The Perfect Couple

by Lexi Landsman

  I know I’m testing boundaries the police told me not to cross, but he’s played me for long enough and now it’s his turn to be played.

  I watch him take in what I’m saying in. ‘They’d never harm her,’ he says assuredly.

  ‘How do you know that?’ I don’t give him time to answer. ‘Even if her abductors told her she wouldn’t be harmed, she’d still be terrified. If they’d been game to abduct her, she’d probably think they were capable of anything. And I mean, what if the men had weapons or links to drug or sex traffickers? They might have started out with no intention of endangering her life but maybe now they’re rethinking their plans given that we still don’t have the necklace.’

  He hasn’t made eye contact with me since I walked into the room. To hide his edginess, he starts to refold his clothes and put them back in his suitcase. ‘I didn’t think of that,’ he says quietly.

  Of course you didn’t, you adulterous egotist, I think. You just thought about yourself and your prized necklace.

  ‘I hope she’s not afraid,’ he mumbles, more to himself than to me. ‘I just feel so lost.’

  He has no idea how much he stands to lose. I can’t believe the nerve he has. It’s like he wants someone to hold him and tell him everything will be okay. That what he did wasn’t so bad and all his sins will be forgiven.

  It’s a relief when Second Lieutenant Romano walks past the room so I don’t have to respond. ‘Sarah, I can escort you now to the village to get some dinner.’

  It’s the signal. ‘Anything in particular you want for dinner, sweetheart?’ I ask Marco casually, even though I know he’ll never have so much as another morsel of food from me.

  ‘Whatever you’re having,’ he says.

  He leans forward to kiss my cheek and I have to use every ounce of my willpower not to slap his face. When his lips touch my skin, I wince. I feel repulsed. It’s as if a reptile has slithered over me. I hide my disgust and force myself to smile faintly just before I leave. This is the last time I will see my husband outside of a courthouse or jail. He doesn’t know it yet, but the next few hours will be his last as a free man.

  I walk casually out of the villa and to the back gates. Romano is beside me, walking a brusque pace as he plays the role of police escort. I give way to let him lead. He takes me to a back street, looks around and then ushers me into an undercover police vehicle for the short drive to the hotel.

  ‘What’s happened? Have they found the location?’ I ask when I find Vittoria in the hotel room waiting for me. Her arms are crossed and her face is stern.

  ‘The detectives went to both farmhouses. Outside one of them, there was a parked van that is registered to a known drug dealer from Naples,’ she says.

  I shudder. ‘Oh god,’ I say aloud, my worst fears realised. ‘A drug dealer. Dammit, Marco! What the hell was he thinking? Is the man dangerous?’

  Vittoria pauses. She seems to be giving me brief, calculated responses. ‘He is known to have possessed weapons in the past.’

  ‘Fuck!’ I swear. I pinch the bridge of my nose. The stress is bringing on a migraine. How could Marco be so stupid? He’s entrusted our daughter’s life to a drug dealer. ‘This is bad, isn’t it?’

  Vittoria shrugs and I can tell she is trying to hide the true gravity of the situation. ‘Because the man could be armed, this will become a large-scale operation. We want to move quickly but cautiously. The Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza team, NOCS, will be called in. They are getting everything in place now. Of course, we don’t want the media getting wind of this and jeopardising our operation, so we will make our move at ten pm.’

  I swallow. That’s two hours away. How can they pull this all together in such a short space of time? ‘What if he tries to escape before you get there and takes Emily with him?’ I ask, suddenly panicked knowing the man could be armed and dangerous.

  ‘Marco’s secret phone is now tapped, so if he calls the perp once he’s retrieved it, we’ll be the first to know. The officers are surveying the farmhouse from a hidden location in the mountainside where they are able to keep a close eye on any movement.’

  I rub my forehead. This is a nightmare that just seems to be getting worse.

