Untangle Me

Chapter 61

Vincenzo

It's been too long since Giada left the table. She told me she'd be right back but I'm still waiting, my cake cooling with each dragging second and the knot in my stomach tightening. This might seem like an overreaction since she literally just went to the bathroom but something feels off.

So off I finally can't help but text her.

Me: You drowned in the toilet or sum? Dessert is getting cold

I send the message. Then I stare at the screen of my phone and wait for her to reply.

And the longer no three dots appear, the more anxious I get. I reread my message. Then send another.

Me: Well, mine is. Yours already is cold but lava cakes are supposed to be eaten while they're hot. Everyone knows that.

No reply for five more minutes and I'm internally freaking out. My stomach is in so many knots I actually feel sick, a weird sense of foreboding triggering the alarm bells in my brain.

This is silly, I finally decide. I'm freaking out over nothing. She's literally in the same building as me, I need to calm down. That's the reasonable thing to do.

I've never been particularly rational when it comes to Giada though. So I call her only for her phone to ring right beneath the table. Fantastic, she left it in her purse. Sounds like something my girl would do.

The fact calms me on one hand since that means she couldn't reply to my texts. My mind was going some dark places, telling me something happened and she can't answer her phone but she simply left it here.

Good.

Well, on the other hand, I think I might be freaking out more now. Because now, I can't reach her.

Sure, it has only been a few minutes since she left but I've had enough. Getting to my feet, I tell the waiter I'll be right back and head for the bathroom, ignoring the skeptic look he shoots me. He's probably scared I'll dip without paying but it'll be fine. I'll pay, I don't need to explain myself.

I hesitate in front of the women's bathroom. I'm not allowed to go in there, totally aware of that. And yet I open the door and peek my head inside. The lights are on, good. But there aren't any sounds.

"Giada?" I ask but there's no reply. My throat dries up uncomfortably as I enter the room. I look beneath each stall, calling my girl's name again and again but she isn't here.

She wouldn't just run out on me. She has no reason to be mad and even if she were, she wouldn't leave without her phone. There's just no way.

I consider the possibility that she saw something pretty outside and went to take a look at it, getting carried away as she tends to do but I dismiss the idea. Surely, she wouldn't leave without telling me. She knows I freak out easily. She wouldn't do that to me.

But maybe she has seemed a little off today. Twice, she acted a suspicious but I brushed it off, blaming it on the jetlag and on being in Italy for the first time in so long. I regret that now as a familiar wave- no, tsunami of emotions rushes over me and drags me back to a memory I never wanted to revisit.

I wake up in the hospital room thingy in my skyscraper, my head's throbbing, my neck and shoulders tense and the rest of my body weirdly heavy. Still, my mind is alert. I rack my brain for how I got injured and got here and when I remember the car crash, my heart stops for a beat.

I sit up, ignoring my protesting limps and the agony behind my eyes when I turn my head to scan my surroundings. The movement makes me dizzy but I don't stop, can't bring myself to stop shaking my head when I don't find what I'm looking for. Who I'm looking for.

Giada isn't here.

"You're up. Can I get you anything?" Luciano's smooth voice meets my ears. I don't question why he's here.

I don't do anything other than ask the question that seems to be wrapping itself tightly around my heart and throat, stopping my blood flow and making it hard to breathe.

"Where is she?" I mutter, barely audible.

"What?" Luciano asks and I'm quickly losing my patience. And mind. All I see is our car flying and landing on it's roof. Then, finally Giada and her blood. Blood on her window and all around her head.

Fuck! My chest constricts as I blink back the memory.

"Where is she?" I repeat more loudly and despite my every attempt, I start spiraling. "Where is Giada?" I roar, running a hand through my head. My head hurts. So does the rest of my body.

But nothing compares to the agony that hits me when Luciano merely looks at me, his eyes sympathetic.

I shake my head, balling my fist as the room starts spinning. All I can think about is her blood. And our accident. Fuck! What even happened? We were just driving and everything changed so fast.

"Dante, where is she?" I repeat.

"I'm sorry, boss. No one else in the car made it. When we and the ambulance arrived she was already gone," the man tells me.

And then something weird happens. My mind calms. My limps stop shaking. My heart stops galloping. It's like my whole body and mind just shut down until I feel nothing but the dragging dum-dum in my chest.

"Boss?" the man in the room asks but I don't reply. Can't reply. Because I'm not here. No, I'm with her. See her smile, her bright green eyes, hear her laugh and feel her next to me. She isn't gone. She can't be. Can't, can't, can't.

She's what I see when I think of life. Life, not death. Never death. This is wrong. Wrong, so horribly wrong.

I won't accept it.

Zoning back to the women's bathroom in Italy is like a punch in the gut. Because I don't know why this memory came to haunt me now. These two situations aren't related. Still, I feel like I did when I woke up there and honestly, I long for the calm I got after.

I need to calm down, collect myself and focus. Giada is fine. All I need to figure out is where the hell she went.

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Guysss this is the first chapter in a while that was easy to write and which I actually like do yayy

Hope y'all are here for the drama;)

Wish y'all the best of days<3