Rumor Has It

I don’t know how many minutes I spent just staring aimlessly at the air. My ears rang, and my body shook with fear. The words, ‘Emilio Vitale escaped from prison, and it’s all your fault,’ kept replaying in my mind over and over again.

My blood ran cold, and I almost wanted to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I rushed to the living room and turned on the TV. The headlines were all over the news, and they only cemented what my father had already told me.

Only the headlines weren’t angry with me. They were brutal.

“New in, Emilio Vitale escapes prison with the help of the daughter of the DIA’s director, Chiara Moretti.” One news outlet reported.

“Breaking news: Emilio Vitale escapes from prison after Chiara Moretti, the second chair lawyer in his prosecution case, visits him.” Another one reported.

“Foul play? Emilio Vitale escapes prison after charming Chiara Moretti.”

My name had leaked to all the media outlets, and everyone was tearing into me. Some less mainstream stations were even calling me Emilio Vitale’s whore. They didn’t even know what had happened, and they were already jumping to conclusions.

My phone was buzzing every few seconds, and I was too scared to open it and see what people were saying. I wanted to cry, scream, and laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing at the same time.

If I were to even help Emilio get out of prison, how would I go about it? It was ridiculous, and it didn’t even make sense. But sense didn’t matter when it came to hungry reporters looking for a catchy story.

I sat on my couch with my head buried in my hands. Everything was going so great, and all of a sudden, things fell apart. I didn’t even have the energy to talk to my father. What would I even say to him?

I numbly walked myself to the shower and stood under the hot water for twenty minutes before my doorbell rang. I turned off the water, put on a robe, and opened the door. I wasn’t shocked that the person standing on the other side of the door was my father.

“What the fuck happened, Chiara?” He asked as he pushed his way inside. I could tell he was very disappointed in me. “Get dressed.”

I ran to my room and put on pajama pants and a tank top. I didn’t even bother drying my hair because I knew how impatient my father could get.

He was pacing my living room when I got there, his jaw tight, and a vein popping on the side of his head. I had never seen him that upset and agitated before.

“Papá, I didn’t help him get out. You know I would never do this.” I defended myself.

“What happened?”

“I went to interview him, and I handed him some documents, but we barely got to speak for ten minutes before I was alerted to a kitchen fire and informed, I had to leave so he could go back to his cell. Then he just left. I swear I didn’t do this. I know how much you hate him, and I do too. I wouldn’t let out a murderer.”

He ran his hands over his face and let out a string of curses.

“Did you check the documents before you went to see him?”

“Yes! I did everything you asked. I don’t know what the media is painting me as the person who let him go.”

I couldn’t help but shed a few tears even though I knew how much my father hated it when I did that. He stressed that women were not supposed to be emotional, especially because I wanted to become a lawyer.

He was frustrated and angrier with me than he had ever been. I still understand why he believed I was the reason Emilio got out of prison.

“This is all your fault, Chiara. I should never have let you become a lawyer in the first place. You are an embarrassment to this family. You belong in the kitchen like your mother.”

I bit my lip to stop myself from lashing out and saying something that would trigger him or upset him. He would kill me if I said something he didn’t like.

“Lay low and refrain from talking to anyone but me and Elena. Do you hear me?”

I nodded my head, and he muttered something about me being a headache as he walked out of my apartment. I stood there wondering if I even had a career in law to pursue after the whole incident with Emilio.

Everyone thought I had ties to the mafia, and no one would ever trust me to put a criminal in jail if they thought I was breaking them out. Everything I had worked hard for, to prove to my father that I wasn’t just another pretty girl with no skills, had just gone down the drain.

I sat on my couch with my head in my hands when I heard a sound in my apartment. All of a sudden, the lights went out, and it was dark.

“Hello?” I called out, thinking there was someone in there. When it was silent for about a minute and I heard nothing, I sighed and walked towards the master control panel to check what happened to the lights.

I turned on the flashlight on my phone and opened the small box. I was shocked to see that the main switch that controlled all the lights in my apartment had been turned off. I looked around in fear, my heart racing, thinking someone would jump and scare me from behind.

I shook away the thoughts of paranoia immediately. No one could have entered my apartment without my permission. The switch must have turned off by itself because of the overwhelming circulation of electricity.

I turned it on and walked back to the living room, and that’s when I saw him. I screamed so loudly that I could have shaken the whole building with the sound.

Sitting on my couch in a casual white shirt, blue jeans, and brown Timberlands was Emilio Vitale. He was in my apartment. How did he even get in? I had a balcony, but I also lived on the fifth floor.

It would be a suicide mission to even climb up.

“What the fuck?!” I screamed.

“You'd better stay silent or I will kill the first person to come and check up on you.” He said.

That shut me up immediately. It was one thing to see Emilio behind a glass wall with cuffs on his hand, but an entirely different thing to see him sitting casually on my couch.

He was handsome, but he was also intimidating with his icy gaze and tattoos covering his neck and arms. He also had a gun in his hands.

Add that to the fact that he was a murderer. Papá told me he had killed thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of men. And he was only twenty-eight.

I fumbled with my phone so I could call the police, but he turned the safety off the gun with a click.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You’re a pretty girl. I wouldn’t want to color your apartment walls with your brains.”

I closed my eyes, silently praying that it wasn’t the last day I would ever be seen alive.

“Have a seat, Chiara Moretti,” he said as he gestured to the armchair opposite the couch. I numbly walked there and sat down. He smirked in satisfaction when I did as he said. “I told you I would see you out here. Tell me, are you happy to see me?”