Page 93 of Hate to Love You

“Roman, what the fuck is going on, I don’t understand what the hell just—”

BOOM!

The car is suddenly rocked by a massive explosion behind us. Turning to look, the front room of the small building that used to be Albertos is now a blazing ball of fire.

“Holy shit!” Abby gasps, throwing her hand to her mouth. “That was—”

“Yes,” I say, still staring at the flames shooting out of frames of what used to be windows.

“Shouldn’t we go back and help?” Abby asks, staring out the back window before shaking her head.

“No,” I growl, staring out the windows of the backseat. “It’s too dangerous.”

“But how did…” she says, looking at me in disbelief. “You…you knew that was going to happen. How did you know?”

“No, I didn’t,” I say, shaking my head.

“Yes, you did, because you knew we needed to get out of there,” she snaps, pulling back against the wall of the car.

I sigh. It’s clear to me now that I’m going to have to explain something to Abby. But I have to be cautious in how I do that.

“I didn’t know that was going to happen,” I say quietly. “But I knew something was off.”

“What does that even mean?” She scoffs throwing her hands in the air.

“Because of my…status,” I say slowly. “I’m very cautious in who I allow to serve me. In any industry. I’ve been going to Albertos for years now, and the only person I’ve ever allowed to wait on me, was Alberto himself. Because I trust that man.”

“Okay, but I still don’t understand how you knew that bomb was about to go off,” Abby demands, eyeing me suspiciously.

“I didn’t know anything about…this,” I say firmly, my eyes finding hers. “I only knew that I deliberately confirmed with Alberto that I was coming today, and there is no sickness under the sun that would have made that man miss waiting on me. I knew something was wrong, and I’m just grateful we got out of there in time.”

Abby stares at me before looking back at the smoking street behind us, the sounds of sirens wailing in the street.

“Some lunch date,” she says quietly.

But the look in her eyes tells me that for the first time Abigail Wayne isn’t just afraid of me...she’s suspicious.

After we dropped Abby off, there was only one place I wanted to go: Alberto’s home.

The problem was that the media had the same idea.

It was expected, considering an award-winning chef’s flagship restaurant had just been hit with a bomb, and according to the reports we were getting, nearly a dozen people had died with dozens more taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

And so, everyone was waiting on Alberto Caruso, expecting him to make some sort of a statement as to the cause of this tragedy.

But they would be disappointed.

Because when the police knocked on the door of Alberto’s residence, they got no response. And when they entered, they found no one there.

I know this because my team and I were monitoring every police band in the area, listening in on their conversations. When we discovered that Alberto was not found at his residence, I knew immediately where we’d find him.

As a long-time married man with an estranged wife who preferred to spend the cold New York winters overseas in Malta, he’d found himself a mistress.

Stefania Rodero was known to our circle, as was their not-so-secret affair. She was the widow heiress of a packaging company, and she lived in a penthouse in Soho.

While the clumsy and confused police were rummaging around his empty apartment, speculating that Alberto had left town, Cal and I headed back to my penthouse and changed into more casual clothes, then we drove to Soho, to visit my old friend.

Given that the police were looking for Alberto, and likely surmising that he himself had something to do with the tragic fate of his restaurant, it wasn’t going to take them long to find out about his affair and track down the couple.