by Tamara Lush
“Exactly.” Gianni watched two police officers walk toward the café. They each checked Annalisa out as they passed, and one even smiled lasciviously and winked. “But let’s go somewhere a little more private to have this conversation, no? I don’t like being so exposed here, especially with you. You attract too much attention. You’re too pretty, Annalisa.”
Annalisa nodded and tried to think. Should she take him back to her hotel room? No, that wouldn’t do.
Gianni reached onto the dash and grabbed the brochure for the swampy preserve that the hotel clerk had given her a few days earlier. “Oh, hey. Let’s go here. This looks private. I heard about this park.”
Annalisa winced. It was the place with the fucking alligators.
* * *
The long wooden boardwalk into the swamp seemed to stretch for miles. Dense green foliage pressed up against both sides of the waist-high wooden rail, and Annalisa fought back a wave of revulsion.
“You never imagine Florida being like this,” Gianni remarked. “You think of the sand and water, of Disney, of clubs on South Beach. This is actually pretty cool.”
Annalisa stopped to read from a wooden sign. “Says here it’s an eighth of a mile to the river.”
“Let’s do it. You okay in those heels? I just didn’t want to go to either of our hotel rooms. Didn’t want to attract unnecessary attention.”
Annalisa smiled. “I’m fine.”
Of course, she was far from fine. She hated this place. Nature made her feel claustrophobic. Out of control. It was so quiet in the swamp that Annalisa jumped every time she heard the buzz of a mosquito. They were seemingly the only visitors in the park. Which made sense, because it was two in the afternoon and hotter than fuck. No sane person would be out at midday in a Florida swamp in August.
Gianni peered over the side of the railing, and Annalisa wondered why he didn’t mind that his blue soccer jersey was touching splintery wood.
“Look, it’s water under here. Hey, check out that big white bird!”
He pointed, mouth agape, and Annalisa sneered. The hit man was a bird-lover. Wonderful. She wanted to roll her eyes but didn’t dare. Birds creeped her out. Gianni creeped her out.
She scratched the back of her neck nervously as they walked. It felt like a thousand bugs were crawling across her skin, ready to suck her blood. Stifling a sigh, she hitched her purse a little higher on her shoulder, stopped at the edge and pretended to look over but groped in her bag for a tissue. Something in this awful place was making her nose run. Maybe she was allergic to nature.
“How did Bruno track Luca to Florida, anyway?” she asked. Her voice seemed especially quiet against the ambient noise of the swamp. A dragonfly the size of a bird buzzed her face.
“It took us a while, but we figured out how to hack into his Skype. When he called his uncle, we kind of figured he was headed here. I guess Luca needs his long-lost uncle after all, eh? Probably because Federico’s rich as fuck.”
Annalisa laughed, angry at herself. “And then Bruno made a point of telling his crazy, obsessive cousin that Luca might be in Miami, and boom! Problem solved.”
Gianni laughed too. “I’m sorry. I know that you loved Luca at one time. I’m sorry that we’re going to have to kill him after he testifies. But you were going to do that anyway, weren’t you? Once you found him and fucked him, no?”
No. She wasn’t going to kill him. She was going to love him. But she couldn’t tell Gianni that.
“Of course. I want him dead for what he did to me. Breaking my heart. Stronzo.”
They walked in silence for a while, the sound of her heels clacking against the wood.
Gianni’s steps were silent, but he inhaled loudly. “This is nice. Thank you. I needed a little bit of peace and quiet to take the edge off. It was a stressful flight. Bruno made me fly coach, and the drive here from Miami was brutal.”
They reached the end of the boardwalk. It was a wide, wooden platform overlooking a tea-colored river. It smelled earthy and a bit like rotten eggs. The river didn’t seem to be moving much, and bugs buzzed the surface. Annalisa pressed her hand to her mouth and swallowed a gag. How was she going to stop Gianni from taking Luca away from her?
