“Italy.”
Wasn’t that convenient? “I’m going there, too.”
“Yes, with me, should you want to.”
I laughed. He sounded so certain. “No, I’m supposed to meet my sister at the hotel. But I need to go to the airport to switch Johnny’s ticket to mine, then we’ll leave at 11 AM to fly to Denver, then from there to Venice.”
Mario stared at me with those soft, but intense eyes. “You won’t have to switch the ticket. We’ll get there faster in my jet.”
My heart beat a little faster. Not only was he a fantasy in the flesh, but for him to be rich was right out of la-la land. I wasn’t a sucker…yet. “You own a jet?”
“It’s the company’s, but in part, yes.”
That sounded more plausible.
And crazy. He was so far out of my league. “What about Ellie?”
“She has a ticket, no? You’ll meet her there. Please?”
My heart wanted to jump out of my chest. This was huge. “Are you serious?”
“To a fault. I mean, surprisingly I am…yes.”
He sounded sincere. I wanted to open my mouth and grill him for details. Logistics. Plans. But underneath all that noise was a voice. Ellie’s. Live a little. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
“Absolutely not. That would be against the code.”
A code was much better than false promises. Of course, sometimes it was worse if you ran afoul of it. Was this the good kind or the bad kind? “You have a code?”
He nodded solemnly. “Yes. And upon that code, I vow you will be safe, Allie Jacobs.” His face shifted. “Probably safer than with your sister.”
I laughed, slightly relieved, and because he was right. “That’s the truth. So…Italy? Do you think I’ll beat her there?” Sue me. We’d been in competition since birth. Likely before.
“Absolutemente.”
Ding! Extra bonus, he knew the language and his accent was real. Not mangled like mine due to the online language courses I’d been taking over the years. “Are you from there?”
“My father is, so, yes.”
“Where do you live?” The real Allie was peeking out with her twenty-question quota.
“Here, there.”
That wasn’t an answer, and a tiny warning light flashed in my brain. “That’s not specific, where?”
“Mostly Liguria and Sardinia. New York when I have business there. Milan, Los Angeles, Miami, London…”
I refrained from asking something uncouth like, ‘How much money do you have?’ That would be countered with how much money do you have? Which right now could be summed up with, “None I wanted to touch.”
And I really couldn’t answer the questions that statement would trigger. Grandfather’s trust gave me an allowance that was generous, but I refused to do what Ellie did and spend it willy-nilly as soon as it hit my fingertips. I was saving. For what, I didn’t know. Hopefully, a small farm, a private practice, some place where no one knew who my grandfather was, or at least didn’t care if he’d been the mob’s accountant. And hopefully in a secure enough location that a sudden catastrophe wouldn’t would rip that private and peaceful life away from me. Maybe I couldn’t accept the money was real because I knew there was no escape from the source of it.
The limo pulled into the private airlines’ terminal. Mario got out with the driver and sent him into the terminal to arrange the flight. Then Mario paced around the car. If I were Ellie, I’d be taking notes about the sculptural perfection of his ass. But I refrained, instead texting on my phone.
“El, I have to do something. I’m sorry. I WILL meet you in Venice. Cash in the extra ticket.”
A second later, my phone buzzed with a text from Ellie.
“You BETTER meet me there, or I’m calling Mom.”
