Page 3 of My Dark Fairy Tale

Being the good girl.

It was one of the reasons I was even in Italy. My parents had practically begged me not to go on my trip, still too rattled by Gemma’spassing to deal with having me so far from them, especially when I had health concerns of my own.

But I felt it was a fitting tribute to Gemma to finally do something I wanted for a change. She had encouraged me for years, but particularly those months she’d been living abroad, to branch out from under my parents’ shelter and discover the world for myself.

I knew with bone-deep certainty she would approve of my duplicitous holiday.

Distantly, a humming vibration sounded.

I perked up against the side of the car, cocking my head to strain my ears.

Yes, a car.

I shot to my feet, slipping slightly in the gravel, and then ran around the car to the roadside. A nondescript blue sedan was descending the hill before this one.

Without really thinking through the ramifications, I threw myself into the middle of the road, jumping up and down, waving my arms, and crying out.

When the car crested the hill, it slowed instantly, the driver probably unused to seeing a crazy American in the middle of a country road.

“Ciao,” I called, dropping my arms as it crept to a standstill just in front of me. “Parli inglese?”

Do you speak English? I asked.

My Italian was passable, but not when I was in panic mode.

I moved closer to the open window and noted that the driver was a middle-aged gentleman with weathered tan skin in workingman’s clothes. We were surrounded by vineyards, so I had to wonder if he was one of the men who worked them.

“My car broke down,” I explained, waving an unnecessary hand at the cute and inoperable Fiat.

He blinked at me, almost like he couldn’t be sure I existed. “Broken?”

“Yes,” I exclaimed a little too enthusiastically. “Yes, broken.”

“I can look,” he offered, a slow grin taking over his swarthy features.

I beamed back at him. “That would be great, honestly. I know next to nothing about cars.”

He nodded, indicating for me to move so that he could pull off the road behind my car. I went to wait near the Fiat, fiddling with my phone because I’d been taught to text my dad if I was ever in trouble, but he was all the way back in Michigan, and texting him would just make him worry.

I startled a little bit when the gentleman got out of his car. He was a big man, broad through the shoulders and at least six feet. Given I was five foot three on a good day, my heart started to race.

“What’s your name?” I asked him, trying to establish a connection because I’d read once somewhere that people were less likely to harm you if you shared details about your life with them.

He grunted as he grabbed a tool kit out of the back of his trunk. “Galasso.”

I’d never heard the name before, and it made me think he was making it up, but I told myself to chill out. It was still light out, though the sun was only a sliver of molten orange on the horizon behind the vineyards and the sky was sprayed with pink-and-purple clouds. I remembered the number for emergency services in Italy and typed it into my phone even though I didn’t have great service, ready to press the call button if the need arose.

“Thank you for this,” I said as he walked over to the Fiat and started his inspection under the hood. “I’m in Italy with my entire family just twenty minutes from here, but of course I had to wander off on my own. They’ll be so worried about me if I don’t get home soon.”

Galasso’s mouth twitched, the first sign of true humanity in him. “I have daughter a little younger than you,” he admitted in thickly accented English.

Instantly, I felt relief sluice through me like cool water on this hot summer’s night.

He had a daughter.

Good, not a predator, then, but a helpful father who envisioned me as his own daughter stranded on the side of the road.

More at ease, I grinned at him and ducked into the car to grab two plums, then offered one to him.