Without touching the wood, Annalisa peered over the edge of the rail and grimaced when she spotted a swimming turtle. Gianni walked to the other side of the platform, near an opening in the railing where a ladder led down and into to the murky brown river. She glanced at him, and at the sign, which said, LADDER FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. DO NOT CLIMB.
What kind of idiot would climb into that water?
“Holy shit, Annalisa! It’s a huge alligator. I gotta get a photo of this. Those bastards back home won’t believe it.”
By the time he pulled out his phone, swiped it with his finger and knelt on his knees over the ladder, she had slipped her feet out of her strappy sandals. She swiveled her head, looking for other people. Her hearing seemed attuned to every rustle of every leaf, and she could only hear the horror of nature.
When he lifted his phone to snap a picture, Annalisa already had her hand on what she needed. She crept toward him as he turned his phone horizontal and vertical, shooting at different angles. He was in an all-fours position, stretching his neck out over the water, except one of his hands grasped the phone, pointing it downward.
“It’s so big I can’t get all of it in the frame.”
Bending over him as if she were looking into the water, she reached down. Noticed that his bald head was shiny with sweat. Touched the knife to his throat. Pressed hard. Sliced. It was like cutting into a giant steak, difficult at first and then gristly and squishy. He dropped the phone in the water and protested briefly with a few stammered words. Flailing, his hands at his throat, he tried to clutch at the wound, but his skin was so split open that he gasped and crumpled onto his belly.
Annalisa stepped back. Stopped breathing. At least until she knew he had taken his final breath.
She had never seen so much blood. Never knew that it could spurt and gush with such force. Like a man’s orgasm.
Mesmerized, she watched the blood seep into the wood of the walkway, through the cracks of the boards, onto his shirt. She watched him the whole time. He gurgled and flailed, and after a while his eyes fluttered.
Dropping to her knees, she grunted as she pushed Gianni toward the edge of the boardwalk. Wow, was he heavy. She managed to push, tug and push some more, and finally she sent his thick body tumbling into the murky river with a splash. She peered after it, watching his blood swirl into the disgusting, tannin-colored water. Nearby, the alligator floated ominously, its bulging eyes watching her.
Annalisa picked up her sandals and stuffed them in her purse. She looked down. And she’d thought Skylar’s coffee had ruined her pants! Gianni’s blood was so red, so bright, against her white jeans. Almost like a candy cane at Christmas.
A plan formed in her mind. If she could make it out of this awful park, she’d strip to her black lingerie in the car and wrap a towel around her waist as if she’d just been to the beach.
She ran and ran, her feet slapping the wooden boardwalk. The green thicket of jungle on either side threatened to crush her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Her plan to back away from Luca had fallen to the wayside the hour she walked into his house, the minute he kissed her mouth, the second he put his arms around her in a long embrace. No man had ever treated Skylar this tenderly, this carefully. On Friday night, Luca cooked for her. He gave her a foot massage. He tried to teach her how to play Scopa, a card game from Naples, but they ended up laughing too hard as he explained the rules so they abandoned the effort.
Saturday, they lounged in bed and he read Italian news on his laptop while Skylar scrolled through the New York Times on her iPad. They read passages of articles to each other, or began conversations with, “Did you know?” and “Wow, listen to this!” They spent at least an hour reading aloud from the Twitter feed of Florida Man, an account t
hat posted funny, crazy stories about weird Florida stories. Skylar had followed the feed earlier in the week and showed it to Luca. She’d known he’d love it even though he wasn’t on Twitter.
“Oh God, listen to this one. ‘Florida Man goes to police to report stolen drugs,’” Luca read, practically crying he was laughing so hard.
“No, no, how about this one?” she cackled. “‘Florida Man surprised to learn mannequin he brought to dump is actually real dead body.’”
She was so comfortable around Luca. Despite all her recent concerns, it was like they had known each other forever. He didn’t stop touching her as they lazed about. His leg was always on top of hers, or he would lean over while reading and nuzzle her shoulder, or play with her hair. Every now and then he would give her a devastating deep kiss that sparked her skin then turn back to his laptop.
