My heart sinks lower. I’m starting to think she wants us to be friends.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, “I know who it is. It’s nothing urgent.”

  As I’m showing her more patterns of lace and my phone beeps every few minutes, she gives me a confidential look and says, “Whoever it is, I’d say they think it’s urgent.”

  “They do. You’re right.” I give her a cool smile back. “It’s really not, though.”

  My heart jumps at every beep. Every text.

  I hold it down like I’m pressing a pillow on it. I’m not getting fooled again.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lucas

  I sent texts and left voicemails. Last night and all this morning. Right up until takeoff.

  When I switched my phone off on the plane, I dropped it into my bag. I was determined to leave it off for the flight. Of course I couldn’t do it. But I didn’t try to contact her anymore. I did write a couple of texts. But I erased them.

  The pretty cabin attendant pays me even more attention than the few other first-class passengers. I take beer and bourbon from her almost every time she stops by. She promises to ‘tuck me in’ later.

  “Just keep the drinks coming.” I make an effort not to sound too harsh, and I realize that it’s unfamiliar. Should I pay more attention to that generally? Soft manners don’t get results in my business. I wonder what it would be like, doing something simpler.

  Making things, maybe.

  I skip most of the dinner and go straight for the fruit. Plump, juicy chilled strawberries with mango and melon and fresh cream.

  All the sweetness and all the tangs make me think of her.

  Maybe I’ll try to call her again. Tonight or tomorrow. Or perhaps I should leave it. Wait until I get back. I’m not used to indecision. It unsettles me.

  I could never have imagined that the offer of a trip to Sicily would make a woman react like that. I guess I really don’t understand women at all. Was I dreaming that we had such a connection? No, I know that can’t have been in my imagination.

  I sleep badly on the plane.

  The morning air is soft as we descend the steps from the plane. There’s moisture. It’s hot, but the heat is not like Nevada. Even behind the smell of aviation fuel, there are scents of earth. Green smells like forests. It takes me straight back to when I was small and in the mountains here.

  All the colors are vivid. In the arrivals hall, there are scents of olives, spices. Strong Mediterranean coffee.

  A uniformed driver steps toward me at the airport. “Senor Moretti?”

  Stefano smiles as he introduces himself. I’m relieved that I slip easily into Sicilian. It almost feels like I never left. I’m sure that isn’t how it sounds to him, but of course he gives no sign.

  He takes my bags off the trolley and tells me to follow him as he carries them outside.

  Stefano loads my cases into the back of a pristine vintage Alpha Romeo limousine. The Sicilians and their cars. I’m shaking my head as I look around, wondering where my host is. Did Alex just send a driver?

  A tall, beautiful, dark-haired woman waits by the curbside. “Lucas? I am Alex.”

  I’m expecting disorientation after the flight, but I’m not ready for this. “Alex Bertolucci?“

  “You were expecting a man.”

  “It’s an unexpected pleasure.”

  “Save it. But, as a treat to welcome you, Lucas, I am going to be your driver. Stefano will take your luggage to our villa.”

  “I have a suite at the Hotel Castello San Marco.”

  She shrugs. “You’ll come for dinner tonight at least.”

  I accept her invitation. Today is going to involve at least one difficult meeting. I will be glad of good food and a friendly face.

  She steps back from the limousine, and she gestures toward a black Bugatti Chiron. It doesn’t look big enough for us both to get in. From the glint in her eye, I know I’m in for a white-knuckle ride.

  My seat is so low, it feels like I’m lying down. It almost wraps around me.

  Alex drives like a Formula One maverick who’s been told, ‘Today, guess what? No rules.’

  She seems completely relaxed, making neck-snapping turns at G-force speeds, on narrow, winding mountain roads, often inches from a sheer drop.

  We howl, roar and leap past views that would be stunning if we were still. Zipping this close to the ground and at these speeds, it’s all a series of half-grabbed freeze frames of blood-chilling terror.

