“What?” I tried not to raise my voice.
“The old lady I was with.” She rubbed her forehead. “Someone took me there. She drugged me while I was trapped in her place. I heard her on the phone talking to someone who made her an offer. She said it better be worth it to go against your family.”
“What the hell?” I sent a quick text off to my papa so we could start hunting down who this woman might be.
“I wanted to share all this before, but we got interrupted.” A flicker of pain raced across her face. “It smelled like fresh-baked pastries.” She sighed. She handed me her glass then shimmied down the couch and farther under the blanket. I removed her shoes and pulled her feet up on my lap in hopes she’d continue to share. “I ran. The guys scared me, though, they got bored when they couldn’t find me. Which reminds me we need to replace that back light I broke.” She rambled.
“What guys?” I urged her on, not wanting her to go to sleep.
“Some bar was right around the corner. They followed me, but I hid.” She groaned, and I knew more was weighing on her. “Who do you think did the bomb?”
“I’m not sure, but I will find out.”
“I think it was Stefano.”
“Why?” I twisted so my leg was along her side and the other was on the floor. I tugged up her legs so they rested on my groin.
“Because he seems like he would be cocky enough to stand over me right after the bomb went off.”
“Wait,” I wanted her to keep her train of thought as she told her story to me, “are you saying Stefano stood over you after the bombing?”
“Hmm,” she nodded, “at least I thought it might be him, but maybe it wasn’t. Oh, wait.” She remembered something. “He tucked something into my pocket before he left me to, I don’t know, be kidnapped by some old lady?”
“Do you still have what he left you?”
“Purse.” She pointed to the table. I leaned over and pulled out a piece of paper.
“Death only has so much patience, and life only has so much time,”I read out loud.
“What do you think it means?” Her eyelids grew heavy.
“I’m not sure.” Anger and confusion mixed with the drug in my system, and I closed my eyes to stop the urge to share it all immediately with Papa.
“Elio?” Her eyes were closed now.
“Mm?”
“Can you mourn someone you’ve never met?” She was almost asleep.
“Maybe. Why?”
“Because I am.”
“Who are you mourning?” I tried to follow the jump in her story but saw she had now fallen fast asleep. I let her be.
Once she was out, I checked my watch and sent a quick text off to Aldo, my trainer. Twenty minutes later, I was downstairs in my personal ring with my hands up, ready to shed the tension that had its nasty claws around my chest.
“You look like shit,” he said, deadpan.
“I feel it.” I ducked when he swung.
“Seems that way.”
“Meaning?”
“Your head is elsewhere.”
“Hence why we’re in the ring.” He studied my face as I swung, and I smoked him in the jaw, not that he felt it.