Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Three Alarms

Livia wakes on the rug after a seizure, meets Philip in SoHo, and Giulia sits down with a warning to stay away from her uncle Aldo on Saturday.

I woke on my bedroom rug with no memory of getting there.

My tongue was sore, and there was a bruise on my hip I hadn't had the night before.

Three alarms were waiting on my phone.

The first said, "Take the levetiracetam."

The second said, "Philip, one o'clock."

The third said, "Do not tell Adriano."

I had written that one myself, and I still stared at it for a full minute before it made sense.

By ten, a crew was taking down the glass greenhouse outside the east wing.

Adriano had ordered it built overnight for my nineteenth birthday, and it had been full of white gardenias ever since.

Now two men carried the last potted tree to a truck.

Crates of dark red ranunculus went the other way, toward the ballroom.

I wasn't ruining anything.

I was only watching a room get cleared for someone else.

Bruno was waiting by the car in his heavy coat.

He had been Adriano's underboss for six years, and for the last six months he had been under orders to forget I existed.

"Good morning, Miss Costanzo." He opened the rear door for me. "I'm driving you to SoHo."

"Who told you to?"

"Nobody. I'd like to."

I got in.

He pulled out through the gate and spoke to the mirror.

"The Don wants a file on your Mr. Whitcombe by tonight."

"I know. I heard him."

"I'll give him a clean one." Bruno's eyes stayed on the road. "Boston family, no debts, no enemies, nothing odd."

"Is that true?"

"It's the part I wrote down."

I looked at the back of his head until I understood.

"Thank you," I said.

"I was told to stop watching you six months ago." He turned onto the parkway. "I only stopped writing it down."

The restaurant in SoHo was small and had a table by the back wall.

Philip was already there, with his glasses pushed up into his sandy hair.

He stood when he saw me and then sat down again, frowning.

"You look worse than yesterday."

"Thank you. I fell off a rug."

"You fell off a rug." He put his hand flat on the table, palm up, and waited.

I put mine in it for a second.

He had never once tried to keep it.

Philip's mother had died of the same tumor three years ago, in Boston, in a hospital that told her to go home.

He was the one who found the doctors in Zurich.

He had also offered to be my suitor, loudly, in front of Adriano's men, so that nobody would ask why a Boston man kept taking me to dinner.

"There's a car outside my building every morning since six," he said. "Gray sedan, two men."

"Bruno?"

"Not Bruno. Bruno sent me a text saying 'sorry in advance.'"

I laughed, and it hurt my tongue.

"Are you going to tell him?" Philip asked.

"After I land."

"That's the wrong order."

"It's the only order I've got."

"Livia."

A woman had stopped beside our table.

She was my age or a little older, in a camel coat, with chestnut hair cut at her shoulders.

On a thin chain at her throat hung a diamond ring.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm Giulia Donati. May I sit?"

Nobody had to tell me who she was.

Philip's chair scraped back an inch.

"Please," I said.

She sat and put a paper bag on the table. Inside were lemon cookies, still warm.

"Everyone told me you'd be cold," she said. "Bruno said you wouldn't want to see me. I came anyway, because if I don't meet you before Saturday, I never will."

"I'm not cold."

"No." She smiled at me, plainly pleased. "Adriano said you were difficult. He said it three times, which is how I knew you were wonderful."

Philip made a small noise into his coffee.

I took a cookie, because it was the safest thing to do with my hands.

"Can I ask you something?" Giulia said. "Adriano wants the greenhouse trees thrown out. Every one. I can't do that."

"Give them to a children's ward."

"Which one?"

"Any one. They'll want something that smells like a garden."

She wrote it on the back of her hand with a pen from her bag.

"Done," she said. "Thank you."

Then she looked at Philip. "Mr. Whitcombe, would you mind finding the waiter? I'd like to order for her."

He looked at me, and I nodded.

When he had gone, Giulia leaned over the table, and the warmth left her voice.

"Whatever you're planning for Saturday, do it early and be gone before noon."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Yes, you do." Her hand closed over my wrist. "Stay away from my uncle, Aldo. Don't let him near you, and don't tell Adriano I said so."

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