Dirty Lies

by Lush, Tamara

Curiosity Killed the Reporter

  SKYLAR

  “Skylar, let me get this straight. You went to hot guy’s house for dinner. The two of you had good conversation, lots of laughs and a hot kiss. Then he was okay when you said you wanted to take things slow and not fuck on the first date. He said he’d call you. I’m not exactly seeing the problem here.”

  Emily and I were each on our first beer while sitting poolside at my condo, dissecting Luca’s words and the previous evening. It was Friday afternoon, and I had the day off because I’d worked so much overtime.

  It felt decadent, almost like I was on vacation, to be lounging with my best friend on what was normally a workday. Normally I didn’t like beer and never drank in the middle of the day, but the rarity of a day off seemed like a good time to loosen up.

  Sitting on a chair beneath an umbrella, I wore a floppy straw hat, while Emily sat in the sun. I scowled at Emily’s assessment of Luca. The farther I got from his good looks and charm, the more I questioned exactly who he was.

  “Doesn’t it seem weird? Why wouldn’t he talk about his family or his past? And why would a guy that good-looking want me?”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me? Don’t start. You don’t need me to remind you that you’re hot.”

  “I’m fat.”

  “You’re curvy and men love that. Jimmy said all the cops talk about your ass.”

  “Whatever.” I grunted at the thought of cops discussing my body and took a long sip of beer.

  Emily sighed. “Skylar. Calm down. Who knows? Luca sounds a little old-fashioned, but honestly he also sounds kind of sweet. At least he’s definitely not just some bro dude who demands to fuck and run. Maybe he is just private. You should be happy. This sounds promising and fun. Damn, I’d screw his brains out the next time I saw him. What’s the big deal? As long as you know what you’re getting going in.”

  Emily drained her Corona, and I just stared at her. If only I could be so practical about sex.

  “You’re always looking for the bad,” Emily continued. “Remember when you were trying out OKCupid last month and you got a perfectly nice message from that marketing guy in Tampa? You texted something to me like, ‘Just got a well thought-out, kind message from a cute guy. He must be a serial killer.’”

  I sighed. Emily was right. I was too hard on men. And on myself.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “Damn James.”

  The mention of my ex’s name elicited a wary stare from Emily. “Christ. How many times do I need to say it? You need to forget about that asshole.”

  I mumbled an agreement. “Did I ever tell you the final straw?”

  “No,” Emily said, “but I can’t hate him any more than I already do. After you told me that he pushed you off the bed I didn’t want to know more. Really, Skylar. You’re so strong and tough. You put yourself through college. You’re an orphan. How could you let a man do that to you?”

  I winced at the word orphan. “I sound like a cliché, but the emotional abuse just kind of happened subtly, over time. He waited to ask me out until after my internship was over, and I thought that was chivalrous. He was funny and cute and…I dunno, I thought we had a good connection. And I was ashamed to even admit to myself that things had gotten to such a shitty point.”

  “It was more than just emotional abuse from the sounds of it. So, what made you break it off?”

  “It was my graduation day. He didn’t come to the actual ceremony but said he had a surprise for me later. Wanted to celebrate my graduation and my job offer at The Post. I went to his house and…surprise! He had invited another woman over. He wanted us to fuck while he watched.”

  Emily grimaced. “Shut up.”

  “Yep. I mean, I don’t have anything against people who have threesomes or whatever. But not for me. He told me that this woman—some redhead from South Boston—was my graduation present. Can you believe that? Out of the blue like that? He said it was so I could indulge my fantasies. I think he really thought I’d like it.”

  “Asshole. Indulging his fantasies and pretending they’re yours. What did you do? I would have kicked him in the balls.”

  “I told him to fuck off and left. Haven’t talked to him since.”

  “Listen,” Emily said. She reached out and put a hand on my arm. “I think Luca’s just what you need right now to forget about all that. Just enjoy something casual. You don’t have to marry him, no matter who he ends up being. The important thing is it sounds like he’ll be great in bed.”

