One of my neighbours had called the police and about ten minutes after Massimo had run after the attacker, they had swarmed the place and I was currently sat outside on a bench, being interrogated by two of the most annoying people – I meant detectives – that I had ever met.
Their names were McGuire and Caddell, but I had already forgotten which was which.
“What were you doing when you heard those noises, Miss Turg-Turga-Truga,” Caddell – or was his name McGuire? – asked, struggling over my second name even though it wasn’t even that hard.
“Just call me Yasemin,” I huffed and tightened the blanket around me. One of my neighbours, probably the one smart enough to call the police at all the commotion going on in my apartment during the middle of the night, had stepped out and handed me the blanket. It was the best thing anyone could have given me right now.
“What were you doing when you heard the noises, Yasemin?” Caddell asked once again, a light flush on his face from the way he had embarrassingly fumbled over my name before.
“I was sleeping,” I told them, only repeating what I had told them upstairs when they had started the questioning, but then changed their mind as they believed we would have more privacy away from the crime scene. Their words, not mine.
“And you woke up when you heard these noises?”
“Yes,” I nodded, trying my best not to get too frustrated.
“What kind of noises were they?” Caddell continued to ask the most stupidest of questions. Couldn’t he hear himself right now? Couldn’t he hear how stupid he sounded?
“Are you being serious right now?” I deadpanned, not the least bit impressed.
“Yes, of course,” Caddell nodded, almost looking offended at my question and deadpan expression. “Now, what kind of noises did you hear?” he repeated, his notepad and pen at the ready.
“The kind where it sounded like someone broke into my apartment and was walking around.
“And you mentioned earlier that you had a roommate?” Caddell asked.
“Yes,” I confirmed with a small nod.
“How do you know it wasn’t your roommate?”
“Because one, my roommate is out with her boyfriend and friends tonight, and she’s not going to be back until tomorrow. And two, my roommate is a girl. This man who broke into my apartment was most certainly a man,” I said, feeling like I was speaking to a toddler right now. I understood that most of these questions were customary and Caddell was only trying to gather information about what had happened tonight, but some of these questions were plain stupid. A better use of time would be to check the security footage in my apartment building in hopes of catching a glimpse at the intruder and possibly even which direction he had run in.
“You said it was dark,” McGuire mused aloud, a sceptical look on his face. “How can you be sure that the intruder was a man?”
“Because I heard his voice when we were talking, and I’m one-hundred percent certain that he was a man.”
McGuire and Caddell both hummed thoughtfully before they turned to share knowing looks.
“Anyone you might know?” Caddell asked, turning his attention back to me. “An angry ex-boyfriend, perhaps?”
“It wasn’t my ex-boyfriend,” I denied, shaking my head.
“How can you be so sure of that?”
“Because the last I heard, he was in college in London somewhere,” I told them, leaving out the part where the last time I had a boyfriend was in my junior year of high school, and we had only dated for a month before we parted amicably and remained somewhat friends for the rest of high school. After that, I went off to NYU, and he moved to London with his family and joined a college there, and that was the last I had heard or seen of him. I mean, we still followed each other on Instagram, but that was the extent of our relationship. Non-existent. And there was definitely no way that he had flown over the sea to break into my apartment, his ex-girlfriend from over six years ago.
“So, you’re still in touch with your ex-boyfriend?” Caddell continued to poke his nose into where it wasn’t wanted.
“No, of course, not,” I denied with an incredulous look on my face. “What kind of question is that?”
“Then how do you know your ex-boyfriend is still in London? How do we know that he’s not in New York right now and he wasn’t the one that broke into your apartment tonight?”
“Why does it feel like you’re interrogating me even though I’m clearly the victim here in this situation?”
“Sorry, Yasemin,” McGuire was quick to apologise with a heavy sigh, no doubt trying to take control of the situation before his partner, Caddell, derailed it even more. “We don’t mean to make you feel like that. We’re just trying to get to the bottom of all of this.”
“Let me explain to you what happened,” I groaned, resisting the urge to roll my eyes at the two very incapable detectives. How they were still in a job, I had no idea. When was Massimo going to return and save me from these idiots who were looking at me as if I had been the one to break into my own apartment and try to hurt myself? “I went to bed at around midnight. I woke up because I heard some strange noises from the living room. I didn’t think much of it at first because my boyfriend was meant to be coming over tonight, but something didn’t feel quite right when I walked out of my bedroom. Even though the lights were off–”
Caddell was quick to cut me off, as if he wasn’t already branded as my least favourite out of the detective duo.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Yasemin, but I’m going to need your boyfriend’s name,” he requested, his pen posed at the ready.
I opened my mouth to give it to them even though I suspected there would be some questions, simply because Massimo was the mafia boss, but then I caught sight of him from over the defendant’s shoulders. There was a mask of worry on his face as he jogged over to me, his eyebrows knotted together in the middle.
“Cara!” Massimo called out to me, a frantic look on his face as he approached us. “I tried to run after him, Cara, but he was already gone by the time I got outside.”
I tried to tell him that it was fine. That the detectives and the police were here to get to the bottom of all of this, but no words came out at the sight of him. Instead, I pursed my lips, gulped painfully and sent him a pleading look to save me from these two terrible detectives.
“What are you doing here, Mr Mancini?” McGuire asked Massimo, a shocked look on his face, and I was surprised to note that they seemed to know each other.
