Page 9 of Fall
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Antonio
It’s not wrong that I missed her.
Night after night while she was in Italy, all I could think about was whether she and her grandmother were okay with the protection that Romano's family provided. Nothing's wrong with a little concern for her wellbeing.
What’s wrong is, now that she’s back, and on her eighteenth birthday, I’m craving her.
I watch her through the rearview mirror as she speaks to her grandmother, her voice soft and light, her body turned slightly toward the elderly woman. There’s a sweetness to her tone, a gentle grace that calls to me, drawing me in when I should be focused on everything else around me. She loosensher seatbelt and crosses one leg over the other, and the move reveals the red sole of her black spiked heels. I take her in, all of her, from those shoes and upward, drinking in her curves in the soft summer dress she has on, like an ice-cold drink. But I rip my eyes away when I remember that I need to stay on task, now more than ever.
The airport terminal fades away in the side mirroralmost as quickly as the essence of my lecture to Vinny seems to have been forgotten. The man is stubborn as fuck. I told him to work on being more professional around Natalia, especially when her family or other protection staff are around. But he won’t listen. Even now, with Nonna Romano, the matriarch of the family seated in the back of the Mercedes AMG SUV, he’s choosing to ignore my instructionyet again about engaging in too much casual conversation when his focus should be on driving safely and observing what’s going on around him.
“What do you think, Antonio?” I hear him ask me, but I haven’t been paying attention to what they’re talking about.
“About what?”
“Whether or not Natalia can pull off the robot in her dress for tonight,” Vinny answers, his tone relaxed.“I’m thinking no.”
“I’ll rock the robot no matter what I’m wearing.”
“Robot duck, maybe, with the way your lips pucker and your shoulders scrunch up whenever you dance,” he tells her jokingly.
She shakes her head and leans forward, tapping the headrest of his seat. "Dude, you're gonna eat your words when the DJ drops a beat. You'll see. It'll be like… like that movie I askedyou to TiVo for me before I flew out."
“There were a few you asked me to record for you.”
“The one with that guy,” she giggles, spinning her index finger near her forehead as she tries to remember.
“What guy?”
“You know, the one with the face.”
"Oh, that's really helpful."
“I forget his name. All those foreign films I watched in Italy wiped out some ofmy short term memory.”
I give Vinny a harsh look and turn to face forward. It’s no use scolding him in front of anyone. We’ve been arguing this same point for close to a week, but it might be time to lay down the law.
He's quick to dismiss my orders for a few reasons. First, according to him, nothing bad has happened. I was ready to punch him square in the jaw when he gave me thatjustification. He's looking at it all the wrong way if he believes it'll take something terrible happening to prove that he's not serious enough about how important a job he has.
Second, we've been friends for years. There are only a few people I trust to have my back in this world.
My boss.
My kid brothers.
And Vinny.
But our friendship is getting in the wayof our work relationship. I’m his boss. He has no place defying my orders. Yet on this particular topic, he’s just not doing what I tell him to.
The other reason he’s not listening is because he believes that I’m jealous of how close he is to Natalia.
Jealousy is a strong word.
Sure, they spend a lot of time together, now that I’ve moved up the ranks and made him her bodyguard.Sure, I find myself wanting to tell him to keep his fucking paws off of her whenever I see him guiding her somewhere or helping her in or out of a car. But jealousy? I wouldn’t call what I’m feeling by that word.
I’m not jealous. I’m protective.
