Page 13 of From Italy With Love

“I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care. Eat it anyway.”

He sighed but set down his brush and palette, walking over to grab the container. “You sound like Giovanni.”

“Giovanni would’ve dragged you out of here by now and force-fed you at a restaurant.”

“True.” He opened the container and picked at the noodles with his fingers. “So what’s the real reason you’re here? You never just ‘check on me.’”

“Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”

“Bullshit.” He studied me with the same intensity he had been studying his canvas. “You look different.”

“I look the same.”

“No. You look... I don’t know. Distracted. Like you’re thinking about something you shouldn’t be thinking about.” He grinned. “Is it a woman?”

I kept my face neutral. “It’s not a woman.”

“It’s definitely a woman. Holy shit, Sal. Who is she?”

“There’s no woman. I’m here for work, and I am checking on you because Giovanni asked me to. That’s it.”

Luciano laughed, shaking his head. “You’re a terrible liar. You know that, right? You can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to me. I’ve known you too long.”

“Eat your food, Luc.”

“Fine, fine. Keep your secrets.” He took another bite of noodles, still grinning. “But whoever she is, be careful. You’ve got that look.”

“What look?”

“The look that says you’re about to do something stupid.”

I didn’t answer. Because he was right, and we both knew it.

I stayed another twenty minutes, making sure he ate, making sure he wasn’t completely losing himself in his work. Before I left, I slipped five hundred dollars under a paint-stained coffee mug on the counter. He’d find it later and call me to yell at me for treating him like a charity case. But he’d use it. He always did.

“Take care of yourself,” I said at the door.

“You too, Sal. And seriously, be careful with whatever you’re doing. Or whoever you’re doing it with.”

I didn’t respond. I just closed the door behind me and headed back down to the street.

The café was a few blocks away, a small place tucked between a bookstore and a dry cleaner. It was the kind of spot tourists never found, the kind of place where the owner knew your name and your order and didn’t ask questions about what you did for a living.

I ordered an espresso and sat at a table by the window, looking at the street outside. The evening crowd was thinning now. People were heading home or to dinner or wherever people went when they had normal lives.

I sipped the espresso and tried not to think about Madigan.

I failed.

She was there in my head, constant and unavoidable. The way she looked at me. The way her voice had broken when she apologized. The way she had clutched that book to her chest, as if it were the only thing keeping her together.

I wondered what she was doing right now. If she were still in that house in Riverdale, still trapped with a father who treated her like garbage. If she were reading. If she were crying. If she were thinking about me the way I was thinking about her.

Probably not. She had probably already forgotten about me. I was just a stranger who had been kind to her for two minutes. Nothing more.

I was lifting the espresso cup to my lips when I saw her.