It was interesting how much attention Luca gave to the news. He devoured several different newspaper websites from around Italy, and Skylar tried to sneak glances at his screen. He spent a long time on an article with a headline that had the word “Camorra” in it. She wondered about his parents, and probed gently at various points in their conversation. Had she been interviewing him, she wouldn’t have hesitated to pepper him with questions, but because she was becoming attached and knew he was hiding something—pain or something darker—she treaded lightly.
“What’s Italy like?” she asked, interrupting his reading. “I’ve always wanted to go. Everyone always talks about Tuscany and the food. My mom used to love that movie, Under the Tuscan Sun.”
Luca shut his laptop and held it in his hands. He didn’t look at her. They were both sitting upright, propped up on pillows.
“I wish Italy was that appealing in real life,” he said. “I wish it had that magic on my people. That’s not the Italy for the Italians.”
Skylar scowled. “What do you mean? I thought Italy was like a paradise.”
“The country is a disaster, amore. There’s been decades of political corruption. Incompetent politicians. Fraud. And the organized crime is completely out of control. The violence, the fear that the Camorra and the other groups bring to the country…it’s something you cannot imagine.”
Luca inhaled, and she watched him clutch his laptop, the veins in his hands straining from his grip.
“What’s happened to my country makes me angry. I spent many years in a rage because of it. Everyone stays quiet, and the whole corrupt situation just continues while things get worse for the average Italian—the average Italian who is apathetic and just worried about surviving day-to-day. If you don’t watch out in America, things could become like that here, too.”
Skylar shook her head. “What do you mean? That sounds nothing like the United States.”
“Amore. You’re still young and…what is the word in English? Naïve? Yes. You’re naïve. You haven’t noticed how most people in your country are apathetic, just like in my country. Apathetic people don’t vote, and this means the worst leaders get into office. It’s ripe for corruption here, whether you want to admit it or not.”
She wasn’t sure what to say. His usual honey-toned voice was cold and jarring. This flash of emotion was tied to Luca’s past, Skylar knew. How could it not be, given that his parents had died in that fire, maybe tied to a Mafia syndicate? But his assessment of the U.S. seemed wrong to her, and she was somewhat annoyed he hadn’t come clean about his past.
“That’s a cynical view of America,” she said. “And of your own country.”
Luca stared at her for a moment then relaxed his grip on his laptop. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, and his expression was wistful. “I’m sure someday you’ll get to Italy, amore, and you’ll see only what’s good and right. As an American—as a tourist—you’ll only see la grande bellezza. The great beauty.”
He opened his laptop again and continued to read.
Skylar went back to her iPad and tried to read an article in The Miami Herald, but Luca’s words distracted her. She put her tablet on the nightstand, about to say something, but he scooted down and folded her in the crook of his arm.
Skylar reached over his chest to run a finger over the tattoo on his bicep.
Chi più sa, meno crede.
* * *
Luca mulled Skylar’s questions about Italy as he held her close. She napped in his arms, her head resting against his chest. A part of him wanted to tell her about his past, and about what he’d just discovered from Federico. He longed to say that he was just like her, a curious journalist, one who had bought great success with a slice of hell. He wanted to tell her his memories of the two people who raised him.
It was difficult for him to think of them as his parents anymore. And yet, he still loved them both fiercely. The man whom he had called papa, the brave prosecutor. His mother, the primary school teacher. The summers they’d spent in San Mauro la Bruca at the country house, picking oranges, and the smell of the olive trees near his grandparents’ villa. How his mother taught him to cook. How he and his father had hiked the hills in comfortable silence. Now, those memories were confused. Polluted. After years of explaining others’ lives as a journalist, he was no longer certain how to explain his own.
He longed to tell Skylar about his book, Uomo di Sangue—in English it translated to Man of Blood—about Naples’s most powerful Mafia boss. It had been a bestseller for eighteen months in Italy. He was certain Sky would love to hear stories about covering Mafia murders, about his off-the-record sources in the Italian government and going from an intern at Il Mattino to a popular political blogger then an author. He wanted her admiration and desired her approval of his work.
