“You thought this would be easy.” It’s more a statement than anything else.
“I can hope, can’t I?”
“Ah, the eternal optimism of a person who’s had her life laid out to be successful,” I ruefully reply.
“Hey, I didn’t know that was going on. My parents wanted to give me everything they could. I had no idea, and you know that!” Her face is just a few inches from my own and my guards are noticing.
Hmm. She’s gone too far. “Relax,” I demand in a stern voice to let her know it’s not up for discussion. “You are causing Cosimo and Frederic to become concerned.” I nod to them at the next table.
She quickly glances at the men and back to me.
“So, what? They can’t touch me. The Albanian mafia would be all over you,” she replies with a huff.
“I don’t think you’ve thought this through. If things go sideways with your people, and that’s inevitable, where else can you go for safety? Think Prende, you have to think about the future.”
“Humph.” She chugs her coffee, slumps back in her chair like a petulant child and insists that we leave. “I’m bored.”
“Of all the ways I thought you’d have an issue with on this trip, bored wasn’t one of them,” I say, flashing her my mischievous smile. She might be acting spoiled now, but I can fix that.
I understand she’s away from home, and sure, she’s fraternizing with the enemy her uncle warned her about, but she still needs to be aware of the consequences. She’s not exempt from repercussions even if her father was the head of the mafia, and he wasn’t, that much I’m sure of. He could be a close second though, which would explain why someone would want to eliminate him.
“Who in your family is next in line to move up? I mean, who is taking your father’s place?”
“Besnik is filling in for now, I think, but they don’t tell me those things.”
“I suggest you find out. It might come in handy one of these days. They have a motive to kill him.”
Making sure the coast is clear, we return to the hotel where Prende rests in our room and I go about the hotel asking staff members I encounter if they were around that night. I feel like I’m a detective in one of thoseCSIshows on TV, but I don’t have a badge to flash.
One waiter I encounter says he was in the bar. He’s young and doesn’t want trouble. He heard the man was connected.
“There are tons of people here every night. But that night, there were lots of women, and one of the guys from Sicily had a woman with him. She seems pretty, well,come si dice?”
He touches his head, trying to think of the word in Italian as his first language is French. And fuck if I know shit about French. “Peculiar, that’s the word. She knows many languages, that’s what I remember.”
“Great.” I palm him some euros in appreciation and head upstairs to see what kind of shit show awaits me.
14
Prende
Idon’t get Marchello, he’s so confident it borders on cocky. I learned that his brother is a don because his dad died unexpectedly and he’s not exactly had a tough life either. Who the hell is he to judge me?
Clearly, we’re both disappointed our task here isn’t easy and we’re taking it out on each other.
There is a short knock on the door before Marchello enters and he’s carrying two glasses and an open bottle of red wine.
He seems to make friends everywhere. He pours me a glass.
“They have an excellent selection of wine.” He raises the bottle for me to see the label, which means nothing to me.
“I see.” I’ve never seen it before but I take the full glass he hands me, and raise it to my nose where I promptly breathe it in like Papa taught me.
It has a nice bouquet. I swirl the velvety red liquid so it coasts the sides of the glass until it resembles blood.
I sip as the aroma fills my nostrils and the liquid engulfs my mouth. I’m lost for a moment as the hints of chocolate and vanilla explode in my mouth.
“Very good.” I eye him carefully.