We pass a group of women sitting at a beach table near the sidewalk, and Nicolo waves at his wife and my housekeeper, who’s off for the weekend. Rosalba squints and waves back while they all point fingers, telling her it’s her husband. Rosalba needs glasses, but she refuses to admit her eyes have aged.
Nicolo parks across from Luigi’s neon-blue building, which showcases the colorful part of the island on this end. The moment I lifted the building code restrictions my sister Valerina begged me to eliminate, people painted their shops any way they saw fit.
My sister gets away with everything. Case in point, she is pregnant with twins, and I don’t know who their father is. I would kill him for knocking up my baby sister before marrying her, so maybe that’s why Valerina keeps her babies’ daddy a secret.
Not for long, though. A CIA operative is working to figure out who the father is, and as soon as I have a name, if I don’t attend Valerina’s wedding the day I meet her man, I’ll put out a hit on him. Knocking up my baby sister with no promise of taking care of her and their children is a death sentence.
“Sir?” Nicolo calls, pulling me out of my happy homicidal fantasies.
I tap my finger on the carriage door, wondering what I’m doing here. Sunshine and I shared a single night that lasted a few hours longer than any other romantic relationship I enjoyed in the past fifteen years. That’s why I’m intrigued. She ditched me. Which is admirable given my vigilance, but again, I blame that on the whiskey.
Everything can be blamed on the whiskey.
And since I’m sober now, I say, “Let’s make a turn at the Three Palms and head home.”
“Yes, sir,” Nicolo says at the same time that the blinds on one window begin to lift.
I wonder if that’s her room. “Hold on a minute.”
FIVE
I’M HOMELESS
Lake
The sadist, his wife, and the guard at the door depart within an hour of arriving, leaving me with a broken nose and swollen eyes, terrified of what’ll happen to me and the family I left behind in Kentucky.
I’ve already lost my parents. I can’t lose my aunt and uncle, as well as my baby brother. And he can’t lose me either. After my parents died, I took care of my little brother, but I was living with my ex at the time, and his drinking made it difficult for my brother and me to thrive around him.
My uncle and aunt, though separated and going through their own problems, helped me get through college. When I left Landon, my ex, I went to my uncle, who provided my brother with a more stable home. My aunt is now the primary caregiver for my brother, since she lives in a nice neighborhood with a good school.
My family needs to stay safe.
I want to tear the paper résumé the sadist left me with. Instead, I drop it on the desk and lift the blinds. A carriage disappears down the street, and the view of the endless sea soothes me, helps me think. What will I say to Alessio when I see him again? I’m supposed to be on a flight to the US, never to revisit. Instead, I’m about to show up at his house and ask him for a job.
There are no guarantees that his sister will hire me, even if the sadist sounds optimistic. If Valerina doesn’t hire me as a governess for Alessio’s nephew (the son of his dead sister, the woman who got hit by a car and prompted Alessio to buy an island where he can prohibit cars), and I don’t deliver information about the man who executed over two dozen people, the sadist will kill my little brother.
But wait, there’s more!
Valerina is hiring for a nine-to-five governess position, but I have nowhere to live, which means that if she offers me a position, I’ll have to beg her to accept me as a live-in governess, which also means I’ll spy on my employer, the man who’ll put a roof over my head.
All this misfortune makes me think about luck. I’ve never been lucky. Like, never. The most recent example is last night, when I tried my luck with a hot, rich stranger I met at the bar. What happened? I ended up forced into a suicide mission.
My checkout time is one o’clock, and I’ve tried to extend it, but the next guest arrives earlier than expected, and they really need the room. Again, luck.
I stay in the room until housekeeping walks in. Shock registers on their faces when they see my beat-up one, but nobody asks what happened to me. I think they know what a beating looks like.
I step outside and shield my eyes from the sun. The humidity feels like seven hundred percent. People pass me on the sidewalk, while I stand there with my giant suitcase and my carry-on, along with my empty laptop bag that I’m struggling to keep on my shoulder. The sadist took all my electronics, including my phone. Just keep walking, right? Shit happens, right?
Yeah, okay, but I wish I were constipated.
The sadist gave me the location of Alessio’s house, so I walk in that direction. He said I should keep going until I get to a gated home with a fountain at the top of the driveway. Said I can’t miss it.
I’m dragging the suitcases while strategizing my pitch to Valerina when I remember that it’s the weekend. Nobody does hiring on the weekends, and my face looks terrible. Valerina won’t even let me through the gates. I look homeless, which is basically what I am now since the sadist confiscated my credit cards and my cash.
He left me with a paper résumé. He said I need to tell Valerina that I printed it at the hotel. Oh, and my Kentucky driver’s license. You know, for all the cars I’ll be driving on an island that’s banned motor vehicles!
Gah! I stomp onward.