  She chats like we’re kicking back in a cocktail lounge, late on a lazy afternoon.

  “Like I said in my email, Lucas, I’ll help you any way that I can. I think your problem with the Calabresi family will be tough to solve, though.”

  “I appreciate your help, Alex.”

  She looks sideways at me, long enough for me to be afraid we’ll go off the side of the mountain. The beach below looks spectacular. But a long way down.

  She asks me, “Did you bring a gift for Gianfranco Calabresi?”

  “Thanks for the hint, Alex. I didn’t have time to get a Napoleon brandy.”

  Her lips start to purse.

  I try not to let it show that I’m gripping the side of my seat. “I could have gotten him something, but there wasn’t time to find anything special. I took your other suggestion and looked at his love for the opera.” Her eyebrow lifts. She looks skeptical.

  I say, “I got him tickets for the new production of Cavalleria Rusticana.”

  She takes a slow breath as she snaps us around a hairpin bend. “I didn’t know it was coming to Sicily.”

  “It isn’t. I got him a box at la Scala in Milan.”

  She blinks.

  I go on, “I rented a villa outside Milan for the weekend of the performance. I’ll send a private plane for him and his guests.”

  Her eyebrows rise now. “Oh. Okay.” She smiles. “I think you’ve understood Gianfranco pretty well.”

  Trying not to grit my teeth as we plunge, flicking through the twists of a steep, tiny road in what feels like accelerated free-fall, I say, “He’s still most likely going to say ‘no.’ I understand.”

  She shakes her head.

  “I’m telling you, Lucas, if you do this thing, the fallout could be impossible to contain. Nobody else here misses Drago, not outside the Calabresis. If you have to do it, I understand. But I don’t think Gianfranco ever will. It could turn out badly. He doesn’t have too many people in Las Vegas. And Drago is family to him”

  “Is Drago the worst of them?”

  Her hair ripples and flows as she laughs, throwing her head back. “Hell, no. They’re all the worst. It’s just better having three of them to deal with than four.”

  “I appreciate you making the introduction, Alex. Is there any more I could do? I’ve come here. He knows I’m open about the situation. I can’t be more clear, I don’t think.”

  “See how it goes with Gianfranco. We can talk again afterward.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lucas

  The Calabresis are a small family, but extremely powerful. In the US, their influence is mostly in Miami and Chicago. Some in Los Angeles.

  Gianfranco’s man lets me into his clifftop villa. For such a powerful man, I’m surprised by the small, modest house. Appearances can be deceptive, though, especially in Sicily, so I don’t let my impressions cloud my judgement.

  As well as my gift, the proposition I have for Gianfranco includes a large payment, naturally, plus an opportunity to send two more men to Las Vegas, who I will personally sponsor and mentor and help to get established. It’s against my interests and it will sit hard with the other families. Liam O’Malley would have strong objections, I know.

  But I have to solve the problem.

  Gianfranco is hospitable and welcoming, courteous and respectful.

  Sat across the table on his balcony, looking out over the Mediterranean and sipping Marsala with crispy sweet Cannoli pastries, I know from the first moment that he’s going to turn me down.

  After a long day, I’m feeling the jet-lag when Stefano finally drops me at the hotel. My bags are not unpacked, but they’ll have to wait for the morning. I call the concierge to say that I’ll take breakfast on my balcony, and I will need a few shirts steamed and pressed first thing.

  I set up the bare minimum of toiletries in the bathroom. It’s almost a reflex that I take out my phone and pull up Poppy’s number. My thumb slips over her name and I feel a pang in my gut as I make the call.

  I don’t see how I can miss her so badly. I hardly even know her. But I’m pining, hungry for her.

  The call goes to voicemail. I tell her message box that I wish she were here. It’s only after I hang up that I realize I told her in Sicilian dialect.

  “What are you doing calling me in the middle of the night?”

  She sounds genuinely angry. And her call woke me.

  It’s pitch dark. I look at the clock. It’s three fifteen in the morning.

