Chapter 49: The false information?

Inside the bullet proof sedan, Santino had his phone attached to his ear.

"How dare you fail in the duty to keep an eye on Emilio?" Santino snarled that made the man on the other end choke on his words.

"I only gave you one command!" He gritted his teeth. "All you had to do was inform me about Emilio if he ever approached my wife, but you both failed terribly."

A voice came through the phone as one of his watchers spoke nervously. "Sir, he hadn’t left the house in days. We thought he was staying home and dealing with his problems. We didn’t think much of it and let our guard down for one afternoon."

"Guard down?" Santino’s knuckles whitened until the skin stretched taut over bone. "You thought he was harmless, but the moment he went off the radar, he filled my wife’s head with poison."

"Boss, we..." The person wanted to explain further, but he cut him off.

"You have ten minutes. Find where Emilio is. If you fail, you two will be dead before the sun rises." He ended the call without a word of warning.

Santino stared straight ahead through the tinted windshield. He was a man who planned every detail, leaving zero room for human error. Yet this single slip-up threatened to unravel everything he had built with Soraya.

"I won’t let Soraya leave me," he murmured while clenching his hand tightly on his lap.

~~~~

Meanwhile, in a dimly lit club, Emilio sat alone in a corner. His hands shook as he held his phone, staring down at the glowing screen before raising it to his ear.

He dialed a number after much consideration.

After a few rings, an annoyed voice came from the other side. "Emilio? Are you out of your mind? Why are you calling me?"

"Claire, please," Emilio pleaded, his voice cracking with desperation. "I know you hate me right now, and I know what happened at the bakery, but I need to talk to you. Just for five minutes. Please."

"I have nothing to say to you, Emilio. You terrified Soraya by making up some nonsensical stories, and now you’re calling me?" Claire snapped, ready to hang up.

"Wait—don’t hang up!" Emilio begged, leaning forward over the table. "We were friends before all of this, Claire. Remember? Please, just meet me at the club on Fourth Street, near the cafe. I’m sitting alone. I just need someone to listen to me. I need to fix things with Sora"

There was a long, heavy pause on the line before Claire let out an exhausted sigh. "Fine. Ten minutes. But the second I feel you are making excuses, I’m walking out."

Emilio clicked the phone off, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead, completely unaware that the clock was already ticking down against him.

Within five minutes, Claire arrived with an expressionless face as she was feeling guilty, going behind her friend’s back and meeting the ex who had cheated her and put Soraya in such a dilemma.

"What is it that you want to say?" Claire raised a brow and demanded.

"Can’t we just sit and have a talk normally?" Emilio pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Argh!" Claire glared at him, sitting across from him. "Emilio, I’m giving you advice as a friend; you should forget about Sora and live your life ahead."

"How can you even say that?" Emilio clenched his fist. How could he even forget Soraya who had been with her over a decade? "We were just a vow away from becoming each other’s forever, and you are suggesting I forget about her?"

"I understand what you might be feeling, but," Claire lowered her voice, looking around. "As you said, Santino Salveggio has his eyes fixed on her. Do you think you can fight him?"

"That’s the perfect reason for me to fight for her!" Emilio exclaimed. "Santino... He is a really dangerous person, the biggest manipulator; what if... what if he really does something to her and forces her to become his or marry her?"

Emilio had been restless these days while looking for Soraya, praying that she wouldn’t fall into Santino’s hands, but now that he had found her, he would never let that manipulator go anywhere near her.

Claire peered deep into Emilio’s eyes. She could tell that there was some truth in his words but it was way too late. "Emilio, I think you should just drop all this, Soraya would never go back to you."

"Why!?" He demanded. "We were in love for years, and just because of a phone call which I don’t even remember, I should just let her go?" His already red eyes turned one shade deeper as his finger trembled in pain and fur

Claire got frustrated; Emilio wasn’t explaining himself properly, only giving excuses, which was the last thing she wanted.

"That might have been the case before, but now she is an heiress of the Dalias family; do you think she’d accept..." Claire covered her mouth as if she had blurted something wrong in the heat of the moment.

"What!?" Emilio’s eyes grew bigger in shock. "Are you talking about the Dalias family?"

"I... I don’t know," Claire stood up abruptly. "I’ll be back from the washroom."

"Claire!" Emilio called out, but his voice faded in the loud music of the club. "Fuck! What did she mean by that?" He muttered under his breath, and before he could follow her, a hand tapped him on the place, and several men surrounded him.

He was still trying to process what was going on when Santino appeared on the seat where Claire sat just a moment before.

"San... Santino?" Emilio stammered.

"Mr. Salveggio," Santino corrected Emilio, while resting his left leg on his right. "What gave you the courage to come to Rome and sow discord between me and my wife, Mr. Emilio?"

"Excuse me?" Emilio, despite being afraid of being surrounded by tall men in black, kept his composure. "Who are you talking about? I don’t even know you, let alone your wife?"

"Really?" Santino raised a brow. "Wasn’t it you who met Raya at La Dolce today, feeding her all the false information?"

Emilio froze for a second. "Pardon me?" He asked as if he had heard something wrong.