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His jaw ticked. “I’m sure you misunderstood. Arguing about this is pointless. The bank has been notified and Henry agrees that you are unable at this time to responsibly handle the three hundred million you are being left.”
Oh damn, that had climbed nicely since Henry had last called me in to talk money. I cared little about the ins and outs of that trust fund, only that the dividends kept rolling into my bank account.
“So I am giving you one year to grow up. During that year, you shall reside with Ginerva and learn the business from her since you refuse to learn from me.” I rolled my eyes. He ignored the look. “You will learn restraint, manners, and strive to be the son that your mother always wished you to be.” Ouch! “At the end of the year, on your twenty-fifth birthday, the trustees will meet to see if you have matured enough to inherit. If you have not, you will be given a small stipend and all ties to this family will be severed.” Double ouch! That cut deep, but I would be damned if I would let him see me hurting.
“How much is a stipend?” I asked, forcing my chin higher.
“Whatever a working man brings home in Florence,” he answered, his eyes boring into me as if he were looking for something. What I did not know nor care to find out. What the hell? How much did a working man make? Not much, I bet. Shit. Shit. “If, on the other hand, you show improvement and growing maturity, we shall turn the trust over to you to do as you see fit. While you are in Italy, your monthly income will be the same as the people who work in our olive mills in Tuscany.”
“Man, you are a cold motherfucker.”
“And you are a pampered brat with no respect for anything. Now go pack. Your flight leaves this evening.”
A million replies, all of them shitty, formed and then melted on my tongue. I stalked out, met Maria in the hallway with my vodka and Red Bull, plucked it from her hands and downed it with loud, choking gulps until the glass was empty. Then, because I could, I hurled it at those imposing office doors. Maria gasped, hand to heart, eyes wide.
“Sorry about the mess,” I whispered to her, to Mom, and maybe to myself. But not to my father. Never to my father.
Chapter Three
The flight to Florence was long, tiring, and filled with people.
I was seated next to an older man, a pretty cool dude, who was returning to Ghana from a trip to the States. He slept the entire time other than to wake up for food. I envied him for that rest. My mind was too wired—Red Bull on an empty stomach will get your synapses firing—to allow me to close my eyes. My head was full of bumbling thoughts that bounced off each other like demonic bumper cars, one sending the other flying at the impact.
The food was meh. I mean, I guess I should be thankful that Dad forked out the cash for a decent seat, of course not in first class, but not crammed into the back with families toting cranky kids with poopy diapers and snotty noses. I’d have preferred the Bonetti Lear, obviously, but such things were now not part of my repertoire. To be honest, sitting here next to Sleeping Ghana Dude while an old Denzel Washington flick played, my earbuds were in, but my brain was blanking out the dialog. My life as I had known it was no more. In the flick of an uncaring hand, my father had banished his only child to a foreign country to live with an evil old woman with a cane. No one spoke English, or I doubted they did, and I’d not been there in forever. Father visited several times a year, but I kept a wide berth from Villa de Wicked Gorgon. Now, in order to hopefully return to my previous lifestyle, I was going to have to tote, scrub, and pick olives in the blazing sun.
Hashtag Arlo the newest Disney Princess.
It was just too much to bear, really, and so when the lights went down in the plane I let the tears flow as Denzel played the living hell out of his part as an airline pilot with addiction issues. When the worst of the carrying jag ended, I unbuckled my seatbelt, wiggled into the bathroom, and splashed cold water on my face. The room was cramped, nothing at all like the spacious baths on the Bonetti jets. Everything about this flight was depressing as was my outlook. Things could honestly not be much worse. Feeling lost, scared, and hurt most of all, I flipped the seat down on the toilet and sat, crossing my legs and then lifting my phone from my vest pocket.
“Hey, friends, so this is my life right now.” I panned the toilet to show my followers just what I was experiencing and then turned the camera back to my pitiful face. “I’ve been exiled from the States to my evil, ancient aunt’s house. I’m not sure how the Wi-Fi will be because she is so old she probably uses Morse code to—”
The plane rumbled as if running over potholes in the sky. One strong bounce nearly flung me from the crapper. I threw out a hand to steady myself as a series of pings and bing-bongs filled the cabin.
“Hello, passengers, this is the pilot. We’re experiencing some rather rowdy turbulence so all passengers are asked to remain in their seats with their seatbelts fastened. Flight staff will also be seated until things calm back down. Thank you.”
“Well fuck.”
We hit some pretty nasty air pockets then. I yelped and stumbled out of the bathroom. A flight attendant who was helping an old lady get her belt fastened glared at me and then pointed me to my seat with undue haste. Ghana Man had been jostled from his slumber, I noted, when I flopped down into my narrow seat and hurried to buckle up.
“Been a long time since I had such a bumpy ride,” he said and fell back asleep as if we weren’t being thrown around like Weebles in a plastic pull-along airplane.
I’d had a Weeble Wobble plane when I was younger. Mom used to play with me on the floor of my nursery for hours, pretending we were the Weebles flying to magical, fantastical places. Places with dragons and elves, monsters and heroes, and of course, pirate islands. After a rather nasty jounce up and down, I closed my eyes, cursed my father for making me ride on a packed plane over rough skies, and let my memories of my mother soothe me as the plane bounced along. Fucking sky potholes. Nothing about this trip was ever going to be enjoyable. I might as well join a nunnery upon landing and just be done with it. I’d seen The Sound of Music. I could be Maria. Oh, wait, that was Austria and not Italy. Well, I could be Maria in Italy. But that would involve being a nanny for a slew of kids. No thanks, although I was always up for a good-looking older man with a military past. Or a goatherder. I wasn’t picky. This was why I was on this damn plane to begin with. Maybe I needed to reevaluate the men I hooked up with?
No, that was just silly. This was all my father’s fault. I nodded and gulped as we thudded along on God’s heavenly rumble strips.
***
The airport in Florence was small, that’s for sure, but charming in a way that most of the mega airports lacked. Exhausted beyond all reason, I set off to find my bags. I needed a cooling mask on my puffy face stat. Falling into the small group of people who didn’t understand Italian and so had to stand under signs trying to decipher where to go, I was approached by an older gentleman with silver hair, a mustache that looked like a Muppet sitting on his upper lip and wearing a dark blue uniform from a 1950s hotel. No shit, the old guy looked like a bellhop but a super elderly one that couldn’t tote a toothbrush let alone the several bags I had hurried to pack.
“You Señor Arlo?” he asked, the sign in his hand filled with scribble. I could make out Mr. Bonetti and the word passaggio, which I took to mean passage. He was my passage. Oh, my ride. Cool.
“Yes, oh, I mean, sì, I’m Mr. Arlo. And you are?” I moved to the side to let a chubby woman with an overpacked carry-on hustle past me. Guess she had important places to be. Me? I was just slogging slowly to a dismal year spent stomping olives in vats. Or did they only do that to grapes? I was so lost…
“Alessio, I am Signora Bonetti’s driver.” He smiled, the thick white muzzy burying his nostrils. “Come to car now. We are late.”
“Yeah, there was something about winds making it hard to land. They wanted to send us to Pisa but then changed their minds, but we circled around forever. I don’t know. This whole flight has been a nightmare.”
“Ah, I see. We must go. Signora Bonetti is not liking tardy people.”