  ‘We need you to call Sofia now and tell her to get in touch with Marco and let him know he’s left his phone there. It will take him forty-five minutes to drive to the hotel in good traffic and then she’s got to keep him there for as long as possible. Remember, you need to keep her onside. Are you ready?’

  As ready as I’ll ever be. I take out my phone and she steps back to give me some space.

  ‘Sofia, I’m sorry I was brash on the phone before,’ I say when she answers.

  ‘I’m the one who should apologise.’

  I said I’d play nice and that’s the extent of it. I need to get straight to the point. I repeat what Vittoria has told me to say. Sofia is courteous and agrees, though she sounds nervous. He has betrayed me and now she is betraying him.

  Before I hang up, I need to ensure she doesn’t change her mind, so I play one more card: the truth. ‘Sofia, right now, I don’t care about your affair with my husband. I care only about my daughter. This isn’t about some crusade to get him back for cheating on me. This is about Emily’s life. The man Marco hired to abduct her could be dangerous or armed. He could hurt her.’ My voice begins to waver. ‘She’s my daughter, Sofia. My precious child. I just want her back.’ I take a breath. ‘You understand the importance of this?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says.

  ‘So please, whatever you do to keep Marco there, don’t let him know you’re onto him.’

  I exhale heavily when I hang up.

  ‘You did well,’ Vittoria says, but I am so humiliated by what I’ve had to do that I can’t even meet her eyes.

  ‘Will Marco go to jail for this?’ I say as I stare blankly at the closed curtains.

  ‘We should have enough evidence to prosecute him for the crime,’ Vittoria says. ‘So yes, he will.’

  Marco is going to pay for what he’s done. I want him to spend the rest of his life locked up. I want him to feel what it’s like to be isolated and sealed off from the world so he knows what he put our daughter through.

  Except I want him to relive that terror. Every single day.

  EMILY

  The seconds felt like minutes, the minutes like hours, the hours like days, the days like years. To pass the time, she wrote lists of the little things she had taken for granted. Opening my bedroom window. Looking up at the sun. Watching the moon rise. Having breakfast with my family. Calling my friends. Going to school. Talking on the phone. Hugging my mother. Hearing Daniel play guitar. Jogging with my father.

  Emily thought of her family. She imagined her dad running into wherever she was being held, pinning the man against a wall and demanding to know where she was. He would frighten him so much that the man would run off, but not before her dad got the keys. Marco would race into the room she was being held in, pick her up and carry her to safety. Then she pictured her mother waiting outside, her arms outstretched, crying and then holding her close and telling her she would never let her out of her sight again.

  Emily began to cry when she wondered what would happen when her captors realised her parents really didn’t have the necklace. Would they kill her? A feeling of pure dread washed over her and she began to shake uncontrollably.

  ‘Please let me go!’ she started screaming, louder and louder, until she heard the familiar creak of the stairs as he climbed them, one by one, getting closer. The lock turned and he stepped inside. She’d been so upset that she forgot to study his movements when he entered.

  For the first time, he wasn’t wearing anything to conceal his face. His black hair was greasy and slicked back. His dark eyes were wide and the edges of his mouth seemed to twitch.

  ‘I just want to go home,’ she cried.

  ‘I’m sorry you are here,’ he muttered in reply. He started to pace, tapping his fingers on his forehead.
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  She watched him closely and realised that something in his behaviour was different. She could tell from the sweat that gathered on his forehead and dripped down his neck, and the way he moved anxiously around the room, that he was deeply distressed, made worse by her sobbing.

  ‘Then why don’t you let me go?’ she pleaded. She tried to stop herself from crying but her body still trembled uncontrollably.

  He avoided meeting her gaze. He seemed jittery and nervous. ‘I want to. But I can’t.’

  Emily knew she had to take this opportunity to talk him into letting her go. She’d once read a story about a psychologist who was kidnapped and managed to convince her captor to free her.

  He wiped the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘I’m under orders.’