  I sighed and opened the little blue cooler sitting near my feet. I popped open two more Coronas with an opener and handed one to Emily, who asked, “Did you look him up on the Internet Do any cyber-stalking?”

  “No, I haven’t had time between working on my story and going to his house. And this morning…well, I got busy trying to outline my new reporting project.”

  Emily tossed a disgusted look my way. “You need to cut that shit with the unpaid overtime. Get out your iPad.”

  I always had my iPad with me. I extracted it from the tote and swiped the screen, and as Emily drank and texted Jimmy, I figured out how to search websites only in Italian. There were thousands of hits because Luca Rossi was apparently a common Italian name.

  “Okay, here we go, maybe,” I finally said, after scrolling through several pages of results. Emily set her phone aside and slid next to me on the chaise lounge. “It’s an article from Il Mattino, a newspaper out of Naples, Italy.”

  “Luca said he was from Naples, right?”

  I nodded as I copied the website address and found a site to translate the web page into English. We could see from the photo that the article was about a house fire. The huge home looked like it was bombed. Luca’s name was in the story, but was it the same Luca?

  “Due persona muoiono in un incendio domestico,” the headline read. Two people die in house fire.

  The translation of the web page wasn’t grammatically correct, but we gleaned the details. A man and woman named Cristiano and Sofia Rossi died in a fire in Naples. Cristiano was a prosecutor in the region of Campania. The cause of the fire was unknown, but investigators were looking into whether it was intentionally set. The Rossis left behind two surviving family members: a son, 26-year-old Luca, and Cristiano’s estranged brother, Federico Rossi, a lawyer in Miami, Florida. Luca was out of the city at the time and was not considered a suspect, the article concluded.

  “Damn,” sighed Emily.

  “Wow,” I said, feeling my stomach clench as I thought how awful it must have been for Luca after his parents were killed. The incident also explained why he was so hot and cold. I knew firsthand that trusting anyone, getting close to anyone, was difficult after surviving the death of a parent.

  “He must feel so much guilt for not being there when they died. No wonder he’s a little different,” I said softly.

  This would also explain why he was so guarded. Of course he wouldn’t want to get close to anyone after something like that.

  And why did the article say that Federico was estranged from the family? It was an odd word. I frowned. Maybe the online translator wasn’t all that reliable. Perhaps if I studied the article more…

  I typed Luca’s name into the box near the little search symbol at the top of the Italian newspaper’s home page. Nothing else came up other than that one story. How much of the paper’s archive was available? A few keystrokes and website translations later, I discovered the answer was only two years of past articles; anything before that required a subscription in Euros, and I wasn’t about to plunk down my credit card to snoop into Luca’s life. That seemed to cross the line into obsession.

  I entered his parents’ names into the search tool. One other small article ran two weeks after the fire. I plugged it into the translation website, and learned that something called the Camorra likely set the blaze.

  “Camorra,” Emily said. “What’s that?”

  A chill went through me despite the oppressive humidity. Ha
dn’t Luca mentioned the Camorra the first night we met? I couldn’t remember. Luca had said so many things in Italian. I navigated to Wikipedia and read aloud, “‘The Camorra is an Italian Mafia-type crime syndicate.’”

  Emily and I looked at each other with huge eyes.

  “Whoa,” Emily whispered.

  I didn’t say anything.

  We found nothing else online about Luca or the fire.

  None of this made sense, I decided. Why hadn’t he mentioned this about his parents? Why hadn’t his uncle said anything? I tried to categorize the information in my mind and was beginning to realize there was a lot I didn’t know about the Rossi family. Too much.

  “Luca said his master’s thesis was about the Mafia.”

  Emily sent her a knowing look. “Maybe the fire had something to do with Luca’s father being a prosecutor. Or, what if Luca’s in the Mafia? What if his master’s thesis is bullshit and he’s really a criminal and his parents were killed for retribution? What if he’s like Furio, the sexy guy with the ponytail in The Sopranos who came over to be a Mafia enforcer for Tony? What if he’s starting a branch of the Mafia right here on Palmira?”

