The Italian I Was Never Supposed to Understand novel · Chapter 21 of 32
Chapter 21: The Box
Chiara didn't get up.
She held the box tighter.
"How did you know I was here?" I said in Italian.
"Raffa told the whole bar last night. Then the whole of Alba this morning." She tried to smile. "The heiress and the farmer. He thinks it's funny."
She looked terrible.
No makeup. Cheap sneakers. A coat too thin for the hills in September.
"He left me in August," she said. "When he bought the farmhouse. He said my lawyer was talking to the DA, so I was a risk."
"You are a risk."
"I know." She laughed, short and ugly. "I'm sleeping in my mother's spare room in Turin. My card got declined for the bus ticket. I paid in coins."
I didn't sit down next to her.
"What's in the box, Chiara?"
She opened it.
On top was a stack of label proofs, the Ferri hill in brown ink, with notes in the margin in Raffaele's big slanted handwriting.
Darker brown. Remove number box. 500 rolls.
Under them was a folder of printed emails.
"The print shop in Alba," she said. "His family's printer. He had them run off here and shipped to Queens in wine cases."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of The Italian I Was Never Supposed to Understand are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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