“You said we’re celebrating.” The sun has not yet dipped below the buildings, but I take my sunglasses off so she can see my eyes.
“Ah, yes.” She claps her hands together. “We are celebrating because I realized you and I have the same goal.”
My eyebrows narrow. “We do?”
“Yes.” The server returns and pops the bottle of prosecco, pouring us each a glass. “I was thinking about you all wrong, Izzy. I saw you as competition and I’m sure you can see why.”
My mind flashes to Benito. “Because. . .?”
“Because you stood in the way of the development deal. You have Benito’s ear, as well as the women business owners, and their reluctance is our biggest complication.”
I wait for the rest. That sounds more or less exactly what the situation is. “Is that not it?”
Sutton throws her head back and laughs. “No, of course not. I thought it was to rebrand yourself, which is why I thought the ad campaign would work, but that’s not it. Your goal, really, is to make a place for yourself in La Musa.”
I take a long sip of prosecco, certain there’s some other bomb she’s going to drop any second. “I guess that’s the truth, but how is that your problem?”
Sutton takes a tiny sip of her drink and smiles slightly over the top of her glass. “Because the answer to your goal is the same as the answer to mine.” She sets her glass down and leans back in her chair. “I’ve got it all worked out.”
“Have you?” I ask. I’m starting to get the sense that the apology she promised is never coming and I won’t like the alternative.
“You should be the mayor.” She takes another sip of her drink like it’s as simple of a suggestion as“I’ll let you freshen up.”
I laugh. “What?”
“You should be mayor,” she repeats. “Think about it. It gives you a place in La Musa. You have the experience. You’ll have a hand in saving the place. It’s perfect.”
I wait for her to tell me she’s kidding. That her grand plan is actually for me to buy out the localpanetteriaor be crowned princess or something else that makes more sense. “Benito is the mayor.”
Sutton smirks. “That’s where what I want comes in.”
A bad feeling rises from my gut to my chest, the bubbles of the prosecco burning my esophagus as they travel back upward. “I thought you said what we want is the same.”
“It is. I want you to be mayor.” She taps her fingers on the table, her long nails making a clicking sound. “Because I want Benito back in London with me.”
Chapter Seventeen
I fix my stare into Sutton’s dark eyes. I knew her reasons for being here were not as selfless as“Benito’s been good to me.”She wants him. She wants to use me to get him back. And the worst part is, she thinks she’s doing me a favor. “I do not want to be mayor,” I say.
The sun descends below the rooftops of the piazza that surrounds us and Sutton tops off her glass. “Don’t let the way Benito goes about it fool you, it doesn’t have to be so horribly stressful.” She offers the bottle to me and sets it down when I don’t take it. “Benito resigns, he and Raffaello endorse you to run in his place, you approve the development deal, you sit back, relax, enjoy your life knowing your Wikipedia page doesn’t end with your last election.”
My mind buzzes with questions. Primarilyhow dare you. “Is it even legal for me to be mayor? I’m not an Italian citizen.”
Sutton waves it off. “We’d work it all out, don’t worry about that.”
I sit up straighter. It’s not going to be easy to convince her I don’t want this. “I’d be a puppet for Raffaello’s business. And don’t even get me started on that offensive ad campaign pitch. You’re using me.”
She leans back, exasperated. “Good god, Izzy. Must everything be so sinister?” She laughs, pushing the bottle back toward me again. I relent and refill my glass. “Support Raffaello or don’t. The point is, it’d be your battle to fight. Not Benito’s. He belongs back in London. He chased the wrong family legacy. He needs to return and fulfill his destiny.”
My breath catches in my throat. She’s preaching to the wrong choir. I know destiny is a mirage, a trick into letting life pass you by while you chase a shiny object through a sparse desert to no avail. A way to convince yourself you have a purpose instead of accepting that you are a sack of organs and bones meant only to breathe in and breathe out until you no longer can. “Sutton. I don’t want to be mayor. And if you really cared about Benito, you’d know that he doesn’t want to go back to London.”
Completely unaffected by my words, she laughs. “Benito does not know what he wants.” My stomach does a flip. She’s right about that. He more or less said the exact same thing to me weeks ago.
I take another sip of prosecco. “Will you make a PowerPoint to convince him to go back?”
Sutton’s lips stretch into a sly smile. “If it’ll help.”
I finish my drink and don’t bother to fight Suttonwhen she offers to pick up the check. I walk through town on my way home and my brain is buzzing, both from drinking two glasses of prosecco in quick succession and from what Sutton confessed. Benito is surrounded by so many people who don’t have his best interests at heart. No wonder he was skeptical of my intentions.
