Page 41 of The Enforcer

Alfonso’s brother Ugo leads me off of the main steps through a stone archway and into a small alcove. It’s not midday, but already the sun is beating down on us. The steps only make the heat that much worse, and I feel like I’m melting. In fact, based on the amount of sweat pouring from my body, I am melting. Maybe I won’t have to finish climbing up all these steps because soon enough, I’ll just drip away and evaporate.

Ugo leads me to a stone fountain that looks like a carved sun with a face and a waterspout as the mouth.

Alfonso comes around me, a reusable water bottle in his hand, and he fills it. I watch him and note the patch of wetness on his t-shirt from his backpack. Not that I’m looking too hard or anything, but the wet cotton sticks to his back muscles, and that’s sexy to me, okay?

When Alfonso turns to hand me the bottle, our fingers brush as I take it from his hand, and he watches me as I drink, standing so goddamn close that I swear I wipe the sweat from my chest and some of it lands on his arm. It must be the sun and the jet lag because all of a sudden, I am horny as fuck, but we still have more than fifty steps left to go, and I’m sure that all this excess lust must be sapping my energy.

I’m going to kill Zahra when this is all over; you know, assuming one or all of us don’t die in the middle of this mafia war. There’s a running list in my head of all her offenses for my eventual defense.

Top of the list is that, because of her Italian disappearing act, somehow I’m on the Council of Aunties’ radar again. After some very wild teenage years and fun early twenties that caused my mother to ask her congregation for their continued and abundant prayers, I’ve been setting myself up to move into my thirties like a lady who’s learned to be freaky in private. In all fairness, I also have a list for Shae, but she’s pregnant, so I’ll wait until she pushes her kid’s probably big head out into the world before I consider another homicide, but I will certainly be adding to the list of her offenses until all this is over.

I’m not sure which one of them I should blame for Alfonso.

To be honest, he’s not the problem entirely. Now that my aching thighs have really kicked up the pain a notch, I realize that Alfonso — and my intermittent and inconvenient attraction to him — keeps reminding me that I ended up with him by default. Because Zahra didn’t want to be separated from Giulio, and Shae is carrying Salvatore’s baby. How in the hell did all that happen? And why hadn’t either of them told me?

I start pacing, I’m so angry.

“Dai,” Ugo says. “If you’re going to walk, let’s continue. Yes?”

That stops me in my tracks. “How many more steps exactly?”

He looks at me sympathetically. “Do you really want to know?”

Are these stairs how I die? Maybe.

Will my ghost haunt the ever-loving fuck out of my sister and cousin? Absolutely.

“Congratulazioni,” Ugo says.

“Please shut up,” I wheeze.

He laughs and says something to Alfonso, who clearly curses him in return.

Alfonso touches my wet back, and I shrug away from his hand. “Don’t touch me. I feel gross,” I whine. “This is the worst day of my life.”

“Si,” he says, “and I’m sorry about that. Come. We’ll go inside, and you can freshen up before you meet my mother.”

I whine some more.

“I promise,” he whispers softly.

I’m hot, and there’s sweat running into my eyes, but I blink at him, confused by the intensity of his words. Maybe it’s an Italian thing. Maybe he made that promise in a perfectly normal tone, but jet lag, exhaustion, and a faint memory of him standing next to my bed last night make it very hard for me to be sure. So I nod and follow him through another archway.

This property is a lot like Nicola’s garden but lush. At Nicola’s — two hundred and fifteen steps away — the garden seemed more ornamental than this one, full of flowers. But this garden assails me immediately with the scent of thyme. Everywhere I look, there’s some new row of vegetables or fruit tree. There’s squash hanging from the trellis above me and oregano in a long planter to my right. There are braided knots of onions hanging from hooks on the side of the trellis closer to the house and buckets of potatoes sitting in the shade.

“This is Ugo’s farm,” Alfonso tells me.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Shhh,” he hisses. “Don’t compliment him, he—”

“I heard her already,” Ugo calls. “Do you want a tour?”

“She wants a shower,” Alfonso answers for me.

I glare at him. I don’t like when people speak for me, not even when they’re right.

When we make eye contact, he apologizes. “Unless you want to spend the next hour in the sun listening to him talking about soil.”

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