  I’m just glad to hear her voice. A groan gets out of my chest. The sigh of her breath makes me hard.

  I ask her, “What time is it there?”

  “Ten fifteen. It’s getting dark.” She’s close to the phone. Quiet. “What you said in your message, was that Italian?”

  I can feel her like she’s near.

  “Sicilian. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s okay. I like the sound of it.”

  “Did you understand?”

  “I think so. It’s not so far from Italian, is it?”

  “Some things are. Other things aren’t.” I sit up in the dark. “I said I wished you were here.”

  “Past tense? ‘Wished?’”

  “I wished it then. And I wish it now.” My cock aches for her. “Where are you?”

  “I’m getting into bed.” She takes a breath in. My hand is on my cock. I fell like I should tell her.

  She says, “You have to stop calling me.”

  My voice scrapes thick in my throat. “Do I? Why?”

  Her voice is small. “You make me want you.”

  I tell her, “I want you. My cock wants you.”

  “Tell it I said ‘hi.’”

  “He’s waving.”

  “Oh, my God.” She sighs. “I can’t do this, Lucas.”

  “Which part?”

  “The part where I’m in bed, curled up around your voice on the phone with my hand in my panties.”

  “Your hands are too small.”

  “Lucas.”

  “Your cool fingers should be here, on my cock. Feeling how hard I am. Squeezing. Stroking me.”

  “God, Lucas.”

  “In the ways your pussy wants to squeeze me,”

  “Lucas. Please.”

  “In your panties, you need big fingers. You need my strong hand.”

  “I’m so wet.”

  “You should have my big fingers, adoring your pussy. Pushing you open.”

  “Oh! Lucas!”

  “And my lips, teasing and tasting you. Pulling you open with kisses. Sucks. Flicks.”

  “I want to feel your cock, Lucas. I need to feel how big it is.”

  “It’s huge, Poppy. Huge and hard.”

  “I need you inside me.”

  “You need my tongue. Licking, tasting. Probing.”

  “Lucas!” her voice rises. “Hold it for me. Squeeze. All the way down. Grip and squeeze. Down to the base.”

  “My tongue reaches up inside you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it get high enough?”

  “God, Lucas!”

  “Does the wet tip hit your button?”

  “Lucas! I’m going over.” She moans, “Come with me.”

  My voice lowers and thickens as I growl her name.

  It starts.

  I go with her.

  The panting beat of her breath sets off the rumble in the base of my volcano.

  “Lucas!” Her voice shakes, pleading. “Come! Come with me. I want to taste your cum. I want to drink it all.”

  Eruptions of hot, thick, and sticky jizz pipe out of my cock as she moans and shouts in my ear.

  In the dark, under the covers, she tastes herself for me. I ask her to describe the hot tang.

  She asks me to do the same.

  Waking, bolt upright in a panic and a cool sheen of sweat, I have no memory of dropping off to sleep.

  The hotel phone is ringing.

  Alex tells me she has engagements this morning, but she will send Stefano to drive me. Then she tells me about a fixer I should see. “He’s a very perceptive man, so don’t try to hide anything from him. Call him Miko. He’ll want to draw you. You should let him.”

  The fixer is lives in an isolated house, concealed by trees and vines. It’s about an hour’s drive along the coast. He greets me at the gate to his property and looks at me for a good half a minute before he tells Stefano to come back in ninety minutes.

  He’s my height and about my age, as far as I can judge, with the fast, strong build of a tennis player. He walks me through the gardens to the house and talks proudly about his flowers. He shows me billowing silky white and pink puffy blooms with a sweet spicy scent.

  “Pomelias,” he watches me as he speaks.

  His eyes are bright. Constantly sharp and constantly moving. He shows me in to an airy, sunlit study. As Alex warned me, he tells me he wants to draw me as we talk.

  He won’t tell me what he will do, only that he cannot guarantee success. Alex warned me about his eye-watering price.

