Chapter 18: Wicked Fame: Chapter 18

This is perfection.

Is this the place I’ve been dreaming of? Is this the life that has haunted my dreams? It must be. My heart has been full ever since I landed in Italy. Every day is filled with a sense of rightness, things clicking into place like I was always supposed to find my way back here.

Francesca and I took the train to Milan today. We walked around and she shopped for clothes. As usual, we stopped at a fancy ristorante for lunch. After that exceptional boat ride, this was a more normal day trip, but still great.

On the train journey back to Como, Francesca lays her head on my shoulder casually as she closes her eyes.

“Not protesting?” she moans.

“About what?”

“Me using your shoulder as a pillow.”

I move her head to nestle it in the crook of my arm, so her ear rests on the muscled width of my bicep. “Take my arm, too, if you want.”

“This vacation has worked wonders for your grumpiness.” Francesca snuggles, her velvet-soft hair shifting over my skin. “Or do you like me now because you’ve seen how rich I am?”

“It’s not your money that makes you attractive.” It’s the hidden depths of her. I may have seen a lot of layers of the heiress’s darkness and sexuality and while they were captivating, her lighthearted, fun, playful nature is equally magnetic.

Francesca stretches the corners of my lips with her fingers. “Are you actually smiling?”

“Am I not allowed to?”

“You are, but you can no longer lie that you’re not enjoying yourself with me. This trip is amazing, isn’t it?”

“I already told you. I love it. Something about these places that we visit just speaks to me. There’s a sense of familiarity even though I’ve never been here in my life.”

“I’m glad.”

My hand moves on its own will to bracket the side of her shoulders and nudge her body closer to mine. “So what’re we doing next?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you have any more boat trips planned?”

“No, but we can play a game.” The mischievous glint in her eyes is a challenge I can’t resist. “It’s a game I’ve made up. The name’s kiss and tell.”

“Sounds like we’ll be getting up close and personal for this one.”

“Wait till you hear the rules. You have to kiss me in the spot where I tell you to. Then I’ll tell you one of my secrets. When it’s your turn, I’ll kiss you wherever you want me to and you have to tell me a secret I ask for.”

“You’ll kiss anywhere I ask? Does it have to be on my body?”

“I’ll even kiss your gun because I’m open-minded like that.”

“That’s not what I meant.” I scratch my nose.

“Then what did you mean?”

“Wait and you’ll find out.”

“Kiss me here.” She points to the junction between her head and the back of her neck. We’re back in our hotel room with two glasses of wine and a platter of antipasti laid out on the bedside table.

“Why there?”

“I like being kissed there. Bet you didn’t know that.”

“I’ll remember it.” I plant my lips exactly where her finger is digging into her skin.

When I raise my head, spots of light speckle across my vision.

In the momentary play of colors, I see an image as clear as the wineglass Francesca is playing with. She’s an artist and I’m just a civilian. In the blink of an eye, she’s happy and I’m home. In another dimension, we’re a pair of birds flying through the storm and landing on a dry branch.

In this world, though, the water is still drenching our hearts.

She clears her throat. “Your turn now.”

“What about the secret?” I ask. “Weren’t you supposed to tell me one?”

“Already did.” She pulls the covers over her bare legs. “Told you about my erotic spot. Your turn now.”

I scoff. “You should start gambling at the casino I manage down in Queens. You’d even beat the card sharps at their game. You’re that good at cheating.”

Her eyes widen in false innocence. She pops an olive into her mouth, then washes it down with a sip of white wine.

Whatever. She’s cute so I forgive her.

I push my hand into her wild, flowing hair, cupping her head and tipping her head forward to my chest. I took off my shirt earlier but before I could undress fully, she roped me into this game. “Kiss me here.”

“I thought you’d choose a more interesting spot,” Francesca says.

“This is where my heart is. And I’ve never let you kiss me anywhere close to it.”

She’s a smart girl so she understands the metaphor.

