“Ti vaju a ammazzari!” I shout.
“Calm down, little sister. Everything will be ready. You will leave for Paris in ten hours to get what you always dreamed of, and whileI still think it is a fundamentally stupid idea, and you will get us all killed, you have beaten the odds so many times by now that I am willing to bet on you.”
“Thank you,” I snap and get back to my room. I need to get into the dress. The dress. The dress that was a back-and-forth for months. Like this entire ceremony. I wanted colour. Rosalia all black. I wanted it to happen in Paris. She said it must be here. I wanted it big. She said small.
So now we are entering a civil union, with a ceremony at the masseria I hate, in a colour I hate, in a dress I hate, and nothing is like what I planned in my head. But then, I am also not Sophie anymore. I am Antonella. And this is my life now.
“You look stunning,” says Salvatore as he enters the room. “That dress will blow everyone away.”
“Let’s just hope no one blows me away,” I say darkly.
“No one will dare touch you, sister. They all know they will be dead afterwards, with Rosalia coming after you.”
“True,” I say. “They were so fucking scared when they found out.”
“She has murdered quite a lot.”
“She won’t now,” I say. “Unless everyone keeps to the rules.”
“You have done well, baby sis. You’re also much too valuable. Money is what makes them purr like kittens.”
“Do you have the numbers for the past month already?” I ask.
“I do, but not today.”
“I want to know, now,” I order him.
“A revenue increase of 324%,” he says.
“And the adjusted?”
“Still over 300%.”
“You’re right,” I say, “No one is going to touch me.”
I look at myself in the mirror. I am wearing a strapless black gown with floral lace and petals and a wide, long skirt.
“Here,” says Salvatore and puts the ornate lace cape around my shoulders. “You look like a queen of the underworld.”
“Well,” I say in a sardonic tone. “I am, ain’t I?”
We both laugh. A moment of silence passes.
“Did you find Luisa?” I asks.
“No,” he says. “And believe me when I tell you that I liftedevery stone connected to her. I even put Kat and her AI onto it. There is just nothing. Like she never existed. Not a single full-face photo. No usable surveillance photos. Parents are gone. She is gone.”
“She never let herself be photographed,” I say, as I remember the time of my life with her. “She always made sure her face was never to be seen anywhere. I thought she was just insecure about herself, but looking back, she was leaving no traces.”
And now that I think back, when we travelled, she always had a hood on, or wore her fake glasses to look ‘more academic and older’—that’s what she told me. She had been hiding right under my nose. Which is some accomplishment.
But then, I was different back then. Maybe even a bit naive. Now, I can sniff betrayal from a mile away. Back then, I was almost naive. I was Sophie, and now I am Antonella.
Luisa has been the most important person in Sophie’s life. And while I do hate her, it feels more like a ghost of the past from a life I don’t live in anymore. Because I am not Sophie anymore. I don’t even know what I’d do if Salvatore had found her. Maybe I would have asked her if it had all been a game to her. Maybe I would have murdered her for lying to me.
Whatever it is, I will never know.
Although I do believe in karma. And there is this saying the Germans have: you always meet twice in life, and when I meet her again, I will know what to do.
