PROLOGUE
Alessio
In retrospect, her perfume should’ve clued me in.
She smelled like a gardenia blossom, the scent I associate with beauty, innocence, and playfulness, which boldly demands I pay attention. She smelled too good to be true, but I couldn’t resist. From my position in the middle of the vacant bar, I looked up from my third glass of whiskey and watched her walk toward the ladies’ room.
Short, curly hair barely reached her shoulders and allowed a full view of her back, which had been sunburned sometime during her vacation. She was a tourist. I can tell them apart from locals right away. Even if I didn’t know every local on my island, the white, open-back bathing suit, jean shorts, and simple rubber flip-flops would have been a dead giveaway.
At this hour, local women arriving at the high-end bar of this luxury island hotel would have worn a seductive evening outfit because they would be here for a reason other than to use the bathroom.
After the tourist entered the ladies’, my gaze fell back on my whiskey. I swirled it, pondering whether I should break my two-whiskey-maximum rule. Three drinks impair my judgment.
There’s never been a time in my life when I didn’t need good judgment. Or restraint. Perhaps now more than ever. Which, in retrospect, was precisely why fucking her that night changed everything.
And why, right now, I’m standing in front of an abandoned warehouse under a flickering streetlight with a bloody machete in my hand.
Blood drips from a cut on my forehead. I blink, then wipe it away from my eyes so I can see the lights from the incoming law enforcement, whose sirens I already hear. They’re coming for me. Now I must decide if I’ll stay or run.
Although I run daily, I’m not arunner.
Perhaps I’ll stay.
ONE
HE SMELLS NICE
Tourist
Isola di Monteverro’s summer heat reminds me of growing up on Galveston Island, Texas. Even at nine at night, after sundown, the humidity makes me want to shower over and over again. Since I’ve spent all day at the beach, my hair’s frizzy and full of sand. I need a long bath.
But I don’t want to walk to my rental unit on the other end of the island before cooling down. The bar next to the lobby of the finest, and only, hotel on the island provides a much-needed reprieve from the heat. In the restroom, I freshen up and feel like I’ve transitioned from an elephant seal that slept on the beach all day back into a human.
I want to milk every minute of my last night here, so I slide into a bar chair a respectable distance from the only other occupant, a man in a sharp obsidian suit.
“Hi.” I greet the bartender, who rises from a crouching position behind the bar. “May I please have a vodka and Sprite? With a cherry and some oranges. Lots of ice. It’s extra humid out there, you know.”
The bartender, a man in his midtwenties (around my age), smiles politely and says, “We’re closed. There’s another bar just around the corner past the gift shop.” He ducks under the bar again.
My shoulders deflate. “I really would appreciate it if you let me cool off for a bit. Do you mind if I just…I don’t know…sit with him?” I gesture to the man. “I’ll only be ten minutes.”
At my mention of him, the patron lifts his gaze from his whiskey glass, and I hold back a gasp. I hadn’t expected him to be stunningly beautiful. A sophisticated kind of beauty, almost royal in appearance, with jet-black hair, a square jaw, and a perfectly straight nose. Blue eyes the color of the deep sea pierce me with a glare that could cut through glass.
I don’t think this man wants company.
I gulp and explain, “Didn’t mean to intrude, sir. But I’ve spent the day on the beach with only a quarter of the sunscreen left in the tube, so I burned, and it’s my last night on the island, and I walked all the way from the other side to tour the hotel. I’ll just be a minute.”
“Ten minutes,” he corrects. “You said ten minutes.”
I’ve gotten so used to heavily accented Italian-English that his fluency takes me by surprise. I think he’s an American tourist like me, so I smile wide and approach him. I pull up a chair next to him and offer him my hand to shake. “Oh hey, I hail from Kentucky. You?”
“Rome.”
“Oh.” He’s Italian. You never know these days with people traveling, working, and attending universities all over the globe. Regardless, he appears at home here in his sharp suit and expensive watch while he leans away from me as if I have cooties.
But I sat next to him, so I might as well make the best of it. “Your fluency in English made me think you’re American. Or Australian, maybe, since you didn’t say much.” I watch his profile because he’s not looking at me. This is how I catch the subtle nod he gives the bartender before the bartender starts to make my drink.
Whoohoo! Scored a drink.