“Gabriele.” Her breath is a wet feather sliding over my cheek. “You can be vulnerable with me. I won’t use your secrets or hurt you. I’m more likely to hurt myself, given how much of an addictive personality I have.”

The first thing they train out of you in the mafia is trust. Followed by the vulnerability. But from the depths of the prison where I stuffed them at eighteen, both come rushing out at the sound of Francesca’s voice.

Like she was always the one meant to open the floodgates and free them.

Her soft, wet mouth lingers on my chest, kissing all over me until I tell her to stop.

“I want to know who your first love was.”

“My boss’s wife.”

“What? That’s weird.”

“I saw her often when they were courting. Always wished she were mine. She was a true lady.”

“So your first love was unrequited?” She massages my back. “How sad.”

“It was. But I’ve moved on from it now,” I reply.

I don’t dwell on the hard clench of muscle in the spot where Francesca’s lips were. Extending my hand, I grab my wineglass. I really need alcohol to get through this game. Vulnerability like this is too addicting. She’s cutting me open and I’m enjoying it. Nobody has been so interested in my secrets, my pains, my past, my heartbreaks.

When she questions me, I can’t help but answer.

If she asks me for my debit card PIN now, I won’t even hesitate. That’s the level of hold she has over me.

“Kiss my feet. I want to feel like a queen.” Francesca raises her leg, planting her foot in front of my face, wiggling her toes. They’re painted a light pink, as perfectly manicured as every other part of her.

“Sure, Your Majesty.” I take her foot and rub my lips between her toes. “Good enough?”

“More.”

I trail my mouth over her heel, skimming the hard bulb of her ankle, gliding further and further up. Tracing the curve of her leg, her knee, right up to the flesh of her inner thigh.

She taps the top of my head. “Okay, stop or this won’t be a harmless game anymore.”

I drop her leg. It lands on the mattress with a soft thud.

Francesca pulls her leg back, folding it against her chest. “Is there any secret of mine you want to know?”

“Your bank account details would be helpful.”

“You serious?”

“Consider it charity. Lending a poor criminal a million dollars.”

“I’m not telling you my passwords.”

“I was joking—”

Her face reddens. “They’re too embarrassing.”

“That’s the reason you’re not telling me? Not because I work for the mob and could scam you out of your money?”

“Come on. You’d never do that.”

I do a slow head shake. “I’m terrified by your lack of common sense.”

“Rich heiresses don’t have a lot of that anyway.”

“Living up to the stereotype, are you?”

“Enough.” She rocks her body forward, sending tremors across the bed. “I want to know more of your embarrassing past stories. So tell me where to kiss you next?”

My fingers reach under my pockets for the bulge on my side. I throw my wallet onto the bed.

“On this.”

“Why this?”

“So it always smells like you when I use it,” I reply.

Francesca picks up the luxurious brown leather and studies it, quickly laying her mouth on it before returning it. She winds her arms around me. “Why do you want it to smell of me?”

I can admit a lot, but not the truth. Not before she does. I long to keep a piece of her because I know I can’t keep all of her, no matter how hard I try.

I graze my thumb against her earlobe. “Because you smell good.”

“That’s a simpler reason than I thought.”

“What did you guess?”

“That you wanted to have something that reminded you of me. But I don’t know why you would want that.”

She’s a little too close to the truth for my comfort, so I hide my vulnerability with a sneaky smile.

“I see you so often I don’t need to be reminded of you,” I bluster.

“But that won’t be forever, right?” Her bottom lip is shaking. The quake travels all the way down her neck to her shoulder. She curls her body into a ball. “Let’s stop playing this game?”

“What’s wrong, baby?”

“Gabriele, I don’t want to find out more of your heartbreaking secrets. I don’t want you to know more of mine.” Francesca’s lips clam shut. She studies the mattress quietly, tracing over the edge of the pillow with her nails. “When I’m so scared I can’t breathe when I’m so hopeless I can’t think of anything else, you’re the only one who can make me feel okay. But you’re going to disappear from my life someday. I can’t afford to depend on you so much.”