“I’m here to see my girlfriend,” Massimo replied curtly before he pushed past both detectives to drop to his knees on the ground in front of me.
Ignoring them, he reached out to place his hands on either side of my face, bringing it closer to rest my forehead against his as he looked into my eyes, a mixture of fear, relief and worry swirling in them. I wanted nothing more than to drop my head a little lower and press my lips to his, to erase everything he was feeling, even if for just a moment, but we had an audience. And while I usually wouldn’t care, this kiss would no doubt be far too intimate to share in front of a bunch of strangers.
“Tell me where it hurts, Cara,” Massimo demanded to know, his tone gentle. Soothing.
“Nothing hurts,” I was quick to deny, not wanting him to worry more than he was doing already.
“Please don’t lie to me, Cara,” he all but begged me in a small, vulnerable voice. It was one which pulled at my heartstrings and even though we had been dating for less than a week, I had to fight the urge to come out and declare my feelings for him. I didn’t quite know what they were or how I could possibly feel so strongly about someone so soon after dating, but it just felt right.
I swallowed the urge and shook my head once again.
“My throat hurts a little from when he…strange me, but it’s nothing that some water can’t fix.”
“Water,” Massimo murmured, a dazed look in his eye as he pulled his forehead away from mine to glance over his shoulder. “Can’t you hear? Get her some water!”
Massimo’s request was met with a moment of silence, and I nearly jumped up in my seat at the sheer anger and rage radiating from him as he turned his head to glare at the detectives.
“Did you not hear me?” he spat at them. “What are you doing just standing there? Get her some water for ther throat!”
“Are you talking to us?”
“Look around!” Massimo spat at them, his eyes growing darker with rage with each passing second. “Is there anyone else around? Of course, I’m talking to you!”
“That’s not our job,” Caddell denied, but his partner was quick to shush him.
“Just get her some water,” McGuire demanded.
“Fine,” Caddell grumbled and turned around to head into the building. I could tell that he wasn’t happy with being lowered to the title of errand boy, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“Someone broke into her apartment,” Massimo murmured after a deep sigh, sounding far more calm than he did a mere moment ago. “When I came over, he was there, and he tried to strangle her. I pulled him off her and then he ran for it. I tried to run after him, but I lost him before I even got out of the building.”
“Did either of you manage to get a good look at him?”
“No,” Massimo sighed and shook his head.
I shook my head as well.
“It was dark, and he was wearing a balaclava,” I told McGuire. “I think he was also wearing a hoodie.”
“Right,” McGuire murmured, taking a note of what I had just said. “Do either of you have any reason to suspect why someone would try to break into your apartment?”
“No,” I murmured and shook my head, but it took Massimo a little longer to answer.
“Do you have anything to say, Mr Mancini?” McGuire asked, picking up on it as well.
“No,” Massimo answered nonchalantly, but I could tell he was lying. He didn’t do a very good job at hiding it, and while McGuire didn’t look convinced, he didn’t question it further. He spared me a glance, one which said that he would explain everything later. When we were away from the prying eyes of the detectives, and it was just the two of us.
“Here’s the water you so graciously requested,” Caddell murmured in a sullen tone as he returned with one of my glasses, filled to the absolute brim. When he moved to hand it over to me, a little sloshed over the sides and onto the blanket I still had wrapped around me.
“Careful,” Massimo hissed as he took the glass from Caddell and turned to hold it up to my lips. “Take small sips, Cara,” he murmured to me. “We can’t risk you choking.”
I nodded and parted my lips, allowing him to hold up the glass, tilting it just slightly so I could take small sips of the water each time. The entire time, I could feel the probing gazes of the detectives as they stared at us, but we ignored them.
“Can we do anything else for you, detectives?” Massimo asked as he pulled the half-drunken glass of water from my lips after I turned my face away, indicating that it was enough.
“Not for now, but we’ll be in touch once we find something,” McGuire told us, reaching over to hand Massimo his business card. “However, we do recommend that you get your throat checked out at the hospital. Just to make sure everything is okay.”
“I feel fine,” I tried to deny, but Massimo was quick to cut me off.
“Thank you for your concerns, detectives. I’ll see to it personally that Yasemin gets checked out at the hospital,” he said, turning his gaze to me in a pointed look.
“But–” I began to protest, but cut myself off with a sigh as I knew there was no escaping a trip to the hospital to get myself checked up. Other than my sore throat, I felt perfectly fine, but Massimo wasn’t convinced.
Unfortunately, that meant that we head to spend the next three hours sat in the hospital waiting room until it was finally my turn, and that was after being expediated as McGuire had called ahead to tell them that we were on our way.
By the time I was discharged from the hospital with nothing but the order to get some food in me and a long, well-deserved nap, it was morning. Other than a sore throat which would probably go away after a day or two, there was nothing else wrong with me.
“I would take you back to my house but I’m afraid that’s the first place they’re going to look for you,” Massimo murmured, a worried expression on his face as he turned to look at me. “I think we should get a hotel outside of town.”
“I know something better than a hotel,” I told him and gave him instructions.
Massimo drove while I turned my head to glance out the window. I watched as the busy New York traffic slowly started to fade away as we headed out of town, and then I saw nothing as my eyes grew heavy and then eventually closed.
-
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Layla Knight
05.02.2022
