Gianna In the six-hour plane ride it took to get to Amsterdam, I got almost no sleep .
Worry about Aria had taken the place of worry about getting caught. She was sure that Luca would not see her actions as a betrayal, but what if she was wrong? God, what had I done? I shouldn’t have involved her, I shouldn’t have even told her about my intention to run away.
When I finally got off the plane and successfully made it through immigration, I slipped into the first bathroom I could find and locked myself in one of the small stalls. At the bottom of my bag was the wig Aria had given me. It was long and blond. No one would be fooled by something like that, but it would only be enough until I dyed my hair later today. Fear tightened in my throat as I entered the waiting room, almost expecting someone from New York or the Outfit to be waiting for me, but that was impossible. Even if Matteo had figured out where I was by now, I was pretty sure that Cosa Nostra had no close relations with any Dutch criminal organization, and that it would be some time before the Sicilian mobsters got all the way. to Amsterdam. I was safe for now. At least until the next plane from the East Coast landed at Schiphol, which would happen in a few hours.
I walked quickly out of the airport with my suitcase, overwhelmed by the noise of people speaking in languages I did not understand. I knew a few words of Dutch but had not bothered to learn the language; the Netherlands was never intended to be more than an intermediate stop.
I stopped a cab and let them take me to an anonymous middle-class hotel in town where I booked their cheapest room. Although I was tired from jet lag and the flight, I simply deposited my suitcase in my room before going out again to purchase a few items I needed.
Two hours later I was back in my small hotel room with light brown hair dye, scissors, a couple of new clothes that helped me fit better than my super expensive designer clothes, as well as a prepaid cell phone and a small laptop computer.
After connecting my laptop to the hotel’s wireless network and setting up the blog we had talked about with Aria, I wrote a short post saying that a new journey had begun and that I had arrived safely at my destination. It was all a bit cryptic and probably no one would read my blog except Aria. I resisted the temptation to write something more personal, or worse, to use my new phone to call her. I wanted to hear her voice, I wanted to know if she was okay, but I couldn’t risk it.
Even this blog was already risky. Instead I slipped into the bathroom and changed my hair.
Two hours later I was staring at my new reflection. My hair was a caramel color and I had cut it into a bob that reached up to my chin. Of course, this would not have prevented people from recognizing me up close, but unless I paid a surgeon to redo my face, which I had no intention of doing, a new haircut would have sufficed. I would have to move from town to town until I was sure that Matthew had moved on to another target and I was safe. It would probably take a while. Matteo had told me numerous times that he would not abandon me, and I had a feeling he meant it.
I would not give him a chance to catch me. The next day I would leave Amsterdam and go to Paris, and who knew where I would be the next day? This was a new beginning with endless options.
*** I stared at the white ceiling of my hostel room. In the past three months I had lived in twenty different places , never staying anywhere for more than a week at a time. Sometimes when I woke up in the morning I wasn’t sure where I was, sometimes I even thought I was back in Chicago, and sometimes I found myself wishing I was. Not for my father and the rules of our world, but for Fabi, Lily and Aria, and sometimes even for my mother.
I sat down, groaning, and followed my usual morning habit of reminding myself of my current alias and everything around it before I got out of bed. It was almost noon.
I had not yet figured out any kind of routine. I spent most days exploring the city I stayed in, always checking my surroundings. Would this fear of being followed, of being hunted, ever end? I doubted it. Every time I saw men in dark clothes, I would panic. I had lost count of the number of times I had imagined seeing Matthew out of the corner of my eye.
I still hadn’t made any real friends, which wasn’t all that surprising; I never stayed anywhere long enough to build a connection. Which was better anyway. I still couldn’t risk getting close to anyone, maybe ever. That did not mean I was alone. Wherever I went, I always stayed in youth hostels and met people from all over the world. Of course, I couldn’t tell them anything about myself, not even my name.
At the time I called myself Liz, short for Elizabeth, and spent the year before college abroad traveling around Europe. That was pretty much my cover story everywhere I went, only my name changed.
Lying to everyone 24/7 made any kind of friendship difficult . I opened my laptop and checked my blog, which I updated almost every day, even though I hadn’t received a comment from Aria in weeks. In thirty-one days to be exact.
My eyes raced to the cell phone on the bedside table. As often happens recently, I felt an almost irresistible need to call her and find out what was keeping her from visiting my blog.
I had a feeling it was for my own safety. In her last comment she had warned me to “not waste time in one place because there was too much to explore in Europe.” I had taken that as a hint that Matteo might be after me, and in the last few weeks he had been hopping from city to city, never stopping more than a day or two, but I was getting tired of running constantly. I had lost weight and most of my clothes were hanging on me as if they belonged to someone else. I wanted to belong again, to find a place to call my own.
I got dressed and stuffed my clothes into my backpack. I had gotten rid of the suitcase four weeks after the start of my trip. It was not practical to drag around a heavy suitcase everywhere I went. In any case , I did not need most of my old things . When would I ever wear evening dresses and Louboutins with high heels again? That life was over. I looked down at my worn-out backpack, my sneakers, and my cheap jeans, and for a moment a longing was born in me for something I thought I would never lack.
When I had decided to run away from the mob, I knew that I would miss my brothers terribly, and until that moment not a single day had gone by when I had not considered the idea of returning to Chicago just to see them again, to talk to Aria again , to have a stable home again, but so far I had managed not to miss the luxuries that my previous life had afforded me, at least not so insistently.
So why did I suddenly miss the things I despised?
Everything I had owned had been paid for with blood money, and up to that point even my flight had been financed that way. But I was frighteningly short of money, and I was going to have to get a job at the next place I was going to stay, even if it meant staying more than a couple of days unless I tried pickpocketing, which wouldn’t have been much of an improvement. for mob money, only no one got killed for it.
I put my backpack on my shoulder and walked out of my small room. Fifteen minutes later, I had checked out and left behind my alter ego “Liz, short for Elizabeth.” I was going to be someone new for my next destination. Maybe a Megan. It was August but heavy clouds hung over Vienna as I made my way to the train station. I had loved the regal buildings but it was time to leave Austria. I had been living in the same country for almost two weeks and was becoming anxious.
After boarding the train to Berlin, I checked my cell phone , a silly habit I had not yet abandoned. I never received a message from anyone. The date caught my attention.
August 15 .
The day I was supposed to marry Matteo.
Involuntarily the kiss we had exchanged flashed through my mind, and a little shiver ran down my spine. Since I had arrived in Europe I had kissed three guys , all cute foreigners who were not interested in anything lasting, just like me, but none of those kisses had even come close to what I had felt while kissing Matteo. Maybe it was because he had more practice than anyone else. Matteo was a gigolo, of that there was no doubt.
But what bothered me the most was that I found myself comparing every guy I met to Matteo, and they never measured up.
They weren’t as handsome, as interesting, they didn’t have sculpted abs, and most importantly, being around them didn’t give me any excitement. It bothered me that even though he was (hopefully) thousands of miles away from Matteo, he still had some power over me. I wished I had never let him kiss me so I wouldn’t have that problem.
I would just have to find a nice guy who could make me forget about Matteo and his annoyingly sexy, arrogant smile.
Maybe my next destination, Berlin, could help me with that.