  I burst out laughing. “Thank God you cover sports and not crime. The Mafia’s not like a fast-food franchise.”

  But, maybe Emily had a point. Could Luca be a criminal? It would explain why he was so evasive with details about his past. And Federico seemed a bit shady himself, what with that business about not listing his house under his name for tax purposes.

  “Do you think I should see him again?” I murmured. “If he calls, that is. He might not after last night.” I tapped my beer bottle with my nails: index finger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky. Rinse, repeat.

  “Do you really think he’s a criminal?”

  My intuition told her Luca wasn’t, although clearly my gut had been wrong before. And I’d read too many true-crime books to know that some men were excellent liars. Sociopaths, even. But Luca didn’t seem like he was lying. He just evaded all my questions.

  I shivered in the hot Florida sun, as if someone had run an ice cube down my spine, then shook my head.

  Emily shrugged. “Dunno, then. Sure. Why not? It’s not like you’ve got anyone better knocking on your door. And he’s really hot. If you want to screw him, do it and don’t get emotionally involved.”

  I nodded. Avoiding any emotional involvement with Luca was probably a good plan regardless of who he turned out to be. I didn’t need a complicated guy like this to divert attention away from my career. No, I needed to get out of Palmira and to a bigger paper. When I’d taken the job I’d given myself two years, max, to get enough clips to move up and out. When Mom was dying, I made her a promise: to not ever languish in a dead-end job in a small-town.

  Emily interrupted my thoughts. “At least we know why he didn’t want you to put him in the paper when you first met him. Because of this Camorra thing.”

  I nodded and sipped more beer. Emily was probably right. But now I was even more curious about Luca’s past, and the only way to find out was to get to know him better.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fantasies

  ANNALISA

  "I do not understand. I thought all property listings were public record here in Florida. That is what I read on your state website. Why wouldn't Federico Rossi's address be public? I know he has a house on Palmira. It said so right in the newspaper."

  I tried not to let my annoyance show to the bureaucrat sitting across the counter. I'd searched online in public records databases for Federico's address, yet found nothing. After a confusing volley of phone calls to government offices, I'd been forced to drive off-island to the county's property appraiser in Fort Myers.

  The bureaucrat shrugged. "Sometimes people list their properties under a corporation or business name."

  I sighed. I needed to locate Federico's house. It was the only way to find out if Luca was there. I opened my oversized Gucci bag and took out that day's Palmira Post. I also extracted three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from my wallet. This was the way things were done in Italy and worth a try in Florida.

  The clerk watched me set the money on the newspaper, then fold the paper in half.

  "Surely everyone must know where Federico Rossi's island mansion is," I said, my voice softening and taking on a greater Italian lilt. I slid the paper toward the bureaucrat, who took the paper wordlessly.

  He rose from his seat, and I wondered if this little scheme would backfire. But what was the worst they could do? Try to arrest me on bribery charges?

  I could get out of anything with tears.

  After a moment, the clerk returned with an orange sticky note. He handed it to me.

  The Sanctuary, 100 Royal Palm Drive, Palmira, Florida

  "Thank you, sir." I strode out of the office, feeling triumphant.

  On my way back over the long bridge to the island, my phone rang. I recognized the Italian number.

  "Mama?"

  My mother spoke in a long string of Italian sentences without pausing to take a breath. "I know you're in Florida. Please come home. You don't need to be there. I spoke with your cousin and he's going to help you again. He wants you to know everything is taken care of with, with…"

  "I'm fine, Mama. Just taking a little rest on the beach. I'm not doing what you think I am."

  Mama sighed.

  "Bruno wants me to tell you he's on top of the situation in Florida and there's no need to interfere. He didn't want me to say anything to you, but I can't help it. Please come home."

  "Mama, I'm not interfering in anything."

  "Bruno says he's sending someone."

