When I’d told Alessandra and Caterina earlier that I was nervous Emilia knew about my job, I’d been right.
“I’m a driver,” I said neutrally.
“A driver,” she repeated, clearly not believing me.
“And a bodyguard,” I added.
“Oh, abodyguard,”she said, faking like she was impressed. “For who?”
“My boss.”
“And what does your boss do?”
I groaned inwardly.
Okay, she DEFINITELY knows.
“He’s a businessman.”
“A businessman,” she said, repeating it sarcastically.
“Yes. My boss’s wife is opening the fashion boutique next door.”
“Good for her. Whatspecificbusiness is your boss in?”
I shrugged. “A little of this, a little of that. You know.”
“No, Idon’tknow, which is why I’m asking. A little of what?”
“Import-export.”
“Oh,” she said brightly, like that cleared it all up. “Does import-export include extortion? Or blackmail? What about breaking people’s legs?”
Shit.
I sighed. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what’s it like?”
“The family I work for – ”
“So you work for afamily,”she said, putting an ominous emphasis on ‘family.’
“They’re good people,” I protested.
“Good toyou. But maybe not so good to everybody else.”
Before I could say anything else, her voice changed.
“Look… I say this with the utmost respect, because I donotwant to make you angry… and I don’t want to piss off your employers… but I don’t want to date somebody in the…”
She glanced around the mostly empty coffee shop, then lowered her voice as though trying to be discreet.
“…in your line of work. I left Milan to get away from that sort of thing, and I just – I can’t do it, okay? You seem like a nice guy, but I can’t. I just – I can’t.”
Now it all made sense.
She’d probably had some sort of run-in with the mafia in Milan.
