Her cheeks dusted red. Worked up as she’d gotten, her mask had slipped. Not much; she kept control, but enough for another entry in my intelligence file.
“And all this is prelude to my pitch.” I waved to the table. “Would you like some wine?”
She shook her head, blinking rapidly before turning to the chilling wine. A giggle escaped her lips.
“Rosé? That’s a little girly, isn’t it?” she said, shaking her head. “I think I’ve had enough with men trying to give me drinks today, thank you very much.”
She was testing me, probing her opponent to learn how I’d react, hunting for weaknesses with insults and snide comments. A lot of guys had macho hang-ups, doubly so in my line of work, maybe even worse for her people. The Italians’ machismo was legendary.
For a moment, I considered a harsh reaction. If she thought I cared about any of that bullshit, she’d start down the wrong path. In this case, with my ultimate goal, that’d be counterproductive. I stuck to the truth.
“I’ll have you know this comes from my own winery in Tavel,” I replied before pulling the bottle from the silver chiller bucket to show her the label, “and rosé goes best with our entree.”
“Kidnapper, pickpocket.” Gianna counted each on her fingers. “And now wine snob? It seems you have at least one good quality. Fine, I’ll have a glass, a small one.”
She sat at the table and kept her eyes on the horizon. The sun had half disappeared behind it by now. A layer of marine clouds splashed with pink hues in front of the orange sky. I couldn’t have timed it better. Nothing like the sunset on the water for a backdrop.
I dropped into the other chair and poured the wine. She glanced away from the sunset when I pushed her glass toward her. Narrow-eyed, she studied it but didn’t touch it. Only after I sipped mine did she pick the glass up.
Like a sommelier, she swirled the pink wine. Trails of liquid trickled back to the pool at the bottom of the glass. She sniffed it and swirled again. Finally, she took a sip, eyes narrowed in judgement.
“I’ve had better,” she replied, but she didn’t push the glass away. “What’s on the menu?”
“When you travel as much as I do, you find there are certain dishes that just can’t be reproduced the same way as the place that made them famous. The lahmacun in Istanbul, the bouillabaisse in Marseille,” I said right as the chef ascended the stairs behind Gianna, plates in hand. “Fernando here owns one of the finest restaurants in Rome. He let me persuade him to come cook his signature dish for us tonight instead, his cacio e pepe.”
“Anything for you, Mr. Lebedev,” Fernando said with a nod before setting the plates down.
“Shall we?” I asked when the chef retreated.
5
Gianna
Well, this is a fine mess you got yourself into, Gianna.
Less than five minutes after I’d laughed off my father’s concerns and told him I was perfectly safe, I’d been kidnapped and whisked away by an intentionally mysterious stranger – a dangerous stranger at that. Like anyone would believe he was a banker.
Given who my father was, what he did, I’d wondered about the possibility of being kidnapped before. Once I’d learned the truth about him, I’d even taken some self-defense classes just in case. Better safe than sorry.
None of the kidnapping scenarios that had kept me up at night when I was younger had played out like this. They all involved violence, ending with me tied up and ransomed to my father who shared his disappointment at losing the money. His men saved me in a few of them, dispatching my kidnappers viciously. In the worst, my father refused to pay. If the price rose too high, he’d say no. Family always came first with my father – the Mafia family he ruled.
Instead of being bound and stashed away in a dilapidated warehouse or disused factory, I was sipping rosé on my kidnapper’s luxury yacht before enjoying a gourmet sunset dinner.
“Have you ever had cacio e pepe?” he asked.
“In New York,” I replied. His reaction didn’t disappoint.
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” He sighed dramatically, shaking his head. “Like I said, there’s just something about the dish that changes outside Rome. It doesn’t make sense, I know. You can get the same pasta, the exact same cheese, the pepper, but it doesn’t taste right outside of Rome. Fernando thinks it is in the water. He brought his own water to cook the pasta in with him today.”
I eyed the plate of pasta in front of me. The dish looked the same as I’d had in New York, though a smaller portion. Same long noodles lightly coated with the creamy, cheesy sauce and speckled with black pepper.
The differences made themselves known when that first twirled forkful entered my mouth. The balance was perfect. Toothful al dente pasta with the pungent pepper and cheese combined to create something much greater than its parts.
“Better than New York?” Alexei asked.
“If I was in New York, I’d be able to see a show after dinner, maybe go out to a club,” I said – better to change the subject than lie. The man had shown himself to be too perceptive by far already. “You’re not hiding a Broadway theater on your little boat here, are you?”
His shoulders rose with a near silent chuckle and he shook his head. Before he spoke, he patted his lips with the cloth napkin and set it back in place. He’d said he wasn’t British and that fit with his name. Alexei Lebedev sounded Russian to me.
