Chapter Twenty Five

It had taken her the next two days travelling without stopping as the little bike did not go very fast but it did plenty of kilometres to the litre. She managed to get to Bologna before its brave little engine gave up forcing her to pull into a tiny hotel she spotted. Rolling it to a stop behind some large bins  she dismounted and for the first time since she left Sicily she removed her helmet as she entered the hotel,

‘Salve, ha una stanza disponibile per stasera? [Hi do you have a room available for tonight?]

The elderly man behind the reception smiled up at the pretty girl who had asked the question,

‘E' solo per stasera, signorina?’ [Is it just for tonight young lady?’

He said politely and she gave him a shy smile,

‘Sì, signore, tornerò in Inghilterra domani’ [Yes Sir, I will be flying back to England tomorrow]

He pulled himself to his feet and led her to a small but spotlessly clean bedroom down a corridor,

‘La cena è alle sette, spero che ti piaccia il tuo soggiorno con noi signorina’ [Dinner is at seven, I hope you enjoy your stay with us young lady]

He handed her a key and left her to herself, she locked the door, stripped out of her dusty clothes and headed into the bathroom.            

After a long shower, she wrapped herself in the thick fluffy robe and went back into the bedroom. She noticed she had a tiny balcony so quickly rinsed through her clothes in the bathtub using the hand soap to clean them. It was so warm she rung them out and hung them over the rails to dry then cleaned up the bath. When she had finished she drank a glass of the juice that had been left in a jug by the owner and lay on the bed, exhausted she was asleep in seconds and only woke up when she needed to use the bathroom. Checking her watch she saw it was a quarter to seven, her clothes had dried so she folded them up and pulled out a pretty pale green summer dress from her backpack. Brushing her hair she left it loose and made her way down to the dining room at the back of the hotel, already seated were two elderly men and a middle-aged couple,

‘Buona sera’ [Good evening]

She said politely and sat at the small table near the window, they looked at her with interest, she was obviously young and stunningly beautiful, why was she travelling alone and staying at this back street hotel?

Juliette knew they were talking about her, she understood every word they said but she kept her head down ate the food that was offered and returned to her room as quickly as possible. She had managed to book herself on a flight to Manchester early the next day and prayed no one would know who she was so she could escape from the country of her birth. It was very early the next morning when she paid the owner and waited for her taxi as it pulled up he came to her and said softly,

‘Dio vada con te bambino mio e non preoccuparti gli dirò che sei partito sullo scooter, ok?’ [God go with you my child and do not worry I will tell him you left on the scooter, okay?]

She looked at him in surprise and he patted her hand reassuringly,

‘Grazie’ [Thank you]

She whispered as the taxi pulled away, she would never know that he had done it in memory of his own daughter, a pretty young girl who had been a victim of Santini’s men. It was only a small thing but it eased his conscience knowing he had helped her ‘escape’ the Mafia.

Her plane landed in Manchester and she caught the red eye to London and then boarded the overnight train to Cornwall, in the early hours of the next morning her ‘Mother’ was waiting at the train station to take her back to her family home. It was just over a year to the day since she had been forced to go to Sicily and as she curled into her old bed she knew she was not the wild schoolgirl who had climbed the cliffs so freely.

Romero was stunned when he found out she was gone and the two guards who had fallen asleep to allow her to run away were shot without mercy his anger boiling over into a murderous rage at their stupidity. When he sent out his men to search for her he was furious when they came back empty-handed he could not understand how she had managed to hide her tracks so well with so little time to organise anything. Eventually, they managed to follow her trail to her mother's villa but found it had not been broken into and nothing was disturbed, they searched it from top to bottom and it was the Guard whose wrist she had broken that found the missing photo. He noticed the slight dust mark on the side table where it had stood so Romero made them search the house again and that was when they discovered the empty coat hangers in the wardrobe. Romero was angry and annoyed that she had run away from him he knew she was attracted to him he had felt it in her reaction to his kisses his body wanted hers desperately. He hated that neediness that drove him into pleasuring his body in the shower with the image of her soft curves seared on his brain. It was another two days before they found one of mothers old neighbours who told them she had been hanging out her washing and seen the little motorbike heading in the direction of the Port on the day she had gone missing. It wasn’t difficult for them to establish from the ferry’s Captain, a relative of one of his Capos, who informed them a young woman matching her description had gone to the mainland but no one had seen her once she left the port,

‘Dove cazzo è?‘ [Where the fuck is she?]

He paced his office yelling angrily he was so worried about her, the Mafia Dons were in an uproar demanding he handed her over, at least he was honest when he told them he did not know where she was.