It would take years to share everything, though, years that he and Sky didn’t have. Could never have. Or maybe, once Bruno Castiglione was convicted in court, he could begin life anew. With Skylar.
Was that a possibility?
As Luca kissed the top of her head, she stirred and opened her eyes. Smiling, she rolled over onto her back. He took this as an invitation to slide on top of her and enjoy her little noises of pleasure as he kissed and ran his tongue over her breasts and lower. She now trusted him enough to sleep nearly-naked.
Luca dragged his half-open mouth over the velvety skin of her stomach. The tiny freckle near her bellybutton drove him crazy. He kissed it, and she made a soft mmmmmm noise. Which also drove him crazy.
“Open your legs, mia cara,” he said, positioning himself between her thighs.
She still had her underwear on, simple white cotton bikinis. Luca stroked her over the damp fabric then hooked his finger into the panties and raked the cloth gently against her clit, teasing her. Wanting to see all of her up close, he sat up and slid the underwear off, then spread her legs again. It was impossible for him to describe how she looked down there, because it was perfection. Flicking his tongue into her cleft, he grew harder by the second.
“Do you have any idea how much I want you?” he said in a gruff voice. It was the first time he’d alluded to his need to have sex with her, and she responded with a foggy, lust-filled smile. Why had he encouraged her to tease him? This was all his idea.
Skylar was so wet, and she whimpered while running her hands through his hair. She tasted warm and sweet, and he couldn’t get enough. She was so deliciously tight that he had a difficult time believing that he wouldn’t hurt her when he finally put his cock into her, however gently.
“Why are you stopping? I don’t want you to stop.” Skylar tried to catch her breath as Luca kissed her thigh, and she gave his hair a petulant tug. He moved up her body so he could whisper in her ear.
“Show me.”
Breathless, she responded. “Show you what?”
“I want you to touch yourself. Like you did when we were on the phone.”
She bit her lower lip and smiled lustily.
He knelt between her spread legs, and Skylar caressed her breasts and stared at him with a wicked smile on her face. Her hands pinched and twisted her nipple
s, and she feathered her fingers across her stomach, inch by inch. His breath hitched when she spread herself even wider for him with two fingers. With her other hand, she ran her index finger around her folds.
He started to stroke himself.
“No,” she whispered. “You have to wait.”
He groaned and squeezed her legs, watching a flush bloom on her chest. He was ready to explode.
“I love giving you orders.”
“Tell me what else you want me to do?” His voice cracked with lust.
“Your fingers. I want them in me.”
She opened her legs even wider then, and he plunged two fingers into her while grazing with her clit with his other hand. Skylar cried out, arching her back, unable to hold on any longer. He became even more engorged while watching her, feeling her come on his hand. Every moment he sensed he was falling deeper under her spell.
“Now,” she murmured. Her voice was soft, but the way she looked him straight in the eye was insistent—demanding, even. “You can come now. Here.”
She cupped her breasts and tapped her cleavage with her forefingers. Without hesitation, Luca straddled her just above her waist. He grabbed her hands and tore them off her chest; then, stroking fast, violently even, he positioned his cock above her breasts and rubbed the tip slowly on her nipple, which made her whimper. Unable to control his body any longer, the sensation of her breast on his sensitive skin plunged him into a deep orgasm that started in his thighs and moved upward. He pumped himself hard a few more times, then released into her cleavage, hot spurts accompanied by a long, guttural moan and a body-quaking spasm.
He gave her a hesitant glance. “Sky, I’m sorry, is that what you wanted? I just…I couldn’t control myself while I watched you.”
“That,” she said, grinning, “was so hot.”
Dropping onto all fours, he dipped down to kiss her deep. “I’ve never wanted a woman as much as I want you,” he whispered.
She rolled her eyes and quirked the corner of her mouth.
