Aria Island, however, was owned by the Fausti family. I had no idea who they were until my Nonna had whispered in my ear, “Stay away from them. They are a powerful family in Italy. Rules. You do not break their rules. Keep your head down and your eyes averted if one of them enters the room.”
My Nonna had cleaned the Poésy family’s place in the French Quarter for years. Cooked for them whenever they were in town. Scarlett Poésy Fausti had married Brando Fausti, one ofthem, andonce or twice his family had come with him to stay at the property.
I didn’t remember seeing any of them, so I must have escaped their rules. Maybe I was doing homework or something. That had been years ago.
Years ago seemed to lead me to that moment, though. The woman who lived across the street from the Poésy family in the French Quarter had spoken to Scarlett about getting me a job. Evangeline, or Eva, had known Nonna for years and felt that I needed a change of scenery when she basically cornered me and pulled out of me what my trouble was. She had a way about her, a way that could easily do that. She claimed I had the same way. But that was neither here nor there at that moment.
I had a stalker.
A stalker who had read my debut book and accused me of knocking off his murders in blood-stained letters with my name on them. Not my pen name but my real name. Problem was, the murders he referenced had never been solved. Murders that had a lot to do with a new drug on the street. No one, including me, knew who this person was. The police were no help. They were as lost as I was. Same with the FBI. He had outsmarted them all.
Scarlett had arranged the job for me, and this was why I took it with greedy gimme fingers.
Even though I was paranoid, something felt right about being here. I was safe. Like I didn’t have to worry anymore. I wasn’t alone in the world. I could relax on a private island that only the Fausti family had access to, soaking up the hot Mediterranean sun on my days off. Maybe even while I worked. I didn’t have a job title, per se, but I would be flitting from one area of the island to another, doing whatever needed to be done.
A vacation really—a vacation with benefits.
The thought soothed me, and I refused to allow my eyes to linger outside of the window again. Instead, I chose to close them and get some sleep. Or try to. Thoughts kept me awake. I was going to have to hustle with my luggage to catch the transportboat. If I was too late to catch the one the other employees were taking, I would have to take another. Would I be stuck in between pallets of already perishing food? Who knew, but whatever it took, I needed to be there.
My eyes still refused to close, even though I tried to force them to. I felt wired, maybe from all the coffee I had consumed to get me to this point, and hyped up, like I had taken a drug. Maybe coffee in Italy was stronger than in America. Whatever was making me feel that way, I couldn’t seem to control it. I pulled my earbuds out of my bag along with my phone and selected the music app on my home screen. I tried to listen to some soothing beats. That didn’t help. I was able to get my eyes to shut tight, but I was lip-syncing every song, giving hand movements with it, like I was on stage.
Sighing, I took the earbuds out, returning them to my bag, and checked my phone. No new messages.
I made apffnoise, like I expected that. Still. The sting of it hurt my chest. My mom knew why I had left home and had only wished me a nice trip. “See you when you get back!”
Umm. Not true. I hadn’t seen her in years. Not after she remarried and moved to Utah. She had three kids, much younger than me, and she never called to make sure I was still breathing. When I had told her about my trouble with the stalker, it seemed like she wanted to hang up on me, pretend like the call hadn’t happened.
“I’ll have to talk to Harry,” she whispered. “Make sure he’s okay with you…coming here.”
“That’s okay,” I had said. “I don’t want to put you or your family in danger.”
She blew out a relieved breath. “Good. The girls are young, and I don’t want them mixed up in shady business.”
Thegirls. Not my sisters. She acted like we were not related through Gabriella Cattaneo—our mother who had never been married to my father, therefore had no reason to take his last name. She took Harry’s last name. Richards. It didn’t matter—any of it. I preferred to stay away from the girls, too. All but one misbehaved, was rude, and no one called them out on it.
I had no father either. My dad died before Nonna. Not that he was any better than my mom. He remarried and had no other children, but left his fortune to his wife, who was probably basking in the St. Tropez sun with cabana boys fanning her from each side.
My father was a famous author. He wrote under the pen name Stefano Simonetti. Stefano was his real name and Simonetti was Nonna’s maiden name. Bella was his true last name, same as mine. At least my mom allowed that. It was one of the oldest names in Italy, I was told. And Stefano Simonetti was considered one of the best thriller writers in the business. He had once told me he imagined my mom as every one of the cold cases in his novels.
Hey, inspiration was inspiration, right? No matter what form it came in.
My mom laughed when I’d broken the news to her about his death—which came to my Google news feed as breaking news—and said, “That’s what he gets for imagining my death! Good riddance to him!” Then she sniffled and hung up on me.
My dad had once told me he was going to write the story I had, about the string of murders, but he died before he could. It wasn’t murder for my dad. He died from a disease that the center for disease control was still attempting to name. But the idea he’d given me before he died, more like the entire plot, had taken root in my mind. I ended up winning over his agent with the pitch for it, and he took me on as a client. The next step was publishing, which happened so quickly, I was suspicious of it lasting.
The money came in handy when Nonna got sick and the bills for her medical treatment rolled around. After she died, though, I had almost nothing left. I started working for the Poésy family in place of my Nonna—my head void of more stories to sell. Then the threatening letters started, and it seemed like everyone bailed on me.
I was starting to wonder if I was writing in the wrong genre.
The thought made me smile, like it was the warmest thought I could have. It was compared to my usual—will I make it alive to see tomorrow?I should have known better to end my thoughts on that violent note before my eyes closed on their own and I faded off to sleep.
In my dream, the faceless monster chased me, and after catching me, it carved out the pieces of me it wanted to collect, ending with stealing my heart and keeping the pieces of me in formaldehyde to preserve. It tossed what was left of me into one of the bayous, and an alligator with one eye stuffed the rest of my remains in some bubbling hidey-hole to enjoy later.
Sometimes, having a vivid imagination was hard on the nervous system.
Which was the only explanation for what happened next.
My eyes flew open, and I jumped from my seat as if the dream was only a warning, and the killer was a breath away from catching me. I abandoned my things, totally forgetting about them in my panic, and ran up the aisle as the monster nipped at my heels. I hit people and pulled hair. My hips rammed into seats, and I ping-ponged back and forth. My feet felt as if they were on fire. My chest burned with the rush. I was almost panting, but I was still able to scream out, “Stop the bus! Ah.Ferma l'autobus!”
