Mafia's Final Play (Mafia's Obsession #3) - Summer Cooper Page 0,35

Matteo interrupted the silence that followed.

“Chili?” Marie offered, but Anton broke in.

“I’d like to make dinner tonight if it’s alright with you two?” He looked at them and smiled when they nodded. “Cool. I’m going to make a goulash, so I’d best start it now. It’ll take a while, you reckon everything will be okay while I’m down here, Matteo?”

“Should be. We’ll both be keeping our eyes peeled.” Matteo stood up and stretched. Marie caught a glimpse of his abdomen as his flannel shirt rode up, and wished she could touch him there, but Anton might run back up to his attic haven if she did. She clenched her fingers and looked at Matteo. “I’ll see if I can get an appointment with a doctor, there should be one in town.”

“If they’re open,” he reminded her. “There’s a phone book in the living room, have a look in there.”

“I will,” she promised, even though she’d already done that. She’d picked up the phone to call the one she’d found a dozen times, but never dialed the number. Fear had always made her put the number away. She owed it to him to find something out, though, and to herself.

She’d have to stop putting it off and face facts, she decided. She could stay in this prison forever, and let it grow worse, or find out if she even had the disease at all. If she did, maybe there was a cure for it that had been newly discovered or at least something that could stave off the worse symptoms. She followed him out of the kitchen, but when he split off to go to the office, she went into the living room, her eyes on the table by the couch where she’d hidden the number in a drawer. She could do this.

11

Matteo stared at his computer screen, fear a tight knot in his stomach. Nerve damage, stress, maybe she’d damaged her shoulder when she was attacked. They were all thoughts that flitted through his mind as he stared blankly into space. With a sigh of frustration, he got up and walked over to the window in the small office.

He picked up a pair of binoculars that rested on a small table next to the window and looked out towards the edge of the fence. He’d noticed she spent a lot of time staring out of the windows as if lost in her own thoughts, or searching for answers that she never found. She didn’t know it, but he spent a lot of time staring out of the windows too. Only he wasn’t looking for answers, he was looking for threats.

He thought about the last email he’d received from Celeste, a few days ago. There’d been an odd shortness in her email. Normally she’d go on about how wonderful life was in Italy, how people were much more refined than back home, but this time, she’d written three simple lines.

Not sure when I’m coming home.

I may be a few more months.

I heard you’d disappeared, where are you?

He hadn’t responded yet. He didn’t know how to respond, because as every day passed, as memories bombarded his dreams and his waking moments, he became more convinced that it was Celeste that had ordered that contract. Anton had people working on it but as of yet, the author of that contract had not been identified. Normally, it wouldn’t take long, which was something else that told him this was Celeste. The woman knew how to cover her tracks, or she wouldn’t still be the head of the family.

It didn’t take a lot of skills to know that Marie was worried. She’d spoken about her worries before, but earlier this morning she’d tried to deflect from those worries, to blame the reason for her tremors on something else. He couldn’t blame her for that and knew she did it only to keep him from worrying, but she should know by now that he was always worried for her. There was a real possibility that she could have Parkinson’s disease.

That disease would ruin her life in many ways, it would even take her life eventually. The fact that she was so young and already showing signs was exceedingly worrisome. He’d done research many, many times. He’d looked for treatment options, even experimental ones, but had found nothing that would actually stop the disease.

If she got it, she could take medicines, have treatments that might slow down the course of the illness, but nothing would stop it