  ‘Orders? Whose orders? There are others, aren’t there?’ Emily started to cry again, sensing that he was just the middleman, and maybe he was suddenly on edge because he knew that if the necklace wasn’t delivered they would have to dispose of her. ‘They’ll kill me, the others, won’t they?’ She started screaming again.

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said quickly. ‘No one is going to kill you.’ He seemed desperate for her to stop crying. He went to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water and handed it to her. She pushed it away and the water fell on the floor.

  ‘The others will,’ she cried.

  ‘There are no others,’ he spat out, ‘just one man, and he would never harm you.’

  As he said it, he turned his back to her and started to rub his face with his hands. She could tell he regretted saying so much.

  ‘This man,’ Emily said, again trying to stem her tears and think clearly so she could extract as much information out of him as possible, ‘did he hire you to abduct me?’

  ‘It was never meant to take this long,’ he mumbled and she noticed a twitch in his right leg. ‘He said one day, or two max.’

  He was talking openly to her, as though he had to talk to someone aloud to allay his own guilt and fear. Perhaps he wasn’t a seasoned criminal like she had thought. ‘I only did this because I needed the money. I shouldn’t have,’ he muttered to himself under his breath. ‘Stronzate! Why did I listen to my father?’

  His distress only made her more afraid, because with each movement he seemed to grow more anxious and think less clearly. What might he do to get rid of her if he lost control?

  ‘So, are you just following this man’s instructions?’ Emily asked.

  ‘He’s gone cold,’ he said simply. ‘He hasn’t replied to me or answered my calls.’ He paused, and she could tell from his body language that he was afraid and unsure of what to do. The boss he spoke of would surely not be forgiving if he knew the details he had divulged to her.

  ‘Maybe I should just let you go.’

  ‘Yes, you should,’ Emily said quickly, feeling a wave of relief that this nightmare might finally be over.

  He went to the door and unlocked it. Emily stood up, shocked that he was going to let her walk out, just like that. Her heart was racing. She thought about just pushing past him and running for it, but she didn’t want him to change his mind and go after her. So, she forced herself to walk calmly towards the open door, when he suddenly paused and faced her. ‘I just need some time to think.’

  And with that, he closed the door and locked it. Emily stood staring at the door in shock. The window of hope that had opened before her for a few glimmering moments had shut, leaving her inside the dark, claustrophobic room again, alone with her thoughts.

  She had been inches away from freedom and now that opportunity had passed and she didn’t know if she would ever get another one. Why hadn’t she just run for it when she had the chance?

  MARCO

  Everything was falling apart. Sarah hadn’t regained her memory. The police were watching our every move. The media were digging deep for a headline and I feared they would uncover my sordid past. And now, to top it all off, I had lost my secret phone. Of all the things that I could possibly have misplaced, why that? How could I have been so reckless? I searched everywhere for it. The only places I could have left it were in the rental car, which I checked, or at Sofia’s hotel. I wanted to call her to find out but my normal phone was tapped, and I couldn’t risk arousing suspicion.

  I had been using my secret phone to stay in regular contact with Don to get updates on Emily, but now five hours had passed and I couldn’t call him on my normal phone. I cursed myself for being so negligent.

  I needed to head back to Sofia’s hotel. She was not the type to pry, but what did I really know about her? I couldn’t risk her seeing the contents of my message inbox. Up until I lost it, I’d deleted every message from Don as they came through but he could have sent more in the past few hours.

  Sarah had gone to get dinner, so I decided that now was the best time to go. If my wife called me while I was out, I would tell her I went for a drive to clear my head. I almost walked straight into my son on the way out.

  ‘Papà, where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going for a drive. I just need some time alone.’

  Out of nowhere, Daniel stepped forward and hugged me. I was stunned into silence. Shame made my body stiffen as I hugged him back. ‘You’re not to blame for this, Papà.’

  But I am.

  ‘We’ll get Emmy back,’ he said reassuringly.

  The roles should have been reversed. I should have been the one to comfort him and tell him everything would be okay. And yet my twenty-year-old son was being more of a man than I was. I opened my mouth to say something but closed it again. Instead I nodded meekly.