  What the fuck? My voice dropped to a whisper. "Here? To Florida?"

  "Yes. Now, come home."

  "No. I'm enjoying myself on the beach. Please. Trust me. Remember, the doctor said I'm fine as long as I take my medicine, and I'm taking it. How's the kitty?"

  My mother chattered on in a nervous voice. I didn't care about the family cat and refused to ask about her stepfather. In fact, fuck my mother and the entire family. My mother hadn't protected me from my stepfather, so why should I tell her the truth about anything?

  As I came close to The Sanctuary and Federico Rossi's house, I hurried my mother off the phone with more lies. "I have to go, Mama. My spa appointment is coming up. I love you. I'll send you a postcard."

  I hung up, then slowed the car. But, dammit, there was a guard at the gate. One more obstacle.

  I pulled into the nearest public beach parking lot and climbed out. Walking down a wooden path between the dunes, I spotted a long gate and the mansions of The Sanctuary behind it.

  Which one was Rossi's house? It was difficult to tell the addresses from outside the complex. I considered talking to the guard at the gate, maybe bribing him. That would have to be a last resort, in case Luca's uncle was with him, or if there were others in the house.

  Somehow, I had to get Luca alone. And soon.

  What did Mama mean when she'd said Bruno was on top of the situation? He wouldn't send someone here to kill the man I love, would he? My heart dropped into my stomach.

  Yes. My cousin would. I needed to find Luca and protect him. To take him away. To make him understand I was his only hope for safety.

  I leaned on the wooden rail of the walkway, and a hot breeze made my short sundress flap against my thighs. I slipped into a daydream, the sun lulling me into a fantasy world. This was a beautiful beach, and I knew Luca would want to kiss me here at sunset.

  And if Bruno was sending someone to Florida, I didn't have much time left to make my fantasy come true.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Things Heat Up

  LUCA

  We'd been kissing for hours.

  It had started when Skylar arrived. I gave her a long, lazy kiss, pressing her into the door as I locked it. We smooched throughout dinner, in between bites of the pizza, then I led her upstairs to the TV room attached to my big bedroom, and we made out on
the sofa for a long time, pausing to talk and laugh as our bodies molded together.

  I hadn't spent so much time kissing without having sex since I was a teenager.

  Skylar's lips, now practically bruised from my nips and nibbles and bites, made me feel young again. Innocent. I'd promised sex wasn't an option until she gave the go-ahead, and found myself unbearably excited by the teasing, wanting, aching feeling inside me. Neither of us had mentioned the previous night's hot talk on the phone, but that, coupled with her in-person shyness, drove me wild.

  "Are we really going to watch a movie?" She tickled my side. "Or are you going to kiss me all night?"

  "I'm going to kiss you while we're watching a movie. It's really old, from the seventies. In English, it's called The Passenger, but in Italian, it's Professione: Reporter. It's about a reporter who takes on a different identity and then falls in love with a woman and they run from criminals. There's subtitles."

  Skylar grinned. "Sounds good to me."

  I chuckled softly as we reclined on a wide, tufted, brown leather sofa. She snuggled her back to my chest as I pressed play on one remote and turned down the lights with the tap of another. I put my arm around her, wishing she wore a shirt and not a dress so I could easily access the skin of her stomach.

  The movie started. As I stroked the curve of her hip and pressed my lips to her shoulder, I was slammed with an overwhelming, unusual feeling.

  Normalcy.

  I'd never really been intimate with a woman like this. High school, college, post-college—all were spent on quick hookups. I hadn't ever taken a relationship slow because I had never really attempted to have one.

  I'd bounced from boarding school to university to internship to my first newspaper. In my early twenties, my career had come first. But here on Palmira, when I was supposed to be writing a second book, I was spooning a sweet woman and watching a movie.

  Acting like a man whose parents hadn't been killed as retribution for an expose. Pretending I hadn't spent a year on the run. Appearing as though I wasn't waiting with dread for a mafia boss to go on trial.