  I’m about to tell him about Drago. He nods and says, “I know him. I know the family. They’ve been here almost as long as my own family.”

  When he says that, I realize what’s odd about the house. It feels like a single person’s kingdom. The tables all have one chair. Everything is set up for a solitary occupier. Everything but the armchair where I sit. Presumably, all of his guests sit here.

  While we talk, he looks intently as he draws me. After about fifteen minutes, he looks up from the drawing to study my face, then back at the paper. Like he made a discovery.

  “You’re a man who has found love, Senor Moretti.” He smiles. “Recently, I think.”

  Unsettled, I steer him back to the business at hand.

  I say, “If I offered you a bonus for a successful outcome…”

  He holds up a hand. I see him hold back a sigh, like a man exercising patience. “Then I would say that you haven’t understood me, Lucas. If you doubt that I will use all my very best efforts for your case, save your money. If you believe me, then trust me.”

  He squints back at the paper, then at me. “If I don’t succeed, it would not be because I didn’t try hard enough. It would be because it can’t be done.”

  “And then?” I ask him.

  He shrugs again. “Then, I assume, you would have to do whatever it is you are trying to avoid.”

  I ask if I can see the drawing. It’s not only a perfect likeness, but it’s shockingly perceptive. He’s seen me more clearly than any mirror or photograph.

  I tell him, “I’ll take the drawing. How much do you want for it?”

  Sadly, he tells me it’s not possible. When he rubs his thumb and fingers, I understand that he means he won’t let me have it because of forensic traces.

  “I’ll photograph it and we’ll burn it, then.”

  He shrugs. I ask if he wants to take a picture himself before it goes up in smoke. He smiles like he might at a slow-witted child. I know at once what he means.

  As he walks me back to the gate, I ask him, “You’ll remember the drawing that well?”

  He shrugs. “Three years from now, I could reproduce it. Line for line.”

  Stefano arrives at the moment we reach Miko’s gate.

  In the back of the golden era Alpha Romeo, all the way back to the hotel, I’m trying to remember.

  Last night. Before I fell asleep.

  Did she say, ‘Goodnight?’ or did she say, ‘Goodbye’?

  Chapter Fourteen

  Poppy

  My shaky Italian doesn’t help me understand the Sicilian dialect nearly as much as I hoped it would. Even when I recognize that people are speaking Italian, the accent makes it hard for me to understand.

  People are kind, though, and it’s still evening when my taxi pulls up outside the bright and luxurious Hotel Castello San Marco. After traveling all day, I’m grateful to the happy and helpful driver.

  We struggled and mostly failed to communicate, until I showed him the name of the hotel on my phone with a picture. After that, we both tried to talk. When it didn’t work, he seemed to feel it was his duty to entertain me by singing.

  He sings operatic arias, really well. I catch sight of my smile in the rearview mirror. I even know some of the melodies well enough to sing along. Under my breath. I know almost none of the words.

  When he stops in front of the gorgeous old castle that the hotel occupies, I give him most of the euros that I got from the ATM in the airport.

  Probably I over-tipped him outrageously. I’m just so happy and relieved to be here.

  I bound all the way up the imposing sweep of stone steps. Behind the reception desk, a black-haired woman who could the model for a million secretary fantasies smiles brightly. She is happy to inform me that Sr. Moretti is in the dining room.

  The dining room down a short staircase. It’s quiet, romantic and about half full of diners. Almost all the tables are occupied by couples. They lean toward each other, smiling. Craning to be closer.

  At first I can’t find him. An elegant Maitre d’ approaches me and I’m about to ask. Then I see him, seated at a table with his back to me. He’s craning forward. Towards a slender, elegant, black-haired woman.

  Her amused eye catches mine and sparkles as her chin lifts.

  I’m already running back up the stairs as he turns, red-faced.

  I’ve flown halfway around the world, to see a man who is obviously in the middle of a romantic date. I hope my cab driver hasn’t left. There were no other vehicles in sight and I would be lost in seconds. I have to get away.