66

Gianna
The minutes ticked by. My eyes darted to the bar door more than once, expecting Marco with a replacement drink for the one I’d intentionally spilled. For all I knew, he was trying to get into my pants the old fashioned way. Paranoia sometimes had me seeing threats where there were none, but I wasn’t about to even sip the next drink.
I should just go. Katie must have found an interesting guy inside. She’d be fine, she always was. Last thing she needed was a third wheel. I owed Marco nothing. The best way to turn down his next drink was to not be here at all when he came out with it.
For some reason, despite deciding on retreat as the best option, I remained in my chair, unmoving. His reaction when I ignored the drink would tell me all I needed to know. With the audience of other patrons, even if he wanted to try something, we were in a public place. Even if my most paranoid fantasies came true, I was safe.
The bar door opened. I took a deep breath to ready myself. Instead of Marco, a larger man stepped through. Broad shouldered and taller than my attempted suitor, he was a welcome distraction, a man instead of a boy. No facial hair covered his tanned face, another plus. It’d be a crime to cover up a jaw that strong.
His pale blue eyes met mine when my assessment finally ascended that far. He hadn’t looked anywhere else. The corners of his closed lips curled in the slightest of smiles, moving millimeters but enough that I noticed. He had targeted me and only me.
Never breaking eye contact, he stalked closer. My pulse thudded in my neck, ears rang. My father kept me separate from his business, for the most part. Still, I’d met some of the men who worked under him. Dangerous people, predators like the man sauntering closer.
His size alone had me thinking thug; a leg breaker brought in for the second warning when someone’s payment came late. The obvious quality of his dark suit and even the way he held himself told a contradictory tale. A thug in a suit was still a thug. They menaced and little else. Most didn’t have a second gear, they were simple men who performed simple, brutish tasks, often with destructive efficiency. This man exuded power. Head high, he owned the sidewalk he strode and my table when he stopped in front of it.
Without asking, he dropped into the chair both Katie and Marco had vacated. His fingers drummed against the beer in his hand as he rolled his shoulders, taking a relaxed posture. At no time did he even attempt to speak or look away.
Intense as his eyes were, I didn’t back down from an obvious challenge. Why the hot, but dangerous and obviously incredibly full of himself man started an impromptu silent staring contest, I didn’t know but I wasn’t going to let him win. That might have been the grappa talking, though I felt sober as a straight edger sitting this close to trouble.
The seconds slipped by, each stretching an eternity, our faces unmoving stone. Suddenly, his lips twisted into a smile. It even reached his eyes. He shook his head, offered a rumbling chuckle and took a gulp of beer.
“It is truly a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Marciano,” he said with a nod before another swig of beer.
The posh British accent removed all thoughts that he might have been a thug. My grappa-slowed mind started making James Bond comparisons before it caught up to the more important nugget he’d let slip: my name.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Mr.” I let my words hang.
“Yes, I do,” he replied. His eyes finally left mine as he chuckled.
The smile that had charmed me a moment ago now begged to be slapped. Handsome, fit and rich didn’t overcome being an asshole. The sooner I got rid of him, the better.
“I’m drinking with someone else.” Using the man I’d planned to ditch as an excuse to get rid of the new man tasted bitter, but I hid it. “I don’t know what’s keeping him.”
“He drank something that didn’t agree with him,” the still nameless man said. He chuckled again, laughing at his own joke.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I frowned at the door.
“No, you’re not.”
My head whipped around to face my aggravating new acquaintance. Who the hell did he think he was?
“You presume a lot,” I hissed, “and you haven’t even offered me your name.”
“Alexei,” he replied with a single nod.
That didn’t sound like a British name.
“I never said I was British, did I?” he replied to my apparently not-so-silent question.
My lips pressed together to keep myself from mumbling any more thoughts. Damn Katie for goading me into that second drink. Alexei’s smile grew and he leaned further in the chair, carefree and in control.
“It’s always a risk to make assumptions, Ms. Marciano.” His eyes widened. “Or would you prefer Gianna?”
“I’d prefer,” I began, my finger a dagger directed at his heart.
No, anger rarely helped. Probably what he wanted in the first place. Everything he’d done so far had been designed to keep me off balance, at a disadvantage. But why?
“I’d prefer if you tell me what you want,” I continued in a measured tone after taking a deep breath. “Are you ever planning to share that?”
“Eventually.” He tilted his head to the side.
“Eventually?” I repeated, jaw remaining slack until it came to me. I snapped my fingers and pointed again. “Did Katie send you out here to screw with me?”
“No, she took one look at me and said I was too much man for you.” His eyes narrowed and he frowned. “Her exact quote was that I ‘wasn’t a starter model?’ I didn’t exactly understand what she meant by that.”
Heat took my cheeks. Katie had all but told this dangerous stranger that I was a virgin. The bar door burst open, saving me from fixating on that.
Marco stumbled through. His well-styled hair had been mussed and water matted his beard. He jumped back against the closing door when he spotted Alexei. Following my gaze, the bigger man swiveled his neck. The smile flattened when his eyes found Marco but his expression remained unmoved.
My last wannabe lothario shuffled to the side, away from us. His path pressed his back against the seat of another patron, an older man wearing a Cleveland Browns shirt with a fanny pack hanging around his waist.
