Page 5 of Lorenzo

Dante stands, retrieving his phone. “Anyway, it’s just for a few weeks. A month at most. Relax.”

“But you said she needs to move into my apartment…”

“So what? You’re always here, at the club. Continue chasing your models, your actresses. Enjoying your jet set lifestyle. Just keep her under your roof so the press buys the romance.”

I recall her photo in my mind.

She looks like she’s meant to live in a convent or work in a library or museum.

Not wedded to a man for whom killing and getting killed is an occupational hazard.

That red hair is going to clash horribly with the blood that regularly gets spilled on my floor.

“This Friday. Six o’clock,” Dante says, closing my office door behind him.

I turn back to my spreadsheets with a tight, dark grimace. Our late mother always taught us never to judge a book by its cover. Looking at Emily’s rigid, frozen expression, I hope to God that in this case, my mother was right.

CHAPTER 2

EMILY

“Emily! Thank God I reached you in time!”

My bestie’s voice sounds somewhat hysterical on this long-distance call. But that’s normal Anna-speak.

Still, it’s a treat to hear from her. Last I knew, she was elbow-deep in spaghetti carbonara and art history, somewhere near Rome’s Pantheon.

In sharp contrast, I’m sitting in the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine heading down Central Park South in Manhattan. Quite a change of transportation in my economy-driven life.

“You may be in Italy, but there’s no need to shout. I can hear you just fine.”

I glance at the back of the chauffeur’s head. Can he hear my conversation? I lean forward and check that the glass partition between us is shut tight.

Something about the chauffeur my new fiancé Lorenzo hired to bring me to the Big Apple from Boston doesn’t sit right with me.

Can’t quite say what it is.

He’s a big guy, gruff and bulky. Most chauffeurs seem like slender, cheerful, crowd-pleasing types. At least in the movies.

But I’m just being judgmental as usual. I shake off the negative vibes and focus on Anna.

“My only question,” she says, her voice dropping into something both sweet and pointed. “Is WHY such a sudden marriage? This guy knock you up or something?

“As if!” I harrumph, a damn good indication of my late Aunt Jane if I say so.

She was queen of the harrumphs.

“I haven’t even met him yet, so there’s no chance he’s my baby daddy.”

Anna and I both laugh.

“But still, you’re holding something back. Spill.”

“Let me put it this way,” I say. “My Uncle Eton made me an offer I can’t refuse.”

“He forced you into marriage?”

“Not forced exactly,” I say, picking my way through it. “Not as dramatic as the word ‘forced’ implies …”