Page 36 of Marcello

Plus, I’d really like to keep an eye on that Camorra guy.

Pasquale laughed. “Well, it’s true, we do pay a lot better than dishwashing. Com’è ’o nglés tujo?”

I answered his question in English. “Pretty good. I used to be a business major, and I thought I might work for international corporations, so I studied pretty hard in my high school and university classes.”

“Holy shit, dude!” he said in Neapolitan, and laughed. “You speak English way better than I do!”

“Naaaah,” I said modestly, but it was true. My accent was far less pronounced than Pasquale’s. He tended to put a lot of -ahs at the end of his words: street-ah… Roman-ah…

Pasquale scratched his chin. “Well, we do want guides with great English… and you could also do Italian tours if we needed you to. Let me ask my boss if he’s looking for somebody. If he is, I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“Awesome! Thank you!”

“No problem.” Then he gave me a worried face. “If you get the job, is Federica going to be okay with you not working at the pizzeria?”

“She’ll be fine,” I reassured him.

Although the truth was she probably wouldn’t be.

But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

I’d even burn it if I had to.

I glanced back at the archway –

And saw the Camorra thug was gone.

I’ll be back, I promised silently.

Whether I get the job or not… I’ll be back.

13

Iwent back to the apartment to get ready for work.

I found Federica sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring down at the rumpled sheets.

“What’s up?” I asked, trying to be pleasant. “Did you paint?”

“What’s this?” she asked angrily, and picked up Fausto’s wad of cash from the sheets.

Shit.

There wasn’t nearly as much money as when I first came to Naples – my paychecks had helped a lot – but I still had a thousand euros wrapped inside the rubber band.

I’d been spending it conservatively on the theory that if I didn’t ask Fausto for more money, then he wouldn’t pressure me to move as fast.

So far, it had worked. I hadn’t heard from him once.

I’d been thinking about putting the remainder of the cash in the bank, but I was uncomfortable depositing money I’d gotten from the mafia. I knew the odds of the government tracing the serial numbers back to Fausto were probably close to zero, but the idea still made me queasy.

And part of me wanted cash easily available in case I had to bug out at a moment’s notice.

I didn’t know why I would need to clear out that quick… but I was trying to join the Camorra, so it wasn’t entirely unreasonable to be paranoid.

However, I also hated having that much cash just lying around, so I’d done my best to hide it. Federica had cleared out a drawer for me in her dresser, and I used it for the clothes I wore the most – underwear, socks, t-shirts. I’d stuffed the money in a sock in the back of the drawer, which meant she’d gone digging in order to find it.

But if she’d found the money, that meant she’d also found –