In the Wind: Out of the Box, Book 2 Read Free Page B

I get the feeling that happens a lot in this particular café. I make my way past all the battered tables and chairs, ignoring the smells that tempt me to stop and get a sandwich of my own—one that’s bursting with mushrooms catches my eye—and enter a portal in the back. Bathrooms wait to my left, and their smell is projected into the hallway in which I stand. To my right is a white door, flecks of paint falling off. It looks like it hasn’t felt the touch of a fresh brush since the days when Mussolini was giving speeches.
    I push at the door, let it crack open. It squeals, makes a little noise to let me know it doesn’t appreciate me touching it, but swings open even so. My eyes start to adjust to the dim.
    Before I can see, though, I feel something sharp against my belly, and I hold my breath. There’s not so much as a threat, a warning, nothing—before I feel it poke me, hard, telling me everything I need to know about the intentions of the person standing just inside the door.

4.
    This isn’t the first time I’ve had a knife on me, but it’s certainly more novel nowadays than what I’m used to, which is guns. Guns are scary. I can’t dodge a bullet, can’t blast it out of the way. I hold my hands up in the air, reaching for the sky like it’s something I can touch. Well, maybe I sort of could touch it, being an Aeolus.
    Words of Italian are breathed in the dark, and I feel the pinch of frustration. I don’t speak Italian. I know, ugly American, working in Rome, doesn’t speak the language. This is the sort of thing the French want to murder their tourists for. But in my defense, a) I wasn’t in Rome THAT MUCH, and b) almost all the Italians I’ve met speak enough English to make conversation possible. They’re amazing in that regard. Friendly, warm, wonderful people.
    Except for this bastard holding a knife to my gut. If he were a pro, he’d hold it to my neck.
    Another burst of rapid-fire Italian fills my ears, florid and completely incomprehensible. I ponder being a dick and muttering, “No comprendo,” but it feels too stereotypical. “I don’t understand,” I say instead.
    There is a pause in the dark, and I hear the click of a lamp. “Reed Treston,” says a deep Italian voice, with all the rolling syllables that come with it. It’s an old voice, filled with years and wisdom, and hints at hundreds of thousands of cigarettes smoked.
    “Giuseppe,” I say in reply, nodding my head. He notices for the first time that while my hands are in the air, my palms are pointed directly at him, ready to send him into a wall with a gust of wind at the first hint of applied pressure on the knife’s edge.
    Giuseppe hastily throws the knife upon a nearby desk with a clatter. He’s lit a desk lamp, one of those kind that bend so you can study papers up close with blinding light. I watch his face for reaction, but he doesn’t give much. Tossing the knife was a good start.
    Giuseppe is probably in his sixties, with dark, olive skin and a shock of white hair that crowns him. He looks like a mafioso, like something out of The Godfather , but his humble surroundings reveal that he’s no Michael Corleone. We’re standing in a storage room that he’s made into his office, and the cot in the corner tells me a lot about how he’s living, too.
    If this were a movie, this would be the point where he claps me on the back, embracing me like a lost son or a favorite nephew, demonstrating our long, deep history. You know what I’m talking about? Where the cool main character shows he’s beloved by everybody, everywhere, because he has friends in places you can’t imagine?
    Yeah, that doesn’t happen here. Giuseppe tosses the knife; that’s about the only concession he’ll make on my behalf. “It has been a long time, my friend,” he says. But he’s just being Italian in calling me his friend, and I know it and he knows it.
    “Alpha fell,” I say, lowering my hands. He knows I’ve got power.