The tourist barely got out an irritated “excuse me, young man,” before Marco bolted from the outdoor seating area. Instead of the exit, which would’ve brought him closer to us, he hurdled the low wooden fence and didn’t stop running until he’d disappeared down a side street. Alexei took another gulp from his beer, finishing it and setting it on the table.
“What did you do to him?” I asked, staring at the point Marco had disappeared. “What did you say before? He drank something that didn’t agree with him?”
“I might have made him drink it,” Alexei admitted with a shrug. “Better him than you.”
“That son of a…” I let my anger take control. A deep breath with a slow exhale helped me quell it. “If you wanted to play the white knight, you’d have told me that right away like a good little boy scout. What’s your game, Mr… Alexei?”
Not knowing his last name yet left a stutter in my words, but I’d made the demand clear, for all the good it did me. He lounged in his chair, faking relaxation. Too much tension remained in his neck.
“Do you like nature programs?” he asked but kept talking immediately. “I’ve always been a fan, ever since I was a kid. David Attenborough taught me more English than any of my teachers.”
I glared at the man when he paused. No matter what I asked, he ignored the question and just went about saying whatever he wanted to. The best plan I had, short term, was to let the man continue. No reason to participate in his rigged game.
“I never missed the ones about the oceans.” He sighed, long and wistful. “In a different life, I might have been a marine biologist. That would have been fulfilling but it just wasn’t in the cards, got dealt a rigged hand, I’m sure you understand. Care to guess my favorite sea creature?”
“Sharks,” I deadpanned, channeling my best Aubrey Plaza, “ooh, scary.”
“Sharks?” he scoffed, head jerking back, “no, no, no. The octopus. Fascinating animal with their camouflage ability, intelligent, too. But I don’t want to talk about octopi. I only asked the question so I could bring it around to my favorite sea mammal. The orca.”
“Oh, did you watch Free Willy when you were a kid too?” When anger took my tongue, I didn’t pull it back this time. I’d had enough. “Did you cry at the end? ‘Jump, Willy, jump.'”
“I saw a documentary on orcas and how some pods teach their young to hunt,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “a few of them take the hunt to great lengths. In one they teach their young to beach themselves, snagging seals before shimmying back to the water. When one of the parents gets a seal, they give it a chomp, maybe break a flipper then release it wounded. The young orcas practice hunting on the injured seal. They play with it, let it swim away, thinking it could escape before attacking. So few predators treat it like a game, toy with their prey.”
He fell silent. His left hand drummed against the table, his right rested against his cheek, one finger extended toward his eyes. His neck muscles contradicted his relaxed posture. They remained tense, ready to spring should he need to.
“So you’re the predator and I’m the prey?” Somehow my voice remained measured, cold, even as my pulse thundered. “Did my father hire you to do a whole scared straight thing? Are you my minder for the rest of the trip?”
“Don’t worry, Gianna. I don’t hurt innocent women and children.”
“Yeah, the most reassuring thing a strange and dangerous man who I never met but knows my name can say is ‘I don’t hurt innocent women and children,'” I hissed. “Did. My. Father. Hire. You?”
“He sent me, in a manner of speaking,” he answered.
Even so far from home, mobsters were the same. The smart ones always kept their words vague. After bugs and wiretaps took down so many of the bosses, no self-respecting Mafioso ever said exactly what they meant, especially in public.
“Well, when you go back to my father, you can explain to him that I don’t need any protection.”
“Oh, my dear, I have a very different message for your father,” Alexei spoke the last word as if it was a curse so bad, had it been printed the editor would use ‘F-word’ to blunt its impact. He didn’t work for my father, he worked against him.
“I’ll scream.” My eyes darted to the occupied tables around us.
No one matched my dangerous adversary, not even close. If we’d been back in the States, the old guy from Cleveland might have been packing. Hell, I always carried a . 357 in my handbag back home and I knew how to use it. Still, Alexei wouldn’t try anything in public, would he?
“Why would you scream?” He held his hands up to his sides. “We are just two people having a pleasant conversation. I even sent your would-be rapist running, piss dribbling down his leg.”
“Do you want a thank you?” I asked. “Not like you did it to protect me.”
When Marco had given me the first drink, I got rid of it. His second would have been wasted too, even if Alexei hadn’t forced him to drink it instead. The man hadn’t saved me, but why had he tried to in the first place? We’d only been talking for a few minutes and all I had was question after question.
“I thought about letting it happen,” he admitted, offering a shivering shake of his head. “I wanted to talk to you alone, after all. If the idiot succeeded, he’d get you out of here. I’d follow, wait for the right time; there are so many narrow and winding side streets and alleys in Rome. You saw how easy he was to get rid of.”
“That’s what I would have done,” I said before he could continue and waived my arm out toward the other patrons. “You said you wanted to talk to me alone, but we aren’t exactly alone right now, are we? Let that son of a bitch drug me, follow and take him out. Then you’d have me all alone and in no state to argue or get annoyed when you started blathering.”
Alexei blinked at my response. His head jerked and that ever slappable smile faltered. Good. It was time I knocked him off balance, scored at least a small victory.