I contemplate packing and boarding the one that sails tomorrow.
The only problem is I don’t think I could escape. Drago keeps walking around the property, carrying some sort of equipment, surveillance, I believe. They’ll monitor every inch of this place except maybe the bathrooms and my bedroom.
But I can’t just stay here.
I’m considering returning to work. I went in briefly today for a meeting. Weekends are busy, and they could use a pair of hands. But we hired a new chef when we thought I’d be going on my honeymoon, and I’d hate to have him think I’m taking his job. Or supervising him.
I want to call my friend and sous-chef Bianca and ask how everything is going with the new guy, but it’s eight, and the dinner service is in full swing. Thinking about dinner and food makes me hungry. I haven’t eaten anything since the few bites of pie this morning, and for obvious reasons, I don’t want to go into the main kitchen.
The floorboards creak under my steps as I pad over to my closet and slip on a light beige dress that falls to just above my knees. I unroll my curlers and fasten my hair up, styling it deliberately messy, then apply some mascara and lip gloss.
My fingers trace the serpent tattoo. It’s an outline of a red serpentine body that drapes over the back of my neck and hangs in the front. The head is missing. Just a body. I grab a scarf and cover it up.
I’ll eat out tonight. At Frenchy’s down the street. Besides, ever since Corrado mentioned that my father had been taking the green leather book to Frenchy’s at the end of each month, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of times when I saw the two men conversing about anything remotely related to the Serpentine Order.
Either I paid them no mind or they didn’t do in front of me.
Frenchy, Dad, Gio, and other men their age used to gather at a private table in an alcove in the back. Since my dad and Gioare both dead, I’m sure Frenchy grieves. Maybe he could use my company too.
His homemade pasta is even better than ours at the resort, and I’m always bugging him for the recipe, which he promised to give me in his will. He’s pushing eighty, and I love him so much, I hope I never get the recipe at all.
I exit my room and walk across the courtyard, spotting Drago immediately. He’s at the pool doing God knows what. I pay him no mind even when he lifts his head and waves at me. My heels hit the cement harder than I want them to since I’m trying to sneak out without Severio noticing. I make it all the way down the street when it occurs to me there’s nobody on the street besides me.
A shiver runs down my spine.
It’s never this quiet on my street.
My neighbor Valentine’s kids aren’t in bed this early either, and Maina, from two doors down, lives on her bicycle. She rides up and down the street all the time.
I jog to Frenchy’s, open the gate, and enter the patio area as if my tail is on fire.
The place is deserted. Completely empty. I check my phone for the time. Nearly nine. People come here for pizza and pasta, so there’s always someone outside, if not inside. I hope nothing happened to Frenchy. He and Dina were at the wedding.
I rush up the steps into the restaurant and enter another empty space.
“Frenchy?” I call out.
“The kitchen’s closed,” his cook, Honey, yells from behind the door.
“Hey, it’s me, Cristina. Is Frenchy here?”
Honey comes out through the kitchen’s double doors. She’s a short, thin, frail woman with thick blond hair and one plastic eye to replace the one she lost when her brother poked it by accident.She wipes her hands on a towel fastened to her white apron. “Hey, I thought you’d be on your honeymoon.”
“That makes two of us,” I say, because I don’t know how else to deflect.
She doesn’t push. “What’s up?”
“Frenchy here?”
“Yeah, the table in the back. Some new guy’s with him.”
“Oh no.”
“Why? You know him?”
“I think I might. Tall. Blue eyes?”
She nods. “Haven’t seen a finer piece of man ass walk through these doors in a decade.”