Hidden Heart (19 page)

The twist of events came
when least expected. Victor had told her the fraud accusation was
unfounded because the farmers refused to file any complaint, and he
didn’t want to pursue any further for lack of evidence, but she had
argued with him that something must’ve triggered the sending of
that letter. They both knew the money didn’t end up in her
account.

According to Mr. Popescu,
the farmers received less money than they originally negotiated.
That meant that from the office where Tessa handed the money to the
exit of the notary’s office something must’ve happened and she
wanted desperately to find out what. And the swap of contracts; if
they hadn’t been deteriorated by water, why did the notary need her
to sign a second time? It didn’t make any sense. She didn’t tell
Victor or anyone that she had to sign them again but she wondered
now if the originals and the copies of the contracts were
identical.
They had to be,
right?

***

“
I need to go back home to
Italy for two days max,” Alessandro said driving Tessa to work the
next morning.

“
Why? When?” Panic rose in
her voice. She needed to talk to him before the abortion day and
her countdown had started. That left her even less time than she
thought she had to prepare herself.

“
You think you’ll miss me?”
Alessandro glanced at her, a sheepish grin on his face, the same
grin she couldn’t resist.

“
Since when do we answer a
question with another question?”

“
Oh, come on,
cara mia
, just
un poco
?” His thumb and
index finger showed her the size of a centimeter. She pressed the
fingers together and squeezed his palm.

“
Of course I’ll miss you,
silly, but why are you going?”

“
Business, but I promise I
don’t have to do this too often; and next time I’ll go, you’ll
definitely come with me.”

She sighed and looked out
the window. Will he still be with her
next
time
? Will he stay when she tells him about
the baby?

“
When are you
leaving?”

“
Sunday night so I can be
there first thing in the morning and if all works out as planned I
should be home by Monday night.”

He stopped in front of her
office, came around and opened her door. She stepped out and hugged
him. God, it felt so good in his arms!

“
We need to talk tonight,”
she heard herself saying, a bit too serious but too late to change
it.

“
Something’s bothering
you,” he said, squinting his eyes and tilting his head.

“
We’ll talk about it
tonight,” she responded, averting her eyes. She placed a quick kiss
on his lips and walked inside the building. She waited until he
drove away, then walked back out in the street and called a
cab.

In less than thirty
minutes, Tessa arrived at the notary’s office. She paid the cab,
then went and knocked on the front door. It wasn’t locked and she
knocked once again before entering the reception area. She came
face to face with Corina, the notary’s assistant carrying a big
plant. They both came to a sudden stop and stared at each
other.

Corina let out a small
gasp, her posture stiffened. “Ms. Cosma, what are you doing
here?”

“
Where is she?”

Corina gripped the plant
tighter to her chest. A dazed look on her face, she spoke with a
jittery voice, “I… nobody knows… we came to work as usual and
waited and waited for her, but she didn’t come and she didn’t
answer any calls. Then her boyfriend stopped by and stormed in here
and turned her office upside down. When I asked him what he wanted,
he yelled that he’s looking for the damn money.”

Corina dropped on a nearby
chair, shoulders slumped, still gripping the pot at her chest. Her
soft cry was barely audible.

Tessa pulled a chair and
sat next to her. “I’m not here to hurt you, Corina. I just know
that something went wrong with the contracts I signed and I hoped
you could help me. You and I know that the water hadn’t damaged the
original contracts. Someone stole the money and it wasn’t me. You
have to tell me the truth.” Tessa knew she bluffed, but she tried
to sound convincing.

Corina shook her head and
turned sideways. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The
contracts have been damaged by water, that’s why you had to sign a
second batch of them.”

“
How much?” Tessa tried a
different approach.

“
I don’t
understand.”

“
How much did she promise
you?”

A stubborn look on her
face, Corina said, “I don’t know who told you such stupid things,
but I didn’t take any money.”

“
Okay.” Tessa stood and
walked towards the door. “You leave me no choice and up until now I
tried to offer you a chance to tell the truth. I have to get the
police involved; this situation is way out of my hands.” She
touched the knob to open the door, but Corina jumped and pushed her
away, then pressed her back to the door.

“
You can’t get the police
involved; if her boyfriend finds out, he’ll come after us; you’ll
put both of us at risk. I have three kids at home and I’m already
jobless; you can’t do this to me!”

