Page 80 of The Enforcer

33Zoe

Before dinner,Ugo hiked down to Nicola’s house for my suitcase. He gave it to me with a kind grunt.

After dinner, I tell Maria that I’m tired and retreat to the bedroom where she’s set me up to be alone. I dig my cell phone out of my purse and cringe at all of the missed messages. My mother has sent me novella-length emails wondering where in the hell Zahra is. KeKe sent messages asking how I was liking Positano and then why I hadn’t moved in over a day. I have to respond to her messages quickly because I know my best friend, and I don’t want her to alert Interpol.

I avoid all the other messages from my editor and friends and begin to type a very long email to Tyrone and Kevin. A few days ago, I thought this email would have been hard to write; too many emotions to sort into coherent sentences, too many things we’d left unsaid for so long that it had rent us apart. Too many dreams we’d pulled from whole cloth where we imagined our relationship heading somewhere else.

When we fought that night, not even a week ago, I’d accused them of trying to trap me, but in the cooling darkness of Maria and Gabriele’s house in the Positano mountains, after all the chaotic randomness of the last few days, I can finally admit that I had let them believe that something was possible, even if only in my silences.

On our first date, they told me that they wanted children. I told them that babies weren’t part of my current life plan when I should have said that they never would be. So, I guess I do have something to apologize for after all.

I apologize for not ending it there, for laughing nervously when they mentioned kids after that rather than shutting it down, for staying and letting us all believe that we could change one another.

It wasn’t all me, but I don’t bother trying to convince them of that. There’s no point, and we’re well past the moment in our relationship where any of that mattered.

“I just wanted you to know that I loved you, but love isn’t nearly enough. I’m sorry we had to realize that together.”

I press send without proofreading because I know what I’m like. If I let myself read over my words, I’ll overthink them, revise each paragraph, soften the strength of what I need to say. I’ll try to fix what isn’t broken, just over. I’ll start blaming them in the same sentence where I ask for their forgiveness. I’ll make a fool of myself and shit all over a relationship that was actually beautiful for most of the time the three of us were together, and I don’t want that. I don’t want them to think less of me in their memories because I won’t think less of them; I’ve spent a lot of the last few days trying.

Once the email is sent, I toss my phone on the bed and then head outside.

I hear a television behind Maria and Gabriele’s bedroom door as I pass. I know Ugo is resting in his small renovated shack, but I still expect to see him digging in the dirt when I step outside.

But the garden is empty, and the scent of flowers is so strong that the air feels thick. It’s cooler out here than it was in the afternoon, thankfully. Barefoot, I carefully pick my way through rows of lettuces, my eyes on the midnight blue sky. At the edge of the property, I can see the sea through the trees. I smile, imagining Nicola doing some criminal shit on that water. It looks like smooth, dark velvet, and it reminds me of that alcove on Capri.

And then I think about Alfonso. It would be a lie to say that I don’t want to think about him because I do. But I don’t want to wonder where he is, what he’s doing, or if he’s in danger — I’m sure he is — and I hate that. I hate that I barely know this man, but he has me worrying like some mob girlfriend. I know his dick was good but was it that good?

Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

I’m fighting with myself, trying to only make room for good thoughts in my mind — like the way his blunt fingers had felt inside me just twenty-four hours ago — rather than picturing him bloody and bruised at the bottom of a long flight of stone steps.

The gate creaks open.

At first, I think it’s Ugo. Maybe he went out for a drink. Or maybe he has a girlfriend up a few hundred steps that he visits after his parents fall asleep. Or maybe it’s Nicola or Dario — that last thought makes me angry.

But it’s Alfonso who comes ambling into the garden. I don’t know him well enough to recognize his tall, hulking frame in shadow, or I shouldn’t. But as it turns out, I do. He’s walking slowly toward the house, and instead of calling out to him, I mirror his steps, still picking carefully through the rows of lettuce. I don’t want to mess up Ugo and Gabriele’s hard work.

He’s almost at the house before he notices me.

He goes still and turns in my direction. “What are you doing out here?” he asks.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I say. We both know that’s a lie. “I was worried you wouldn’t come back.” Even if I wanted to hide the truth of those words, I couldn’t. My breath hitches, and my mouth has gone dry.

Alfonso’s face is covered in shadow and specks of blood or dirt or both.

I stop, stepping carefully around Ugo’s vegetables. “What the fuck happened to you?”

He laughs softly. “This is nothing,” he says. “Believe me.”

Sadly, I do.

We’re standing in front of one another, and even in the dim light, I can see that whatever the fuck Alfonso left here to do, he did, and he paid a price, but someone else paid more.

“Jesus, Alfonso,” I say, squinting at him. “I’ll ask your mother if she has—”

He places a hand over my stomach. “Don’t. I don’t want her to see me like this.”

There’s so much left unsaid in those words, and I want to tell him that his mother knows who he is, but I understand. She might know who he is, but knowing and seeing are two different things.

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