Page 66 of Alessia
22 - Alessia
Since we needed Luca more than I thought I flew him out to us in Rome. This way all of us can get any sleep because we don’t have to worry about the time difference anymore to stay up to date. Not that he is getting more sleep, he’s been in full-on nerd mode since the second he got in.
“Hm… Alessia?” Luca says dubiously.
“Yes?”
“I think someone is trying to reach us. Come look at this.”
I get up off the couch and walk over to the wall of monitors where Luca sits. I’s a goddamn miracle the man doesn’t have square eyes yet from staring at those screens for hours at a time.
“Tell me.” I stand beside him and lean towards the monitors.
“One sec…” Luca pulls up different camera feeds throughout tourist spots in Rome, all with different timestamps. Ineach frame the guy with the neck tattoo is visible.
‘Neck Tattoo Guy’ as Luca had started calling him, was no stranger to our feeds. He’d been popping up at random places for the past two weeks now. But this? This feels intentional.
“He’s not hiding anymore,” Luca murmurs, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he pulls up more footage.
Each feed reveals the same figure: the man with the neck tattoo, moving through the heart of Rome like a shadow that refused to blend in.
“Look at this,” Luca says, enlarging a frame from the Piazza Navona.
The man stands in the corner of the shot, his head turned just enough for the camera to catch the intricate design snaking up his neck, a swirling pattern that might be flames or thorns. He isn’t doing anything, he’s just standing there, as though waiting for something, or someone.
“Timestamp?” I mutter.
“Early this morning,” Luca replies, already pulling up another feed.
This time it’s the Colosseum. The man is seated on a low wall, one hand resting on his knee, the other holding a cigarette. Despite the throng of tourists around him, his posture is unnervingly composed, as if he’s entirely unaffected by the people around him.
“And here,” Luca says, his voice quickening.
The Trevi Fountain, just after one p.m. Neck Tattoo Guy leaning against a lamppost, his jacket slung over one shoulder. The tourists walk past him, oblivious, but his eyes were locked on the camera.
My pulse quickens, “He’s trying to tell us something”.
“That’s not everything.” Luca opens another feed, this time from the Spanish Steps. This one is in real-time. The man is there again, standing halfway up the steps. His body language is casual, but his gaze is anything but. Even in the low-resolution footage, his eyes seem to burn with intent.
“How does he know where to be?” I whisper, more to myself than Luca.
Luca scrubs backward through the footage. In every location, Neck Tattoo Guy isn’t just there; he is strategically placed, always with a clear view of the space around him.
“He’s not leaving this to chance.” Luca says, his voice tight. “This is deliberate. He wants us to notice him.”
“Well, he got our attention now,” I say, my jaw tightening. “The question is, why?”
Suddenly, a sharp ping brakes through the tense silence, drawing our attention to one of the monitors. A notification blinks for a new email. Luca clicks on it, and the subject line made my blood run cold:
She’s still alive.
