SHADES OF LOVE

CHAPTER 2 [Flashback, Part One]

Ah, Verona...

Verona is fascinating. It's unique. It's beautiful. Charming. Romantic. And another milestone in your life.

And what a milestone.

It was Alice's first plane trip. And she wasn't the slightest bit scared. She was rather thrilled and, since that day at her grandparents' when Ignazio told her the news, that was all she could talk about.

You too were excited about it, but also quite nervous about how Alice would handle that new way of travelling, so Ignazio had offered her a portable DVD player and a children's picture book to help her prepare for the trip. It really did a great job of walking her through the process of getting to the airport, moving through the airport including security, boarding, take-off and landing, as well as all the sounds she would hear on the plane ride. It even showed what a bathroom looked like on a plane.

You couldn't help loving him for being so caring...

And he once more demonstrated it by also inviting your mother to Verona, so she could finally meet him and enjoy some well-deserved quality time with her two girls.

God, could you love him even more?

You knew that it had been a long time since your mother had taken a trip - especially abroad - and, although she was a very independent, active and still very energetic woman, lately she didn't get many opportunities to travel, so it would be great for her to mix up her routine a bit.

Ignazio had booked you all first class seats, claiming it would be ideal for traveling with a small child and making the whole experience more pleasant as well. You still didn't like the idea of him spending money on you, it was against everything you standed for, but it was useless to argue with him. He would always end up reasoning that you could only see each other if you came to him and that he'd pay whatever it took for that, and you couldn't argue with that.

The plane ride turned out better than you had expected. Not to toot your own horn, but you were proud to say that your daughter acted appropriately at all times. Alice was really a very well-behaved six-year-old kid. She passed the time quietly watching a few of her favorite children's shows with her headphones on and, later on, she and your mother played a really neat children's card game that was part of the amenity kit she had packed in her little backpack. She also played a game where you all made up stories about where each of the other passengers were going.

Once you landed, instead of having Ignazio picking you up at the airport, as usual, you had a transfer service waiting for you at the arrivals with a sign displaying your name. Ignazio had called you the day before saying that, due to a last-minute work commitment, he wouldn't be able to meet you at the airport and there was a good chance he could only be done just before the show started, so he had arranged for the pickup service to take you all to the hotel in Verona.

You were not exactly pleased with the unexpected circumstances, but you did have to understand and accept it - work is work. Even though you still didn't know exactly what his job was, knowing only that it was in the music business and that he had to travel a lot - so, totally unrelated to the mafia, as your friend Laura led you to suspect for a brief period just because he was from Sicily, rich and extremely secretive.

You recognised it was kind of unsettling how he wanted to know every single detail of your whole life but gave you barely anything in return about his own. But he asked you to trust him and somehow you did. There was something about him, something beyond all the mystery and darkness, that made you trust him on that.

Maybe you were blinded by love.

Maybe.

But you'd decided that you would allow yourself to be blindsided, for now. For as long as it felt so damn right.