It was dark when we left the restaurant.
We were crossing the square near the Palazza Vecchio with its looming bell tower. There were still tourists around, but not nearly as many as before.
I had my arm around Bianca’s waist and was holding her close to my side.
We’d gotten pretty deep with the ‘ride or die’ stuff, but now we were back to just having a good time.
She was currently laughing at a story I’d just told her. When I was five years old, I’d tried to catch rabbits so I could breed them and start a rabbit empire.
“I heard they made a lot of little rabbits really fast, even though I didn’t know how they did it,” I said. “All I knew is if I could just get two of them and put them in a cage together, I’d have, like, a million in a couple of weeks.”
“What were you going to do with them?”
“Sell them! Everybody wants a pet rabbit, right? At least, that’s what five-year-old me thought.”
“See, you did have a dream when you were little!” she teased me.
“Yeah, I was going to be the bunny rabbit king of Tuscany. Too bad they were so damn hard to catch.”
“Well, you learned something from them,” she said in a seductive yet playful voice.
“What’s that?”
“Fuck-iiiiiin’,” she said, and giggled.
I chuckled. “Are you saying I’m quick in bed?”
“OH no – no, I would never accuse you of that. Quite the opposite.”
“Good,” I said as I pulled her in for kiss.
She melted into me, and we stood like that for nearly a minute, just kissing.
It felt good.
Hell, it felt amazing.
When we finally stopped and started walking again, she whispered, “Can we go back to your house?”
“Mm, I like the sound of…”
I trailed off.
A hundred feet away, several people were walking towards us, spaced about 50 feet apart.
Two men and a woman.
They weren’t dressed like tourists, which made them stand out –
But they weren’t dressed like your typical mob guys, either.
More working class.
I didn’t like the fact that they all seemed to be converging on a central point:
Us.
I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder.
Bianca looked up at me and sensed something had changed.
“What?” she whispered in alarm.
“Keep walking,” I whispered back. “Smile. And just go wherever I go.”
“Okay…”
I veered off to the left, guiding Bianca with my hand around her waist.
There was a fairly large group of tourists outside the Uffizi Gallery, the big museum in the plaza.
I headed straight for them.
“What is it?” Bianca whispered fearfully, although she kept a smile plastered on her face.
“Might be nothing, but I think we’re being followed.”
I could hear the terror in her voice as she asked, “The mafia?”
“I think it’s the cops.”
She started to turn her head –
“Don’t look,” I hissed. “Just keep staring straight ahead.”
“If it’s the cops, that’s not bad, is it?”
“It’s not good, that’s for su– ”
Suddenly two men broke out of the crowd of tourists with guns pointed at me and Bianca.
“POLICE!” they screamed. “HANDS UP!”
I had a snap decision to make.
If the cops were just puppets –
If whoever killed the Agrellas was paying them or manipulating them to take me down –
Then I couldn’t give them an excuse to open fire.
They wouldn’t want to shoot, either. Not out here in the open, where they could hit civilians.
And not with a bunch of tourists watching.
I pushed Bianca to the right so she would be far enough away from me if they opened fire –
And I dropped to my knees and put my hands in the air.
“I’m not resisting!” I shouted.
As I hoped, all the tourists were pointing their cell phones at me now –
Recording the arrest.
Which would make it harder for the cops to ‘accidentally’ shoot me.
If they did, a dozen videos would immediately go up on the internet showing that they’d killed me in cold blood.
That might have been the only thing that saved me.
The police all rushed in, their pistols aimed at my head.
A couple had their guns pointed at Bianca, too.
Somebody kicked me in the back, sending me slamming face-first into the cobblestones.
They pulled my arms behind me, and I felt cold metal around my wrists and heard the krrrrk of the cuffs.
Then somebody lifted my shirt up and pulled my gun from the back of my pants.
“Somebody’s lookin’ at some jail time, motherfucker,” a voice sneered.
It was true. The gun was unlicensed, a minor crime.
At least it was clean. I’d given the one I’d fired at the hotel last night to Lars. And I’d taken a fresh one that couldn’t be traced to any crimes.
But the gun was the least of my worries.
I looked over at Bianca, who was being cuffed as well.
She looked absolutely terrified.
“Don’t say anything,” I yelled at her. “Nothing.”
“Shut the fuck up,” one of the cops shouted as he hoisted me to my feet. He cranked my arms painfully up behind me, totally on purpose – just because he could.
“Lawyer,” I said.
“Sure, sure,” the cop said as he pushed me forward.
Thank god for the tourists’ cell phones.
Otherwise, it might have ended a very different way.
