
Just like it didn’t work out with the first man, because when he finished his book, he sold the cabin, and his boat, and never said goodbye, and never came back to our small town. It was that year, that I was taught a lesson which now I was remembering. It was that year I realized it was love only for me, and I was a passing after-thought to someone I believed would love me forever. I was not that naïve anymore.
That lesson I learned would take me through the rest of my life, and to save my life, therefore, I decided to run from Dante and his world.
After I found a pair of sneakers that fitted, I strode to the window and realized that was a bad idea. Climb through a window on the second floor was out. There was no way I could squeeze through that small opening, and if I did manage that, I’d probably die of the fall. So I checked the bedroom door that was shared with Nico’s restroom, and to my surprise it was open. On careful checking I realized the room belonged to Chad. There were pictures of Nico and Chad both on the beach, and Chad holding a surfboard. He looked younger then and he probably was. They looked good together and happy. For a moment I wondered if that could be me and Dante in another place and somewhere far from New Jersey.
I curtailed my dreams by concentrating on what was important like getting out of here before Dante discovered I wasn’t in the room waiting for him to decide my fate.
Searching around, I rummaged through his drawer, and found socks, a change of underwear and some snacks tucked in Chad’s top drawer. I even found a burner phone because Nico or his men seized my phone when I entered his compound.
When I perused the room once more looking for anything that would help me make it out of this place, I found a backpack with bottles of water. I thanked my lucky stars for Chad. Was Chad planning his getaway too? I didn’t know, and I didn’t have time to think about what his thing was. I needed to get away from this place as fast as possible if Dante wasn’t the man I thought he was.
The only way to get to the first floor was to leave by way of the stairs and hope Dante would stay in the basement long enough where I could walk out the front door unseen. With the backpack on and the things I needed to make my getaway, I realized I didn’t have any cash. After searching for a safe I spotted a picture. No one’s going to place a safe behind a picture these days, I thought. Who would hide a safe in those places anymore? But just for curiosity, I checked behind a large portrait of Nico looming over the bed. He was standing on a beach in his speedos.
After pushing the painting aside I discovered the safe. Oh fuck me, do you mean I have luck on my side? Maybe I can get out of here after all.
More good luck. Someone had left it open, but when I stuck my hand inside, there appeared to be nothing there. I moaned and then extended my arm to the back. “There has to be something,” I murmured. They must have raided the safe when they took off. “They had to have forgotten something because they were in a hurry. I do that all the time. I forget everything. On another quick search with my fingers, I hit something hard. I leaned in and reached for it and brought it out.
It was a gold bar, and another, and another. “Oh fuck me. But how do I exchange this for money? If that is indeed possible.” I didn’t have time to think because I didn’t know when Dante would return. He had been in the basement longer than I thought or calculated.
Tucking the bars in the backpack and a pack of twenty dollar bills it was resting on, I had cash and the gold bars and a few gold coins. It never occurred to me that I was stealing from the mafia. I was trying to run to save my life.
Then I remembered in one of my classes the professor talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—food, water, safety, and love.
As I snaked down the stairs trying not to be heard, I reached the front door and opened it and it was dark outside, and that was a relief. However, I didn’t see Dante’s Jeep. Did he leave me and go to a store to get a bag and tape and a few bricks to get rid of my body? My mind explored all the possibilities.
Maybe he enjoyed me too much to do something like that, I thought. Maybe he was preparing to take me away where we could be together. Maybe it was my first thought, and I kept walking into the woods and looking for a clearing and the highway.
I continued marching away from the mansion, and thinking about what brought me to this, to this place and perhaps to the end of my short life, until I spotted car lights. I hid until I realized it wasn’t any kind of cars that I had seen at the Bonetti’s’ compound. Then I stepped out and waved at the car, and it came to a stop ahead of me. I ran to the driver’s side and the window slid down.
“Where are you going in the dark?” a young female’s voice said.
“I’m going to Manhattan. Can you take me there?”
“You’re in luck. I just sneaked out of my house while my parents were asleep. I plan on going dancing at this club I know in the Village, and you can come along with me if you want. My name’s Zoey. What’s your story?”
After introducing myself, I gave her a lie. I didn’t like to lie, but I couldn’t tell her the truth and get her involved with mobsters. I mentioned that I had an issue with my parents and they grounded me, and took my car, and that’s why I was on foot, but I was trying to get to a friend’s apartment in Manhattan.