I click my tongue. “You always overthink this much?”

“Every single day.” A smile edges through her answer. “My mind’s a terrifying place to be.”

“What is that mind thinking of now?”

“About how I’ve never wanted to give anyone everything, but I want to give you everything, even my bank passwords.” Her eyes lift hesitantly. “Is that stupid?”

“That depends on whether you’ll regret it.” Because I’m desperate for validation that her feelings for me are as strong, as absolute, as mine, I push her further. “Something tells me you’re conflicted.”

Vulnerability slashes a wound in the air. Fear plays on her pale skin. I’ve never considered this but she might be as scared of admitting to these weird, nameless emotions as me.

“Gabriele, I love art.” She breathes out softly, confirming my hunch. “I gave my everything for art. But it left me with nothing but paranoia and heartache.”

The unspoken follow-up question flashes in my mind even though she doesn’t voice it.

What if you’re the same? What if you take everything from me and leave me with a broken heart, too?

Art is Francesca’s greatest devotion, her biggest passion, and yet it is destroying her, breaking her apart piece by piece. Maybe to her, pure passion is a festering wound more than a glorious ecstasy.

“You loved your mother, too,” Francesca continues. “You did everything to support her. It ended up killing you. Tell me, do you regret it or was it worth it?”

The cold memories from the back closet of my brain pop up again. She has asked me a complex question to which there is no easy answer. It’s not that I regret what I did, I simply regret not recognizing that Mom would never love me back. That she would never see my love for her.

Am I making the same mistake again?

Is she afraid of making me make that mistake again?

“There’s nothing in the world worth having that doesn’t hurt,” I say. “But if you’re afraid of losing everything, then there’s no point in pushing yourself.”

I reach out to caress her cheek.

For the first time ever, she recoils.

That single action brings down the temperature by a few hundred degrees until it feels like I’m in the middle of the Arctic.

The distance between us seems infinite at that moment. An infinite ocean I can’t hope to cross. Besides, if I manage to get to the other side, I’ll never be able to come back.

This is a one-way trip.

All it’d take to clear this up is one line.

I won’t hurt you.

We’re both experts at avoiding the truth, though, so I let the chill of our frozen relationship ice me.

“Forget about it. It’s not important,” I say.

“Yeah.” Her nod is all eagerness. “Let’s play another game.”

We watch television, not speaking a word to each other throughout. When the show’s over, we turn off the TV and go to sleep.

Just like that, our time in Italy draws to an end, leaving us both with a heavy, swollen awareness of everything we have got to lose.

We’re flying business class on the return journey, too.

“Why did I never get a rich friend before?” I examine the bubbles in the champagne glass the flight attendant just handed me. “My life could’ve been so much easier.”

“It’s not easy to find someone like me,” Francesca replies. “I hope you see how lucky you are.”

“Again, thanks for this break. It was great to get away from my boss.”

I told Nico I was going to Italy on Friday. He was the one who urged me to take a break after I finished the last job, so I did. Though he was surprised by the suddenness of my announcement, he promised he wouldn’t call me for work and he has kept his promise.

“I’ll never forget the places we saw,” I continue, a wistful longing sneaking into my heart as the plane ascends further and further up until Italy disappears under a bed of clouds.

I’ll never forget being with Francesca, how magical it felt to experience a vacation with her.

Though I can’t afford to leave New York or get a long-term visa to Italy given my prison record, I could have lived with the knowledge that Italy is where my weary soul longs to settle down.

Only now that I’m sitting inside the flight, her fingers threaded in mine, I’m growing aware that the feeling of being in the right place isn’t fading.

“Let’s come back again when we both have time,” Francesca says, popping open one of the three tiny bottles of vodka she got from the flight attendant. “I have to show you Venice and Rome.”

No thanks, I want to say. I’d love to erase this entire fucking trip from my memory.