Page 182 of Niccolo

If I were being totally honest…

She was doing a pretty good job of it.

I absolutelylovedhearing her voice again –

And I could tell that she was genuinely happy to hear mine.

Ah, Sofia… why can’t you just accept my offer?

Things would be SO much easier.

But then…

That would take all the fun out of it.

What a woman,I thought, then settled back in my first-class seat as the rest of the passengers boarded.

By the time the plane was in the air, I was out… and I slept all the way back to Italy.

I dreamt of her the entire way.

75

Sofia

Igot back to the compound outside Modena around 7 PM local time.

I was stressed –

Mostly from apprehension about seeing Fausto again.

I’d essentially strong-armed him into paying me a million euros…

He’d threatened to skin me alive and disembowel me if I betrayed him…

And I’d admitted to sleeping with one of his mortal enemies.

We didn’t exactly have the best relationship at the moment.

I shouldn’t have worried, though.

Aurelio came to my rescue by royally fucking up again.

When I entered the house, Fausto was pacing angrily in the kitchen, his cell glued to his ear.

“Hold on,” he said as soon as he saw me. “Sofia just walked in.”

He placed the phone on speaker and put it on the kitchen counter.

“Do we HAVE to involve her in this?”Aurelio asked angrily.

“Yes, we do,” Fausto snapped, then turned to me. “Massimo fled to the Dolomites with the Widow’s granddaughter.”

The Dolomites were a mountain chain north of Venice.

“I remembered that he bought a cabin up there years ago,” Fausto continued. “Aurelio sent some local hired guns over to check it out. They discovered someone had been in the cabin recently, so they began searching all the nearby homes – and found him.”

“That’s great!” I said enthusiastically.

---