"I can tell by your expression that you’re not sure of your feelings. Do you want to go to him? Do you want to leave Italy with him? Go back to your stepfather?" He studied her carefully as she thought about it.
"I don't know," she murmured. She spoke her thoughts out loud. "On the one hand I would love to see my mother again. But doing that means going back to Venezuela and facing a wedding that I'm not sure about, that I haven't agreed to."
"And this wedding, "Giovanni said. "It is something that you do not want?"
Raina shook her head. "I don't know. I… I feel like I'm too young to get married. I haven't seen enough of the world. I don't know what the future holds and I fear if I marry Mateo, I’ll never get a say in my own future. I'm not afraid of my feelings for him and there are some very strong feelings. No, I'm terrified of what the future holds. I'm not quite ready to face it yet."
Giovanni nodded thoughtfully. He picked up the napkin that was across his lap and dabbed his lips then dropped it on the table. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Raina, but his gaze was in a different place, maybe thinking of a different person.
He confirmed her thoughts with his next words. "My wife, Antonia, was very young when we married. Nineteen years. She was so beautiful, so bright, so full of life. She was thirty-four when she died."
Raina could hear the longing and the love in his voice and it made her heart ache with sympathy. "I'm so sorry for your loss, Giovanni."
"It’s been many years since I lost her and I still see her face in my head as clear as day. She might have left me, but I haven’t lost her." Giovanni stopped for a few seconds, overcome by emotion. He gathered himself. Raina surreptitiously swiped at her eyes. "Ours was an arranged marriage but we were happy."
Raina believed that he was trying to tell her something. Perhaps it was that her and Mateo's passion might overcome the origin of their relationship. That their story could end as happily as Giovanni’s and Antonia's.
Giovanni's eyes sharpened, away from the past as he looked toward the present again. "We married too young. There were too many things that we both should have done before we settled down. And though ours was a great love, I have many regrets. I didn't treat her as well as I should have. I didn't have the patience for my family, didn’t spend enough time with them. As evidenced by the way my son has treated you. My wife should’ve been given many more years of freedom before she was tied to the mob."
Giovanni reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled something out. He placed it on the table in front of Raina. She recognized it instantly, because she had made many forgeries of these documents before.
"A passport." She reached for the document and flipped it open. It was a replica of her old passport photo, the one that would have been in her studio apartment when Antonio's men had shot it up. The passport looked completely legitimate, though she knew it was a skilled forgery.
"You will use this to go anywhere in the world that you want." Giovanni reached out to take her wrist in a tight hold. His hand was as tense as his voice when he spoke. "You must choose very carefully where you will go, because Mateo Gutierrez will be directly on your heels. He doesn’t like to lose and he’s world renowned for his tracking abilities."
Raina looked at Giovanni with a smile filled with relief and happiness. She wouldn't have to make a decision about Mateo. At least not right now.
"I've managed to elude him for two years, I've no doubt that I can get myself lost somewhere in this world."
Giovanni shook his head and waved his hand in the air. "I’ve known of Gutierrez’s reputation for a long time now. Had I been able to employ him I would have. But your stepfather keeps him close at hand, utilizing his skills only for himself and the Sotza Empire. Mateo is the best tracker in the world. He’s unparalleled. I have heard that his skill is like magic, the uncanny ability to know where his victims are hiding."
A chill slithered down Raina’s spine. "Then that would mean that he always knew where I was. That he chose to allow me to travel the world for those two years. That he has now chosen to come and collect me."
Raina wanted Giovanni to deny her words, to tell her that wasn’t Mateo's plan. That somehow he managed to find her in the nick of time to stop Antonio's men from killing her. She knew better. She'd been stupid to think otherwise. Naïve.
"He will find you wherever you choose to go next. That is why I implore you to choose carefully. Don’t try to hide or evade him, because it won't work. He'll find you, he'll scoop you up and he'll take you home. If you wish to make the most of the few days you have left of freedom, choose a destination that truly means something to you."
Wise words, Raina thought to herself. Where should she go? If Mateo was going to follow her, then maybe she should give up and hand herself over. Because there was a part of her heart that was in Venezuela, that longed to go back.
Then it hit her. She knew exactly where she was going to go and it wasn't straight into Mateo's arms. Not yet. That was a future problem. She was going to run one more time, with Giovanni's help.
Then another thought occurred to her. She looked at Giovanni with concern. "Your son."
She didn't say more than that, she didn't need to. Giovanni had told them that his son was hidden away and Mateo wouldn't find him. But today he was telling her that Mateo could track anyone. And Giovanni was about to lose Raina as his leverage.
Giovanni seemed to slump in his seat, aging somewhat. He was about to lose his only child and there was nothing he could do but stand by and accept the loss, because his son had committed the grave error of attempting to kill Sotza’s princess.
Raina's heart ached for him and for the decisions he'd had to make in the past few days. He was an intelligent man. He probably realized from the moment he intended to let Raina go that he was signing his own child's death warrant. She didn't understand why he didn't fight harder for the life of his son and it wasn't her place to ask him.
Giovanni leaned over and kissed her cheek before sitting back in his seat. "God speed on your journey, my young friend."
Chapter Fourteen
Mateo was lying on his hotel bed fully clothed, his legs stretched out, his arms over his head, his hands tucked under his biceps. It was a deceptively lazy pose. Deceptive because the coiled tension running through him meant he could be on his feet in a split second. He was not relaxed. He was annoyed, bordering on angry.
It was 10:05 AM and Raina had not been delivered to his hotel room as promised. Apparently, Giovanni was not afraid of playing him, a mistake that would cost the old man dearly. Mateo didn’t deal well with hitches in his plans and so far, Italy had been a complete clusterfuck.
In fact, when Mateo really thought about it, he realized that the common denominator was Raina. If Mateo were to be honest with himself, he would've realized from the moment he set hands on her that she was going to throw a huge wrench into his life. That day, more than two years ago, when he had first seen her, his whole world had turned upside down. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, her energy and joy in life so fucking attractive, that he'd lost all sense. In reality he didn't know if she was the most beautiful woman in the world, but to him she was the gold standard.