“Embedded in its network.”
“Who are these spies?”
“You think I’m going to share their names with you?”
“It was worth asking in case you slipped up and gave them to me without thinking.”
“I never do anything without thinking.”
“That I’m here means my mother is right, and I don’t doenoughthinking. Not serious thinking. I knew you were gangsters as soon as you got out of your car, but instead of recognising the potential danger and preparing to defendmyself, I was thinking about my car and how I was going to get it out of the space you’d boxed it in without damaging it. Could you really kill me?”
Francesca’s ability to skip from one conversation to another without a pause was something Gino was already getting used to, but this made his stare whip to her.
“It can’t be easy to stop a heart from beating,” she said in that matter-of-fact way she had. “Psychologically. I’m sure the act itself would be easy for a man your size when it’s being committed against a woman my size, but could you really bring yourself to do it?”
Drizzling olive oil over the lettuce and cherry tomatoes, he pointedly said, “If it gave my ears a rest, I’m sure I’d find it easy.”
“You joke, but in reality, I think you would find it hard.”
“Who said I was joking?” The microwave pinged. Gino removed the dish and placed it on the breakfast bar, then put the salad bowl beside it. “Lasagne, Miss Marino?”
“I ate just before you kidnapped me, so only a small portion for me, please. Are your goons joining us?”
“No.”
“Can I call home?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t a holiday camp.” He got plates out.
“Even prisoners are allowed calls home.”
Clenching his jaw, he cut her a quarter of the dish and served it up for her. “Your dinner, Miss Marino.”
She jumped off the counter. “We’re not eating in the dining room?”
“This isn’t a date,” he reminded her sharply as he placed the remainder of the lasagne on his plate.
“I don’t know. Two single people sharing a meal over a glass of wine, all alone except for the armed guards patrollingthe apartment…” She topped up both their wine glasses with a mischievous smile. “That sounds like a date to me.”
“Well it isn’t.” Pulling a stool out at the end of the breakfast bar, he slid onto it. “Now be quiet and eat.”
There were three remaining stools. She hoiked herself onto the one closest to his so she was sitting at a diagonal from him, and dug in.
Her silence lasted half a minute. “This is really good,” she said appreciatively. “You said your housekeeper made it?”
He grunted.
“Where is she? Don’t your domestic staff live in? No, let me guess, they do live in, but you’ve given them the evening off? Or even the whole week off?”
He wouldn’t respond. Let her talk all she wanted. She would soon shut up without a receptive audience.
“Well, if I don’t get to meet your housekeeper, can you please let her know her lasagne’s nearly as good as my mother’s? As in the woman you won’t let me call to put her mind at ease that I really am safe and well and that you’re not pulling my fingernails out.”
“I tell you what, Miss Marino,” he snapped. “If you can make it through the rest of the meal without saying another word, not one, I will allow you to make a short call to your mother in the morning.”