  ‘Papà, I know we haven’t been close lately. There are some things we need to talk about. I hope when this is all over, we can mend whatever it is that’s broken.’

  His words felt like a knife to my chest, carving guilt into a new shape. I had hurt my children and, in doing so, I had not only morphed into my own father but had exceeded him.

  I had to get to Sofia’s hotel, so I couldn’t even afford to give my son the time of day he so deserved. ‘I’m so sorry, Daniel,’ I said, even though he would never know how deeply my apology delved. I was sorry for being a failure of a father. I was sorry for being an adulterous husband. I was sorry for putting my career before my children. I was sorry for being so obsessed with the necklace that I let its diamonds shine above my morals. I was sorry for the nightmare I had thrust my family into. I was sorry for it all.

  ‘I’ll be back soon.’ I turned and left, shame knitting to my body like a cobweb. The media were still camped out the front of the villa so I put on a cap and exited through the back on foot and then walked two blocks to my rental car.

  I tapped the steering wheel anxiously as I sped through the narrow roads that snaked along the cliffs of the lake. They were barely wide enough for two-way traffic, and I was regularly overtaking cars. I should have slowed down, but I had to get to Sofia fast.

  As if she were reading my mind, my phone rang and her number flashed on the screen. She had never called me on my regular cell before. When I answered, I reminded myself that the police would hear every word. At least I’d already come clean about the affair.

  ‘Marco, it’s Sofia.’

  ‘Hi, Sofia,’ I said calmly. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘How are you holding up?’

  There was something artificial in her tone so I assumed she was concerned that Sarah was in earshot, or had gathered that my phone might be tapped.

  ‘Not well. I wish none of this had happened,’ I said, which was the truth.

  ‘Marco, you left something here,’ she said casually.

  My pulse quickened. I was immediately relieved that it was there but then terrified that she would mention the secret phone and the police would wonder why I hadn’t disclosed its existence and then promptly look into its call records. ‘I know,’ I said quickly, before she could say another word. ‘I’m on my way to you now, to get it.’

 
; ‘Oh, good,’ she said. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing you.’

  I swallowed. She obviously hadn’t read anything on the phone or she wouldn’t have sounded so nonchalant. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ I said and then hung up before she could say anything else.

  Now the detectives would know where I was headed. They wouldn’t think much of me, given that I was going to see my mistress, but at least it wouldn’t raise any red flags. They knew I was cheating on my wife. It might have made me deceitful but it didn’t make me a criminal.

  My secret phone was always on silent, which meant that at least Sofia wouldn’t be alerted to any calls or messages from Don. I hoped she had popped it down somewhere out of view. Don’t look at the phone, Sofia, I prayed as I drove.

  I wanted to stop and find a payphone somewhere so I could call Don to get an update but I feared that it would slow me down. The sooner I got to Sofia, the sooner I’d have my phone and then I’d promptly leave to call him.

  Don had been nervous about the abduction from the start. He was not a seasoned criminal like his father; in fact, I got the distinct impression that he was entirely unlike his father in every way. That day in Naples, I’d gone to my old friend Stefano knowing that he could get the job done. I had everything organised and just needed someone to carry it out. It would practically be a walk in the park for Stefano given his extensive portfolio of crimes. But when I saw him that first time after so many years apart, I was shocked by how much he had changed. His face was lined with scars. He had a missing tooth and his shoulder had a nasty keloid scar that I was sure had been the result of a bullet. His eyes were different too. They were darker, black almost, and they seemed to bear no capacity for sympathy.

  Something in my gut told me not to trust him. Plus the mere look of him would scare Emily. So, when I glanced upon his son and heard about his desperation to study, a desire his father laughed at, my instinct was that he would be the right fit. He was well built like Stefano, but he had a gentler demeanour. I offered him enough money to pay for a full year’s tuition, and though he hesitated when he heard what I was asking of him, he took the cash gratefully. It was more money than he had ever seen in his life.