by Lush, Tamara
"Yeah. And because of my…er, uncle. He promised I'd be safe. I thought I'd come here and write my next book, but I haven't been able to focus. I have it all reported, but I don't even know if I want to write anymore."
I frowned. "Why?"
"I'm afraid, honestly. Afraid if I write about another Mafia boss more people will die. I hate violence, Skylar. I hate what violence has done to my country. I hate what it did to my family. I hate what it could do to anyone I ever care about again."
"So, what's next?" I wasn't sure she wanted the answer.
"I don't know. Because of the reporting in my book Bruno Castiglione was arrested and—"
A smile spread across my face. "Luca! That's amazing. It also means you're safer, right?"
He shrugged. "That's what my uncle says. I have no idea. I've lost all perspective. Castiglione's on house arrest, and his trial is scheduled for next month. I'll feel better if he's convicted."
I shifted so I was sitting in his lap, my legs wrapped around him. "So, let me ask you again. If Castiglione's in jail, why are you leaving?"
He rubbed his hands over my arms. "Because I'm still afraid. I'm still afraid the Mafia might find me here, and it's just become too much with my uncle…uh, Federico. And with you."
I said nothing, just regarded him stonily.
"What?" he asked.
"So, you'll spend your whole life on the run?" I put my hand over his heart. "Look here. You have an entire second book reported, no reason to think anyone's found you, and all the luxury in the world on this island. It's a perfect place to write. You obviously were—are—a great journalist. Why would you want to fade away and not help people, your country, with your writing?"
Luca shrugged, clearly miserable.
I sighed. "Even if you don't want to write the book you thought, you could write something else. A memoir. About your parents. About how you went on the run and feared for your life. That would be a huge bestseller," she said. "Especially in America. People would love that. You've got it all. Intrigue. Corruption. Sex."
He shrugged again, and I eyed him skeptically. "You have this amazing platform. You have things to say. You have an entire country—hell, all of Europe, it sounds like from that Guardian Review—reading your work, yet you're choosing to stay silent, and you're also choosing to run. You once believed in helping people. If you're going to keep running, you need to find the courage inside you again to write."
Luca glanced sideways at me. "What's the phrase in English? 'Man up'? Are you telling me to man up?"
I nodded, aiming to look sympathetic but realizing I'd come off as cold and a bit harsh. "Maybe a little. Sorry. It's just…you have your uncle, or father, or whatever he is, wanting to get to know you. He's still alive. That's a blessing."
Luca huffed out a sigh.
"And you have me. I care about you. I…I could love you."
His expression was full of disbelief. "Really? You could? After everything I just said?"
"Yeah. I could. You're afraid, Luca, but that's natural. What you shouldn't be is afraid of opening your heart, because living without doing that is like being dead. That's what I think."
He squeezed my upper arms with both hands and raised his voice. "Of course I'm afraid of opening my heart. Why wouldn't I be? My parents were murdered, and my mom lied to me. Don't forget, I just found that out."
"Understandable. But she probably did it to spare you and your father. And regardless, at some point, you have to live."
With my finger, I tapped the skin over his heart, and he snorted bitterly. "When will I ever be able to really live? How? With all this guilt and fear? How can I trust anyone when I'll probably lose them? Especially if I write another book."
I slid off him, annoyed. "I get that you've been in danger, and I don't know what that feels like. But I do know what it means to grieve and lose someone you love. We all eventually lose people we love, whether it's from cancer or murder or old age. We all suffer. It's just up to us how we live in between the suffering. How we love in those moments between the pain."
We stared at each other, unblinking, not speaking. Luca climbed out of bed and walked to the door.
"I'm going downstairs to make coffee," he said.
I bowed my head and exhaled as he closed the door. I'd thought we had a deep emotional connection, a mental attachment to each other. Now, I wasn't so sure. It was as if he hadn't heard me at all.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Admitting Is The Hardest Part
LUCA
I jabbed at the buttons of the fancy coffeemaker. What did Skylar know about life and death and grief? She was young. A girl.
