hate driving your car,’ Ella started, but was met again with silence. Having given his orders, Santo would assume she was jumping to the snap of his manicured fingers, and had already hung up.
‘Bastard,’ Ella hissed and then she heard his voice.
‘You love me, really.’
Ella was too annoyed to be embarrassed. ‘I love lying in on a Sunday morning.’
‘Tough.’
This time he did hang up.
In a few weeks you’ll be out of it, Ella told herself as she rang for a taxi. The woman on the other end of the phone sounded half asleep as well and told Ella it would be a good fifteen minutes to half an hour, which suited her fine. She climbed out of bed and headed straight for the shower and then to the mirror, but Santo could forget it if he thought she was going to arrive in full make-up. She changed her mind, because like it or not, Santo was her boss and Ella took her work very seriously. So, instead of a slick of mascara and lipgloss—which were usual weekend fare, if she wore any make-up at all—Ella set to work with the make-up brushes and then smoothed out her hair a touch and tied it into a low ponytail. She pulled on a dark grey skirt and sheer cream blouse and added low heels.
One good thing about working for Santo was her clothing allowance.
Actually, it was the only good thing.
And Ella wasn’t even particularly interested in clothes!
Hearing the taxi toot outside her small rented flat, Ella checked her appearance one more time and then grabbed her ‘Santo Bag’ as she called it, making sure that she had his spare set of car keys, before heading outside. She squinted at the morning sun and took in the vivid colours of a gorgeous Palermo in May. The ocean was glistening and the city still seemed to be sleeping. No doubt the whole of Sicily had had a late night, waiting for updates in the news.
‘Buongiorno.’ Ella gave the taxi driver the address of the smart hotel where Santo was staying and then sat back and listened to the morning news on the radio.
Of course the jilted Corretti groom was being talked about long after the headlines had been read.
And, of course, the taxi driver was more than delighted with the news. ‘Trouble!’ he told her. ‘As if a wedding would ever unite the Corretti and Battaglia families...’ and happily he chatted some more, unaware he was driving her to meet with Santo. Ella chose not to enlighten him. Santo didn’t exactly keep her informed about the goings-on in his family. If anything, his Italian picked up pace if he ever had to speak with one of them, just enough to make it almost impossible for her to work out what was being said.
‘They have always fought?’ Ella checked.
‘Always,’ the driver told her and then added that even the death of Salvatore Corretti a few weeks ago would not bring peace between the two families. ‘The Correttis even war with themselves.’
That much Ella knew. Even though Santo didn’t reveal much about his family, Ella was forever having to deal with the feuding Corretti cousins. The family was incredibly divided and they were all constantly trying to outdo the other, under the guise of the family empire. They were all trying to outmanoeuvre one another in the bid to become top dog, not just at work, but with cars, with women, with horses. Ella was sick of it. She was tired of the dark secrets and mind games they all played.
She’d have put up with it for a while longer though, if Santo would just give her a small step onto the ladder she wanted to climb. Over and over she had asked him if she could work on just one of his films as a junior assistant director.
‘Presto,’ Santo would say and then, as he did all too often when he spoke to her in Italian, he would annoyingly translate for her. ‘Soon.’
Well, soon, she’d be gone.
Ella asked the driver to stop while she bought some coffee and then climbed back in.
As they approached the hotel Ella told the driver that she wished to be dropped off in the underground car park. As they approached she saw that Santo was right—there were a lot of press around and security was tight. Ella was more than happy to show her ID before paying the taxi driver and telling the concerned valet that she wanted to personally