Page 37 of Valentino

We all listen intently as he tells us the story.

“I don’t even know why but I just said to her out of the blue, what have you got there? Turns out she was given a gift bag as we left the restaurant by the concierge.”

“What was in it?”

“It was like a postcard from the restaurant, a fake lemon.”

“A lemon?”

“Yeah, a lemon. This restaurant is the famous lemon restaurant, anyway there was a lemon.”

“A real lemon?”

“No, it was kind of like a ceramic or glass kind of thing, an ornamental decoration or some shit. Also in there was a sprig of a real lemon tree, some leaves and a little bottle of limoncello.”

“Okay.” Enrico writes it all down. “That all sounds pretty standard.”

“I agree it does,” Giuliano continues. “But I thought I’d check it anyway, so I went downstairs, I pull everything out of this bag and look it over more closely. I notice the leaf on the lemon is not attached, so I wiggle it around and half break it and the inside of the lemon was actually hollowed out, and something had been placed in there.”

We all frown as we listen.

“When I pulled it apart it was a fucking bug.”

“What kind of a bug?”

“I don’t think it was a listening device; the boys and I pulled it apart. We couldn’t work out how to deactivate it, we think perhaps it was a tracker. After trying to deactivate it for fifteen minutes I had to get someone to take it away in the car to throw off whatever might have been about to go down.”

“What did you do then?”

“I told Francesca there was an emergency back at work and we got on the yacht and immediately set sail for home,”

We all frown as we listen. “You think he was going to move in on you?”

“For certain.” He shrugs. “I think he put a tracker in that lemon so he knew where we were and him calling Anna at the exact same time was a distraction to keep us busy so that we would focus on Anna and not a fucking lemon.”

We all fall silent as we think this theory over.

“Something was about to go down, and I needed to get Francesca home and safe.”

“Did you tell her?”

“No, of course not. I’m not scaring her.”

“What if it’s not related?” Romeo asks.

Our eyes all flick to him. “What do you mean?”

“What if that was one giant coincidence that Carlo called Anna. What if someone else put that bug in the lemon. Because let’s be honest there’s about a fucking thousand people that would want to kill Giuliano right now.”

“It’s a very good point.” Enrico nods.

“I don’t think it is a coincidence,” Giuliano replies. “Carlo knows that Anna is a trigger.”

I clench my teeth so hard that I nearly crack my jaw. I can’t even deny it, she is. And I fucking hate it.

“So, what now?” They turn their attention back to me. “What happened after you turned up at Anna’s?”

“She was distracted and I saw that he text her, I snuck away and answered the phone and just listened. He was all Anna baby; you have to listen to me.” I roll my eyes. “Made me fucking sick.”