A really smart girl.
She'd lost her mother when she was a teenager, never had a father, put herself through school. When I thought about it, she was much more resilient and tougher than I was. I'd been raised with privilege and wealth, and while my situation was precarious with Bruno Castiglione, I had enough money to hide for the rest of my life. In luxury.
Skylar has always, and would always, have to fight and struggle.
Unless…
I stopped myself. The idea of caring for her had been a constant fantasy in recent days. I was old-fashioned in many ways, and thought that if I was in a relationship with a woman it was my responsibility to care for her. Not just financially, but in every way.
Everything about Skylar made me want to protect her. It was one of the reasons I wanted to run far away. What if we were together and something happened to her? What if I was unable to protect her? I couldn't bear the thought of failing her.
I was downstairs for an hour and grew surprised that she didn't follow me and press me into talking more. For most of the hour, though, I stared off into space, thinking about what she'd said.
Love in between the moments of suffering.
Taking two coffees upstairs, I found her lying on a chaise on the terrace. Her hair was wet, and her body was swathed in a big white towel, her eyes closed to the bright sun. Her phone rested on her stomach. My dick stirred just looking at her bare shoulders and legs.
"Sky."
She opened her eyes and I handed her a glass. "What's this?"
"I figured out how to make an iced coffee with that machine."
Her mouth turned up in a smile. She sat up and sipped. "Very nice. Thank you."
I reached down and stroked her cheek with the back of my fingers. The ringing of her phone broke the silence.
"Hey, Jimmy," she said, answering immediately, her voice crisp and businesslike. "Oh! Wow. Really? Whoa, shit. Where? Thanks for telling me. I'll be there as soon as I can. 'Kay, bye."
"Who's Jimmy?" I asked when she hung up.
She stood up. "Why do you care?"
"For someone who talks about peace and love and Zen, you're awfully sarcastic sometimes."
"And for someone who's going to leave, you're awfully curious about who I talk to."
"I am curious, and I do care," I said softly.
Her gaze faltered. "That was my police source. Cops found a body in the Palmira Preserve. Murder."
She sounded a little breathless. Typical reporter. I fought back a smile.
"So, I need to go. Can you drive me to my house? I need my car. I want to get to the preserve before the TV reporters."
"Why don't you just take my car?"
She shot me a baffled look. "Aren't you leaving?"
I shook my head. "No. I'm not."
"Well…what if you need your car today?"
"I won't. I'm not going anywhere. I need to write. It's not like you're going to steal my uncle's Mercedes. How long will you be gone? Six hours? Eight hours? I want you to come back here when you're done. I have a lot to think about, Skylar. We have more to talk about. Maybe we can go out to dinner tonight. Since it's Saturday, I'll try to make a reservation somewhere. Maybe on the mainland."
She grinned and hugged me.
"You left some clothes here last weekend. Let me get them for you."
"You are amazing, you know that?" Skylar kissed me and whipped the towel off herself, tossing it on a chair. She spoke excitedly as she put on her lingerie and a long, cotton dress, ignoring the fact that I was openly checking out her gorgeous body. Maybe she'd have just a few minutes for a quick—
"Apparently a kayaker found the body. And guess what? Half his torso was eaten by an alligator."
Her words jolted me out of my sexual fantasy.
"Florida," we both said at the same time, laughing.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Rite Of Passage
SKYLAR
I'd covered a few murders in Boston during my internship, but they were always cold and sterile stories, with me on one end of the yellow police tape and the body and cops far on the other side.
Today at the Palmira Preserve, I'd reap the benefits of being a small-town crime reporter.
"What a way to start the weekend. Come on," Jimmy said, holding up the police tape so I could duck under. "I'll show you the corpse. Or what's left of it."
My heart went into overdrive. I'd been at my mother's bedside when she passed, and had been so devastated, all I could think was my mother looked so relieved and peaceful in death. But a murder victim in a swamp? I wasn't sure I wanted to see the body. But I also couldn't turn Jimmy down. This was a rite of passage for reporters. I needed to ace this test.
