“It’s almost dinnertime,” Brando said, going for something he felt she would understand. Yank. “She has to cook for me.”
“Not tonight!” Yank. Yank. “We have plenty here.”
“Wait a minute!” I said, feeling like a bone stuck between two dogs. “I can stay for a little while. That way you can have your meeting with Rocco, and I can help out.”
Serafina released me, her nose pointed up in the air, in triumph. “See! She smart. She knows where she is needed.”
“Not always,” Brando muttered, putting his hands on his hips. He fixed me with a stern eye. “I won’t be long.”
“I know.”
“No walking back to the cottage without me. I’ll come and get you as soon as I’m done.”
“All right.”
“Go now!” Serafina said, practically shooing him out of the room. “She is safe here.”
Brando didn’t budge until Brando was ready to move. He stared at me for a moment, reminded me to stay put, and then went to leave. Before he could make it to the door, I snatched his hand and made him stop.
“Kiss me once more,” I said.
He did and then he was gone.
Five minutes later the sisters had gone into the back room, arguing over the amount of flour they thought they had left.
“Nuts,” I mumbled to myself, setting the filled cannolo to the side on a platter. “Effing nuts.”
I blinked at the sun coming through the window. After putting the cannolo down, I caught sight of a figure that I could’ve sworn was a figment of my imagination. I stood so quickly that the chair fell over. “No,” I breathed out. I ran to the window, looking left and right. I didn’t see him. He was gone.
I also didn’t see any guards. We didn’t have a lot of them, not like at home. The men thought that having too many people around this place might draw too much attention. This was a family-run business and not too many people, except for family, lived and worked here. The men also didn’t want to bring extra men here in case they were followed.
But the main reason was, they trusted no one. The only men they allowed at the farm were the men who had been with Rocco for years.
Lothario was not being all that helpful, and what we had in terms of security was slim. He could have dispatched more men, perhaps more quietly, but he didn’t. After what happened in Corleone, his feelings had changed drastically. I got the feeling that he was ready to part ways with us, indefinitely.
Most of the guards seemed to be behind the villa, attending the meeting, so I seized my chance. “I think I just saw my husband,” I said to the women still working. They all nodded, going back to work.
I slipped out of the room. “Livio?” I whispered, turning to look left and then right.
Where could he have gone? Curiosity called to me, pulling like a rope connected to the answer of the riddle. Where had he been? Why had he left? How was he? From the second I had to catch a glimpse of him, he still looked whip thin, but almost like a ghost of himself. Dark circles were that apparent underneath his eyes.
Oh God.What if hewasdead and that was his ghost? Perhaps he was still angry with us, blaming us for his wife’s death, and he was hunting us down. It was possible. I had seen my dead grandfather before.
Brando was not going to be happy about this. He hated when dead people showed themselves to me.
Portugal was a good idea.
I turned to the left and spotted a new car in the driveway. A glare of bright light stabbed me in the eyes, almost blinding me, making the entire world go white.
As I turned to go back inside, a sack was thrown over my head, I was hauled off my feet, and what seemed like a second later, I was flung into a small space and then locked in tight.
* * *
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I tried to kick up, but I was stuffed into the trunk of the car like a sardine. My legs were not short enough to stretch out, and my knees were jammed up, my feet not even able to make contact. On one especially hard attempt, I felt the dress tear and my skin rip. It was nothing compared to the panic that started to set in.
The trunk was stifling. Every time I would take a breath, the sack over my head would conform to my face, and I felt like I was breathing in stale air and dust.
“Oh God,” I prayed. “Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.”
