Page 8 of The Enforcer

I sigh and shake my head.

“Please stop tracking my phone.”

“No can do. Have some pasta for me.”

“Is everything okay?” Shae asks.

I open my laptop, “Yeah, everything’s fine. I had KeKe track Zahra’s credit card. I figure we can check into the hotel, go to the last place she spent money, and then…”

“And then what?”

I cringe and shrug, and we both laugh.

“This entire trip is a half-assed idea pretending to be an actual plan. We’re rolling with the punches, okay?”

“Okay. Do you think she’s really in danger, or are the Aunties being paranoid?”

I roll my eyes. “The Aunties are always doing the most. She’s fine. We’d know if she wasn’t. But apparently, whatever — or whoever — she’s doing made her forget how to send a goddamn text message.”

“Do you think she’ll be happy to see us?”

“Absolutely fucking not,” I laugh. “But all she had to do was reach out, and we could have stayed home. If she were being less Eat, Pray, Radio Silence, we could be back home moving your stuff into my apartment right now.”

Shae winces. “I hate moving.”

“Well, then, you can thank her when we get there. She might like that. And if you distract her, I’ll hit her over the head, and we can drag her into a taxi, and there,” I dust my hands together, “trip over. See how this plan is coming together?”

“Like a crime? Because it sounds like a crime to me,” Shae laughs.

“A criminal plan is still a plan.”

Shae and I laugh together again, and I feel like everything really will be okay.

Zahra

“Amore, torna a letto,” Giulio yells from the bedroom.

“I need to hydrate. You need food. We can’t live on sex alone,” I laugh before I drink an entire large bottle of water. I’m joking, but I’m also not. Giulio and I have been doing nothing but having sex when he’s home, and it’s great. I mean, it’s entirely unsustainable. I have a job and a life back home that I’m still running away from. Giulio also has a life and some kind of job here that he’s also avoiding whenever he can. We’re using sex as our primary means of avoidance even though we both know eventually it’ll all have to come to an end.

But that’s a problem for another day, some other morning, and I don’t want us to be at that day yet. So, I go back to bed like he asks. And hey, if nothing else comes of all this, at least my Italian’s getting a little better!

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