DeLuca (Mafia Romance)

Frankie

Present

The rest of the drive to Carlo and Mia’s home was silent. The ramification of the flower realization was huge. Very few people knew me well enough to know some of the intimate details that this stalker knew, and even fewer people knew that Enzo still sent me flowers on my birthday every year. I’d lived alone for years, and he always had them delivered to my house. I’d never told anyone, not even Mia.

I wasn’t sure I could ever look at those flowers the same way again, and as irrational as it was, that was the thing that was most upsetting. I was shaken to the core that someone could take the one thing that I still shared with Enzo after all these years of emotional torment and defile it.

As soon as we walked through the door, Leo ushered us into a conference room towards the back of the house that I hadn’t even known existed. A petite woman in her early thirties was sitting at the conference table. Her blonde hair was pulled up in a tight bun and she wore jeans and a sweatshirt, definitely not trying to impress anyone. I liked her instantly. She’d been talking to Angelo but turned her attention to us expectantly when we walked in the room.

“Hi, I’m Mallory,” she introduced herself politely. “Do you have the document?”

Enzo handed the letter over to her but didn’t back up; instead, he towered over her with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. She eyed him curiously, but she wasn’t intimidated. She did, however, look annoyed.

“You’re in my light. You mind backing up a bit and letting me do my job?” she asked, her polite demeanor still in place but her eyes held an edge of authority. Enzo grunted and took a step back. It wasn’t a big one though, which earned him the stink eye from Angelo.

“Where’s Mia?” I asked, hoping to divert their attention for a while so they’d let the poor woman work.

“Antonio took her down to Salem to visit Pauline and Michael,” Angelo replied, one eye still on Enzo.

“Did you tell her about the letter?” I asked, hoping like hell he hadn’t.

That got his attention. “No, I haven’t spoken to her since Enzo called. Why?”

“I’d just rather not worry her. She’s got the wedding to plan and she’s nearly five months pregnant; she doesn’t need the added stress.”

He eyed me curiously, but nodded. “Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut, but you better check with Carlo; he might’ve already said something.”

“I’ll talk to him before I leave,” I agreed.

“Okay, so the envelope is a lost cause. Since it clearly went through the postal service there’s no telling how many people touched that thing. However, I was able to lift a few prints from the letter. Which of you touched it?” Mallory asked from her seat.

“We both did,” Enzo answered curtly.

“Okay, so I’ll need to get samples of both your fingerprints to rule you out and see if there are prints from any unknown persons.”

Pulling out a card and ink pad, Mallory waved me over to go first. She rolled each finger in ink and transferred the print onto the card and repeated the process with Enzo.

“How long will it take to match the prints?” Enzo asked when he was finished wiping the ink from his fingers.

“Not long. Have a little patience big guy,” Mallory said without looking up from her magnifying glass.

Enzo went back to his brooding while she worked. I, on the other hand, was racking my brain for who it could possibly be. The letter and address on the envelope had been typed, so there weren’t any clues to be found there. The fact that we had nothing to go on was driving me insane.

“It’s clean,” Mallory announced, much to everyone’s disappointment. “Don’t shoot the messenger,” she said in response to our accumulative groans and curses.

“Back to square one,” I complained.

“There is something that might be useful. See here,” she said, pointing to a particular part of the text. “He uses positive contractions but not negative contractions.”

“He? So it’s for sure a man?” Angelo asked.

“The letter is aggressive and direct so you’re most likely dealing with a man, yes.”

“Is it unusual? The thing with the contractions?” I asked.

“I’m not an expert, but yeah, I’d say it’s unusual. It’s not the fact that he’s sometimes using them and sometimes not. What is strange is that he only uses positive contractions. Not many people do that. If you were to read this out loud, it would sound strange and stilted. The good thing is, if you get a hold of something else this person has written, there’s a good chance you’ll find the same pattern.”

We thanked Mallory and left. I couldn’t find Carlo, so I was sure I’d get a call from Mia at some point berating me about not keeping her in the loop, but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was go home and curl up on the couch. The events of the day had left my mind spinning and my emotions drained.

“You don’t think it could be someone from your past do you?” I asked Enzo on the ride home.

“I’m not sure; but if it was, it would be someone we both know.”

He was right. We’d grown up together, so everyone he knew, I knew as well. Except… “What about the guys in your unit? Did you ever show anyone my picture or anything? Tell them about the flowers?” I was legitimately asking because it was a possibility we hadn’t explored yet. It wasn’t just because I wanted to know if he talked about me.

“Well, yeah,” he said distractedly. “I mean, I had a picture that I kept on me, and one of us together hanging in my bunk. Anyone could have seen it, but no one ever knew about the flowers. And if it had been one of them, this would have come to a head a long time ago. I haven’t been in the military since before we got married.”

I inwardly flinched every time he said the word married. It was as if he thought since the cat was out of the bag, he could just bring it up whenever. Ignoring the ache in my chest, I pressed further.

“What about after the Marines? You did private security for a while, right? What about those guys?”

“No,” he said immediately, his entire demeanor changing.Content from NôvelDr(a)ma.Org.

“No? Care to elaborate?”

“It wasn’t the same thing. The people I worked with, and especially the people I worked for, weren’t the kind you open up to. You don’t give them anything they can hold against you. I didn’t talk about you, ever. The one picture I kept on me? No one ever saw that.”

“Is that why I could only send emails and couldn’t write you letters?”

“Yeah.”

We’d never talked about that job. It was as if he went from the Marines to Carlo with just a black cavern of nothingness in between. After his second tour overseas, he’d been a little rougher around the edges, but he was still my Enzo. The three years he’d spent working private security though; they’d changed him. Only, I was starting to realize he might not be as different as I’d originally thought.

“Why are you different around them than you are when we’re alone?” I asked suddenly.

Enzo’s eyebrows slammed together. “What do you mean?”

“We haven’t spent a lot of time alone together in… a while, but you act differently with me. But then today when Mallory was looking over the letter, you were a total asshole.”

“You call me an asshole daily, so am I really that different?” he laughed.

“See, right there! You cracked a joke and then laughed. You’d have never done that at the house.”

“I guess you’re right. When I’m around those guys I’m working. Even when I’m not, I still keep the mentality. But with you, it’s different. I don’t have to prove anything to you, you already know everything there is to know.”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.

“What don’t you know about me?” he asked.

“Plenty.”