The morning's coffee sloshed around uncomfortably in my stomach as I followed Jimmy down a boardwalk.
It was so hot and bright out, the sun was almost colorless, pure light beating down on the wooden walkway and the Technicolor green swamp surrounding the path. In the distance, a cluster of cops stood peering over the boardwalk railing, and as we approached, I saw men in hip-waders in the narrow river that flowed between the boardwalk and a thicket of mangroves.
"Who are they?" I hissed at Jimmy.
"Medical Examiner's office. And some of our techs looking for evidence."
I nodded and held my breath.
Jimmy addressed two of the cops looking down into the water. "Guys, let the reporter have a look."
The men stepped aside, and I felt my entire body trembling uncontrollably.
"Right there," Jimmy said, pointing down.
I stepped forward, mouth open. There, in the shallow water, tangled in the mangroves, was a human body. Or what had been. He—I assumed it was a man—was bloated, puffed up like a sick, yellow-gray balloon. Pulpy red flesh twisted around what appeared to be arm bones, and I thought I spotted a single eye, half-open in a sickening, horrific gaze. The other eye…the entire left side of his head actually, was missing.
Oh God.
I quickly turned away and sipped a shallow breath.
"See where the gators got his legs?" one of the cops said, removing a toothpick from his mouth and pointing. "Right below the knees. And when we arrived, a big-ass vulture was snacking away on his face. That guy's probably been in this swamp for several days. Surprised there's anything left of him."
I turned my head, shooting another quick glance to the body as bile rose in my throat.
Indeed, the man's legs were missing. Or underwater. Or shredded, torn and bloodied to the groin. I didn't stare long enough to determine which. If that wasn't horrific enough, I noticed a long cut in a half-circle through flesh. Was that his throat? I wasn't even sure, the body was so putrefied and mangled.
"Holy shit," I whispered, thankful I was still wearing sunglasses and the cops couldn't see the fear, sadness, and revulsion in my eyes. "Was his throat slashed?"
I stepped back, not wanting to see any more. If I lingered, the contents of my stomach might have come back up.
Jimmy glanced at me. "You didn't hear it from us, but yeah. The chief's coming to give a news conference soon and he'll tell you all about it."
"Was he killed there?" I swallowed hard. "Weird place for a body."
Jimmy shook his head. "No. We think he was killed further down at the wooden platform. We found a shitload of blood there on the boardwalk."
I peered into the brown, murky river on the other side of the boardwalk and took several deep breaths but got no relief. I realized the thick, humid air smelled sweet, like rotting meat. "Is that smell…?"
"Dead body? Yep."
Holding my breath for a few seconds, I walked toward the parking lot, trying not to retch.
"Was that your first?" Jimmy asked, catching up.
"Huh?" I was trying to keep the coffee in my stomach and had zoned out for a few seconds.
"Have you ever seen a dead body before? A floater like that?"
I couldn't help but grin a little at Jimmy's casual yet macabre questions. "That was my first."
"Right on. So, hey, good job on not puking. I had a bet with the guys that you wouldn't, and I won. Thanks."
I rolled my eyes and snorted. I reached up to adjust my sunglasses, which had slipped down my nose from the perspiration. "You guys are so bad."
"Yeah, you get kinda jaded as a cop," Jimmy said cheerfully.
Finally, we were back at the parking lot, and I slid back under the tape. I quickly pecked out a few sentences in an email to the newsroom so they could update the online story, then tweeted a few details. As I waited for the news conference in the shade of a large tree, she dialed Luca.
"Hey," I breathed, still slightly queasy. "I just saw the body."
"Really?" He sounded genuinely interested. "Was he actually ripped apart by an alligator?"
"Yep. Part of his legs were totally eaten off. So awful."
"Wow. I can't say I've ever seen that."
"Oh, gotta run. The chief's here."
"Be careful, amore mio."
