Gianni said to Nikki, “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You and Tito dated for years. It would be perfectly natural for you to start again.”
“Why should it matter to you?” demanded Nikki, rage rising.
“He clearly cares about you,” said Gianni. “Look at what he did for you!”
“You forced me,” said Nikki, trying, failing, to keep her voice calm. “I had no other options. And now I owe him. Do you understand? You did this, and now I can’t get out.”
This exchange was in Italian. Mac, clearly not comprehending the contention, smiled affably.
“Would you make an introduction?” he said in English.
“No,” said Nikki. “My brother is misinformed. I’m not affiliated with Tito Calandra. I strongly recommend that you stay away. He’s dangerous.”
“You can ask,” Gianni pushed. “He would take your call.”
“Why don’t you call?” she snapped.
Gianni glanced down and picked at the food on his plate.
“He’s not taking your calls,” Nikki realized.
Gianni turned red to the roots of his curly hair.
Francesca pushed back from the table, announcing, “I’ll open another bottle of wine.”
Nikki’s phone pinged.
The message was from the landlord who rented her the Krav Maga studio. It was a picture of a building on fire.
—
Nikki barely saw where she was going as she sprinted out of Gianni’s flat. Racing through the crowded streets on her Hornet, she heard only the engine and the rush of blood in her ears.
—
Fire crews were still battling the blaze when she arrived to stand with the watching crowds gathered in the rain. Smoke mixed with steam, the choking stench filling the streets.
A woman with frizzy grey hair, glasses, and a housecoat sat on the curb, barefoot, head in her hands, weeping as she looked up at the orange inferno.
“What happened?” Nikki asked, but the woman only stared.
She asked another bystander, dreading the truth before it actually emerged.
“Three men torched it,” he told her. “It was il Sistema. The System did this.”
She thought of the intensity of De Rosa’s face when he visited the studio, and his threat:Change your patterns. Stop teaching. I won’t tell you again.
De Rosa had warned her to stop teaching. She’d told him no. This was his response, Tito’s response, tono.
—
It took only a few minutes to reach Tito’s stronghold in the city. Last summer when she’d visited him, the building had been open, filled with music and company. Now, the giant gates were shut. Locked. High stone walls stretched up into the dark night.
She knocked. There was no sound or movement. She kicked the doors, slammed them, pounded, and screamed.
She’d been so naive to think she could be rid of him.
Tito contaminated everything—was everywhere. There wasn’t a crime or mercy he didn’t know about. Worse, he was inside her, in childhood memories, in her sense of her own body, his voice in her thoughts. She wanted him gone.
