Page 21 of A Taste Of Darkness

I shook my head, but I wasn’t sure why. Did I agree with her, or did I say no to vacation? Either way, she wouldn’t have cared even if I knew which one it was.

“As I said before, they’re not here for you.” Without having received any answers, I knew the only reason they were watching Sterlie was because of me.

What was the easiest way to find me? To get me to come out from hiding? Threatening and scaring the only woman who’d ever meant something to me, of course.

Now, I just had to find out who found the letters Adriana sent me, and who sent a bunch of my cousins to find me. I wish I could say it couldn’t have been Adriana, but if you grew up in the mafia, you knew that even siblings were capable of betrayal.

Sterlie hummed a tad uncertainly. Her eyes followed me as I made my way over to my desk and took a seat. I had an hour to spare before I’d make my way back down to Pino to check if he’d had enough. Until then, I’d do what every club owner did; spend money and sign contracts.

“It’s safer though, isn’t it?” Sterlie asked.

From where I sat, I had a perfect view of her if only I lifted my head. If I did that, I wasn’t sure my eyes would ever leave her body again. While I had no desire to be intimate with her before I really got to know this woman, I couldn’t deny that she was attractive; that she stole my breath and robbed me of my sleep more nights than I cared to admit. The moment my thoughts drifted over to her, I’d get lost in my mind.

And I most certainly couldn’t afford to get distracted these days. Now even less than before.

“If you believe so,” I said and pulled out a stack of papers from my desk.

While every single club member got an invitation from me, I occasionally allowed other rich criminals to apply for a membership. More often than not I declined them all. Tartarus was an honorable establishment after all. If I suddenly allowed noobs inside, what would that say about me?

Sometimes, only rarely, though, I found an application from someone who appeared to be a fit for Tartarus. I’d send them a special invite then.

“I was thinking I could go to Spain. I’ve always wanted to go to Spain. Or better yet, I could make it a trip through Europe for a month. A month should be enough to make them lose interest in me, right? So, first I’d go to Madrid because it sounds nice there, then maybe Paris, up to Brussels, and?—”

“Madrid?” I asked. “Very… touristy.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw Sterlie sitting up before she crossed her arms. “Well, my first option was Italy, but I don’t think Paler?—"

“No.” Finally, my eyes snapped over to hers. She didn’t need to finish that sentence for me to know which part of Italy she was about to name.

“No?”

I cleared my throat. “The tourism in Palermo isn’t much better. If you want to hide, you should go somewhere not so crowded.” Honestly, why the tourism in Sicily was as big as it was, I didn’t know. While many parts of Italy were home to members of different mafia families, Sicily was… God, it was like the CPU of a computer.

Cosa Nostra might have no longer been the most powerful Italian mafia, but that didn’t make the region any safer. Was it safe there? The internet said yes, but I begged to differ.

“But crowds are great for hiding.”

“Toronto is crowded and still they were watching you,” I said. “Why Palermo?”

She grasped her phone from right beside her, tapped the screen a couple of times, then showed me a picture. My eyes rolled a second after they laid on a picture of the city I escaped from.

It was a beautiful city, that I had to admit. It had beautiful landscapes, and architecture that sometimes looked good, sometimes it didn’t. The temperatures were great, and the beach was… well, a beach—a dream for tourists, and a nightmare for locals.

“Because Venice and Milan are boring.”

12

FRAGILE MAN

Milo Marucci

“How amazing did the cries get after twenty minutes?” I asked Pino as soon as Arlo and I entered the room. “How about we switch it up a little?”

He certainly looked like he’d had enough of the crying. So, without further ado, I turned on some dog barking.

Pino rolled his eyes while I smiled at him as if these were the greatest sounds in human history.

“You can leave the mafia, but the mafia will never leave you,” Pino said, his voice filled with annoyance.

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