Page 102 of Dominance

“I will. He’s just been busy.”

“Bah! Always busy, you boys. Out in the yard, chasing rabbits. Tell the twins if they want dinner, they need bath!” She chuckles, waving one finger in the air.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Diamante, but it’s time for hers, and her medicine.” The nurse says softly, peeking into the room.

“Of course. I should get going.”

Excusing myself and kissing her cheek once, I look back, knowing it’s probably the last time I’ll see the place, see her.

Ero and Ciro pick me up at my request, looking like they’ve been up to no good. I don’t have the energy to question them. Soon, I’m dozing as we head up into the mountains, the hours fading into fitful dozing and stressful dreams of trying to hide from someone who’s constantly trying to find me, to catch me.

I’m jarred awake from one such dream, shaking myself and taking a breath. Chef Dom kept giving me orders and I didn’t have any of the ingredients.

That’s what I get for watching reality cooking shows in the hotel.

“Wakey, wakey,” Ciro sings, trying to put his finger in my nose.

“I’ll chop that finger off.”

“Testy! I just wanted to see if we were stopping in town or heading straight up?”

“Avoid the village. The fewer people that see us, the better.”

We take that roundabout route, sticking to our tactics, doubling back, covering our tracks, making sure nobody can track our movements. Better paranoid than caught.

After Orvieto, we played into the assumption that we would need to clean up our mess, loading the remains of Ciro’s bike into a van and scrubbing the catacombs of any evidence that we were there.

Careful planning and placement will keep the authorities guessing for a while, but there were enough guys to make it look like a deal gone wrong.

Minus one detail …

Giuliano was shuffling away, having spilled his guts about Dom, everything he knew.

To be fair, he did mouth off, muttering about us “regretting this.”

Ero says he was threatening worse, from his point of view closer to Carcosa.

Needless to say, we had to take his body with us to dispose of it.

“You’re not still mad about Carcosa?”

“No. Dom wanted him dead. No sense leaving a loose end.” I don’t have to like it though.

Ero’s unfazed, shrugging it off. “He was lying about all of that, anyway.”

“I wish I felt as confident as you about that,” I sigh, falling silent as we skirt the little mountain village, looping up into the stunning vistas of the Alps in early summer.

It’s majestic. That’s not even close to enough to describe it.

Breathtaking.

Pulchritudinous.

Several more synonyms flit through my thoughts, leading back to Gloria.

To our back and forth, the way she makes my mind shift into overdrive.

I’m so lost in my head that I barely realize that we’ve stopped.

---