But the sight of De Rosa cast a shadow in Nikki’s already troubled mind.
She unlocked the glass door and he followed her into the cool empty space. It smelled of mildew and damp plaster. Nikki hit a switch and fluorescent bulbs buzzed and flickered.
—
In the sudden brightness, he was diminished even further, standing only a few centimeters taller than her. His features were delicate and refined. He wore a stylish dress shirt and grey overcoat with a bone-white cashmere scarf. So close, his heavily lashed grey eyes bored into her, and she smelled his cologne.
“You need to stop your classes,” he said without preamble.
She faced him. “I’m not doing that.”
From his breast pocket, he extracted one of Nikki’s flyers.
“You’ve posted your schedule online, and advertised with these. This makes you an easy target.”
“Easy target for whom?” she challenged.
He stared. A muscle flexed in his jaw.
“No,” Nikki snapped, that familiar knot of anger forming in her throat. “Do you think it helps to tell me I’m being targeted, and notgive some idea of the actual threat? I’m not a target, unless it’s that fucker who attacked me—and I don’t need your help with him.”
De Rosa dismissed this with a gesture. “That man and his friends are no longer a problem.”
“Then what’s the danger? Who could possibly want to fuck with me?”
“I won’t discuss that with you.”
The intensity of his look jolted Nikki. Her heart thudded rapidly, the taste of metal and bile in her mouth. This class was her refuge, normalcy in a world that had become chaotic and ugly.
“Why am I a target?”
His tone was derisive: “You’re not a foolish or ignorant woman, Nicole. Don’t feign it now. It’s no secret that you and Calandra were intimate once.”
Intimate.Nikki pushed against the word.
She had once called Titocaro,dear—and she could still hear his voice, a whisper in her mind:Mio piccolo mostro.“My little monster.”
“We were just kids…teenagers!”
“That may have protected you once,” said De Rosa. “But you changed that. You! When you came to him…when you asked a favor.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “I can’t possibly be the only person asking Tito Calandra for favors.”
His crooked mouth warped into a snarl. “Do you imagine that anyone can demand to speak with him, to be allowed into his sanctuary? To have him immediately grant so great a request? Calandra is known to be a man without weakness. Consider what he permitted with you! Consider who witnessed it!”
She would never forget the humiliation and fear of that night. Her brother Gianni, hunted by loan sharks, had needed fifty thousand euros to protect his family. She’d been forced to turn to Tito. De Rosa had been there; she’d followed him through a crowd of beautifully dressed men and women, seen the way they stepped aside at Tito’s gesture, felt their eyes on her as she made her case to him.
“You’re saying Tito has a weakness for me?”
“People interpret it that way,” said De Rosa.
“That’s ridiculous…paranoid. You think people watch so carefully—”
“Of course they do!” The words exploded with sudden emotion. “Rats are always the closest observers of the snake! Calandra isn’t like other men. He must not be seen to be like other men.”
Her cheeks burned.
“That was months ago,” she protested.
