His Mafia Prince
Chapter 262: Strayed From My Duty

Chapter 262: Strayed From My Duty

(SASHA)

We each wear a dark hoodie, and the largest sunglasses we own. I leave the sharp paring knife I took with me from the breakfast

buffet in the hotel room. Despite my best efforts at finding a way, I just don’t think there’s any way to get it into the Square—which is comforting in its own way, because if I can’t bring in a weapon, neither can anyone else.

Besides, I don’t need a weapon to protect Tyler . I have killed to protect him before with my bare hands.

I’d just rather not kill someone on livestream to millions of people worldwide.

The best thing to do would be to split up as we go through security, but I don’t want Tyler out of my sight or reach any longer than need be.

I do let a small group of excited French tourists enter the line ahead of me, and behind Tyler . I try to make it look like I’m with them by engaging in conversation, although my French is poor, and their Italian is not much better, and I claim ignorance of English altogether.

Once we’re through, I bid goodbye to them, and manage to snatch the French flag one of them has let drop to the ground before they notice. I wrap it quickly into a bundle as I walk away from them and towards Tyler , who is waiting around nervously near one of the columns.

"Here," I say, pushing it into his hands. "What’s this?" he says, surprised.

"Wrap yourself up in it. Over your head. There are plenty of other people here shrouding themselves in their national flags."

He doesn’t ask any further questions, thankfully, just does as I’ve told him. Between the flag, the hoodie, and the glasses, he’s completely unrecognizable. As for me, I pull my hood well forward over my face and try to keep my head down.

All the better to concentrate on shoes, after all.

The piazza is filling up fast. There are groups of tourists here and there in brightly colored matching shirts, shaking banners that declare their country or organization. Other groups flock around tour guides holding up tall pointers topped by bright triangular flags. Tyler ’s French cloak is mirrored by a score of other countries’ flags as well, many of them unknown to me.

Here and there are clusters of people, and I look each of them over carefully as we slowly move past on the tide of the crowd, wondering if the lady is among them. But I see no familiar faces, and no anomalous shoes.

The sun is reaching its zenith, but in deference to this morning’s clouds there are a number of people with umbrellas. Some of them are using them as sunshades. I move Tyler closer to a fountain near the front, where a group has crowded around it to be refreshed by the spray. As we pass, I take up an umbrella leaning unattended against the fountain—mercifully unbranded, and the same nondescript blue as most of the others I see in use around the square.

I feel slightly safer with the umbrella open and shading my face as I move Tyler further out from the crowd now. We might not fool facial recognition software if it caught us front-on, but we stand a better than average chance of escaping the notice of any human eyes looking for us.

The problem, of course, is that she will also struggle to identify us. Even now, the base of the obelisk is a sea of people.

"What next?" Tyler murmurs, as we take up a position as far away from the cameras as possible, but with a good view of the obelisk.

"We wait. And every few minutes, we move position."

"Shouldn’t we wait at the obelisk?"

I can hear the anxiety in Tyler ’s voice, but I can’t let my own stress cloud my judgment. "No. When the time comes, we’ll move closer."

"It’s not long now until—"

"Tyler . We will find her, if she’s here. I promise. But we need to be careful about it."

He sighs and clutches the flag tighter around himself, but whatever he’s about to say is drowned out by the noise of a striking bell, almost like an alarm.

I stiffen, grabbing Tyler ’s arm, but the rising excitement from the crowd tells me what it is: merely an alert to the people.

"If we get separated," I tell Tyler in a low voice, "meet me at the colonnades nearest to our hotel."

"Come on," I say to Tyler , and we begin to move closer to the obelisk as the crowd flows forward, using the movement to disguise our own objective.

At the edges of the crowd are the curious rather than the faithful, moving off to the other side of the piazza, or lining up in readiness to tour the Basilica.

I lead Tyler on a circuitous route through the assembly, spiraling in tighter as we go. By the time His Holiness has finished reading out the verses and begun his homily, we’re only a few yards from the obelisk. Standing right next to us is someone live casting in a loud whisper on their social media channel, ignoring the furious shushes of those around them. We’ll have to be careful to keep out of their background shots.

"Where is she?" Tyler hisses in my ear. "It’s ten after."

I bite back my initial response, because an I told you so is not going to make today any easier. "She may have been caught up. But we’ll wait here until she comes," I murmur. "Promise."

It seems to help. At least Tyler ’s grip on the flag under his chin releases a little.

