Thursday

Part 5


'So why are you here?' he asked, the din of the Antica Pesa ringing around them, Italians falling in from the Via Garibaldi, a warm Rome day making the night even more open to Roman dreams and possibilities.

How would she answer, how could she answer? She had been pulled out of her world and airlifted by complete strangers to an ancient city in another country. Before her sat a tall, mid 30's, attractive and classically tanned Italian who was being nothing but pleasant yet he had her life in his hands. She started with the truth,

'I don't know.'

He smiled, sat back in his chair, and let his thick red wine dance around his glass.

'Then I shall tell you. You have something we want.'

Her heart was beating so hard and the noise in the restaurant was so loud that she felt it was only a matter of time before she would faint. She wanted to ask what she could possibly have that 'they' would want, but no words would come.

'You have a client, an important client. We are to destroy him. His death is just a matter of time, and I must tell you that I cannot wait to personally pull the trigger, but we need to totally discredit him and his empire first. This is where you come in my dear little English beauty.'

She had heard all this but her brain was struggling to commute it all. Being sat before a murderer who was asking her to go against all her professional code should be terrifying her and yet, bizarrely, her body began to relax. The cat was at last out of the bag and she found her voice at last,

'So you want me to sink to your hell do you?' she fired across the table. She noticed his left eye flick at this. 'Yiou've framed me for a murder, yes?'

'Yes,' he answered with no tone in his voice.

'And you have my husband?'

'Yes.'

'Where is he?' she demanded, anger now firing her voice.

'Well there's a story,' he laughed, drinking his wine as three opera singers arrived to perform for the crowds. 'He was screwing the delightful Daniella just as you were selling your soul too. It was the most beautiful sting and your dear husband was the most willing of players. Here, I have photos!'

As the tenors launched into Giuseppe Verdi's rather apt 'La Traviata,' their voices as rich as art that coloured the walls, the assured Italian placed shot after shot of the man Tabytha had loved, still loved, naked and in the arms of a beautiful young lady. Any confidence that had touched Tabytha had now disappeared, her heart broken, her path to destruction clear.


tbc