I beamed when I heard him say those words. The unsettled feeling in me was crowded out by a shimmer of adoration for Luca. He was still calling me that after our talk. Amore mio. My love.
By the time Chief Judson was ready to address the media, a few other reporters had gathered. We all clustered around the chief, who usually held news conferences about boring things like drunk-driving checkpoints and seatbelt usage. This was only the second homicide on Palmira that year, he said, the first being a man who had bludgeoned his brother with a baseball bat in a fit of rage during a family barbecue on Memorial Day, right when I'd started at the paper.
I held my phone and notebook in one hand and wrote with the other. Audio recording the chief's remarks was normal, but I also liked to take old-fashioned notes too. That made me feel like more of a journalist somehow.
I scribbled as he talked in a slight New York accent, coupled with a monotone. "So, this is one of those things you usually see on TV or in Hollywood. Shortly after oh-seven-hundred hours—that's seven o'clock—a kayaker in the mangroves called us to report a body. We got out here and found the deceased in the water. We've tentatively identified him as Gianni Innocenti. We got his ID from his wallet, and we have good reason to believe that's his real name. We can tell you when we arrived on the scene a very large vulture was near the body. We also saw some alligators in the area, but we don't believe that's how the man died because we found other evidence. He's the victim of a homicide, but at this time, we're not releasing the manner of death. We think he's been in the swamp for several days, if the condition of the body's any indication."
Gianni Innocenti. The name sounded so Italian. Maybe I was hypersensitive because of Luca and his situation. I scowled in the direction of the chief and tried to read his sweaty face, but his sunglasses obscured any expression. I raised my hand.
The chief pointed to me. "Yes, Skylar?"
"Where's Mr. Innocenti from?"
The chief sucked in a breath. "Well, that's interesting. He had an Italian passport that said he was from Naples. Naples, Italy, not Naples, Florida. We ran him in criminal databases and someone with that name is wanted by Interpol on murder charges in Serbia and Italy."
I felt sick to my stomach all over agai
n. I wanted to call Luca, but the TV reporters were asking questions about the alligator, Interpol, and whether the man's body was badly decomposed. I stopped writing in my notebook, grateful for my smartphone's recording capability. Could the homicide victim have been on Palmira for Luca, or was this all just a coincidence? Should I say something to the chief or Jimmy in private?
The news conference ended, and I approached the chief as he walked to his car. I'd talked with him a few times for stories, and he'd been friendly in the past. Hopefully he'd be accommodating today, when I really needed information.
"Sir? Can I ask you a few things on background? I won't quote you."
"Sure."
"I heard the guy's throat was slit."
The chief nodded. "Yep. It was. We think that's how he died. But I'm asking you not to put that in the paper just yet. Only us and the killer know that detail. And you now."
"No problem. But is the public in any danger?"
The chief's eyes got squinty, and he tilted his head back and forth. "It's hard to say. I don't think so. I have a feeling this guy was here on vacation and maybe one of his Mafia frenemies happened to catch up with him. You like that word, frenemy? I just learned it from my teenage son." The chief chuckled. "This guy was kind of a scumbag according to his criminal record. Wanted for a bunch of stuff in Europe, like I said. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is taking over this investigation, in fact, and the FBI is coming in too."
I swallowed hard. "Can you give me any other details for my story? Was he staying here on Palmira? Where's his car?"
"You didn't hear it from me, but he was staying at the Palm Inn. If you go there now, you should be able to get photos of the FDLE techs processing the scene. And his rental car was found near your newsroom, parked in front of the coffee shop, but we towed that to our impound lot behind headquarters. The FDLE and the Feds are taking over this investigation soon. We're just securing the scene here."
"Thanks, Chief."
I walked quickly back to Luca's car. I cranked the air conditioner and called the editor on duty in the newsroom to dictate all the details. After I hung up, I considered whether to call Luca, but decided against it. Gianni was dead. I didn't want to worry Luca if it was nothing—and what if his phone was tapped? No, I should just finish up then get back to his house as fast as possible.