Then I see them.

A whole gaggle of women flocking together, wimples bright in the sunshine, some smiling, some crying, some doing both at the same time. They’re on the opposite side of the obelisk, and when I listen carefully, I hear Italian accents.

Tyler has seen them too, judging by the way he repeatedly nudges me in the side. I grab his elbow to stop him.

"Stay here," I order him, squeezing his elbow to make sure he knows I’m serious. He gives a frantic nod of the head, the flag and hood slipping off his baseball cap. But his hair is still dark under the cap, a few curls peeking out at the back, giving him a modicum of disguise. I leave the umbrella with him and move away.

I step through the crowd slowly, making for the left of the obelisk, aiming to come up behind the group. There must be at least twenty, all of them completely focused on the window of the Palace.

I catch the occasional murmur from them, and they are definitely Italian. But none of them are recognizable from the quarter-view I have of their faces, and I can’t see red hair revealed at the front of any wimple. I sidle around a little further, and then look back to Tyler to make sure he’s still safe. He’s staring intently at me and gives me a little nod when I catch his eye.

Reassured, and deciding that haste is more important than stealth as long as I’m away from Tyler , I pick up the pace, and push my way further towards the front, trying to find a place where I can get a better look at their faces. But just as I push through into a small opening, the pictures on the televisions around the square change, the cameras sweeping over the crowd again, and I spot myself instantly.

I turn back abruptly, surprising the tourist behind me, and raise my phone as though to take a photo of the crowd. I aim for the women and use the zoom function to scan through the line of them. They have a little banner, held by two of them.

But I still don’t see her.

I take a few pictures—and then crane my head to make sure Tyler is okay, but from this angle the obelisk is between us. Cursing under my breath, and after apologizing to the elderly Italian widow who overhears me, I begin to push my way back through the faithful.

I don’t want to call attention to myself, so I try to move to the side instead, get to the outskirts. That’s easier, but once I’m there I have to stand on my toes to see where I left Tyler . He’s so damn small...

I can’t see him.

I shove past someone rudely, muttering a Scusi over my shoulder, trying to get a better vantage point.

"Good afternoon, and enjoy your lunch," the gathering ends jovially, and there’s a great roar from the people, arms going up to wave, to pray, to give thanks, and I can’t see a goddamn thing.

The crowd settles; people begin to disperse. I move as fast as I can towards the obelisk, my heart beating so hard I feel like I’m sprinting instead of making slow headway. I jump up at one point, trying to see, hoping I just haven’t caught sight of him, and I’m told off in several different languages as I jostle people and land on toes. I ignore them all and jump again, a few times.

He’s not there. He’s not fucking there.

I give up all pretense of politeness and start bodily thrusting people out of the way, fighting against the tide until I get to the obelisk. I jog up the little steps of the pedestal and scan the crowd, throwing aside all my concerns about being noticed or recognized.

I still can’t see him. Fuck it.

"Tyler !" I shout. "Tyler !"

But the bells are ringing with a joy that seems to mock me, and I can barely even hear my own voice over them. The rising sense of panic is all too familiar. I should never have let him talk me into this...

I catch a glimpse of a French flag, fluttering in the breeze, and my heart stops. I run towards it, faster this time as I’m not moving against the crowd so much, but when I arrive, there’s only the flag.

The flag. No Tyler .

"Heavens, help me," I choke out, twisting this way and that, trying to find any familiar faces, listening for his voice. I shout his name again, startling a young couple next to me who have stopped to take a joint selfie, and then beyond them, across the piazza, I see a navy baseball cap and dark curls at the nape of a neck I’d know anywhere.

It’s Tyler . He’s making for the colonnade, towards one of the exits, the one closest to our hotel. I’m almost sick with relief. He must have lost sight of me, too, in the exodus of the crowd, or maybe he got a tingle of unease. Perhaps he simply felt unsafe without me there, and decided to make for the shadows.

Whatever the answer, I have strayed from my duty.

I lose him again behind a large and loud tourist group, just for a second, and as my eyes stray over heads trying to find him again, my attention is caught by someone not dressed for the unseasonably warm day. A hunch- shouldered, rotund figure dressed in a dark hoodie and a backpack, making their way determinedly through the crowd in the wake of my husband.

Tracking him.

Tyler reaches the marble columns, but his stalker is not far behind him.

I break into a run, charging through the dispersing crowd, and I reach the hooded figure just as it reaches out to grab Tyler .