Tessa stepped in front of
the young woman, then put her hands on her shivering shoulders. “I
can’t help you if you don’t help me, Corina.” She kept her voice
low and looked her straight in the eyes.

Corina waited for a few
seconds, then walked to her desk and removed a piece of folded
paper from her purse.

“
Here, I kept one original.
All the other ones have been shredded. Take it and leave. I have
lived in Otopeni my whole life and the notary had been one
influential person everyone feared. We all knew she did some dirty
business arrangements, but having a job was more important than
trying to reveal what she was doing. And her father, the mayor,
means business, no one wants to be on his black list.”

Tessa took the contract and
read it. Nothing seemed different than what she remembered. She
worked too long to draft it and knew it almost word for word. Then
what was wrong with it?

“
Don’t let anyone disturb
me,” Tessa said when Eva tried to follow her in her office. She
locked the door and sat at her desk. She read and re-read the
contract until she couldn’t look at it anymore. The name on the
contract didn’t sound familiar, but there were hundreds of farmers
she met with and it happened long ago; her memory didn’t put a face
to the name. She searched for the address of the farmer in her
database and called the number listed.

Mr. Vasile, the farmer,
refused to talk to her. She called Mr. Popescu and asked if he knew
the other farmer.

“
Of course I know him,
everyone knows everyone here. He is my brother-in-law. What do you
need from him?”

“
I just want him to show me
his contract, and if he doesn’t want to show me the original, then
it’s fine; a copy would suffice, too.” Tessa kept her fingers
crossed, while Mr. Popescu seemed to ponder her words. “I’m not
taking his contract and I don’t intend to take his money, either.
It’s just… Mr. Popescu, I desperately need your help, my job is on
the line; I could lose everything, please?”

She heard his sigh, then
for a while, he said nothing. She feared he’d hung up on her and
she almost put the receiver down when she heard him saying, “I’ll
see what I can do.”

***

July felt hot and humid in
Bucharest. No breeze, no rain, just a high humidity that made
clothes stick to the body. Not all stores or households owned an AC
system; too expensive for the average family. Flies and tiny bugs
filled the air during the day; swarms of mosquitoes made nights
outside a real adventure. The city’s mayor promised his team would
take immediate measures to solve the problem. But that’s all he
did—promise.

Tessa saw Daniel first. The
night lanterns allowed her to spot him in the darkness while she
and Alessandro walked the alley to her apartment. Daniel leaned
against the front door, smoking. Since when did he smoke? He hadn’t
shown up for the past week and she hoped he just gave up on
bothering her.

Apparently not.

“
Well, well, look who’s
coming home.” His slurred words made her shiver. His shirt hung on
him wrong buttoned, dirty and smelly. He looked homeless with his
unshaved face, glaring eyes and messy dirty hair.

She took a step back while
Alessandro, clenched fists at his side, blocked Daniel from coming
near her.

Daniel didn’t move, instead
clapped and chuckled. “Bravo, Tessa, it looks like Romanian dicks
don’t satisfy you anymore, you need a foreigner, huh?”

Alessandro didn’t
understand what he said, but he didn’t need to. He inched on Daniel
forcing him to take a step back and said, “Leave.”

Daniel lifted his palms as
in surrender, an arrogant look on his face. He looked sideways at
Tessa and said, “One of these days, I’ll be back and no one will be
around to save you.” He inhaled one more time from his cigarette,
blew the smoke into Alessandro’s face and walked away.

“
I think you need to move
in with me,” Alessandro said once they entered her apartment and
locked the door. The cool air of her place made her feel better
immediately. Once again she congratulated herself for investing in
an AC unit, no matter how expensive it seemed at first.

“
What? Why do you want me
to move in with you?”

Tessa felt exhausted after
that encounter with Daniel. Nothing had happened for several days
after her call with Mr. Popescu and waiting for him to get back
with her added to her anxiety. She was almost sure the key to
solving the fraud accusation lay with that contract. Terrible
guilty feelings about signing the documents for a second time
without reading them troubled her, especially because Victor wasn’t
aware of that and because it was illegal.

“
Because I don’t think you
are safe in your own apartment. I don’t think this is the last
you’ll see of your ex. He’ll be back and I’m worried that I won’t
be around to protect you.”

She came to face him,
hugged him softly and placed her head on his shoulder. “I really
appreciate your concern, but I’m okay here. I don’t want to leave
my own nest, besides he is not dangerous. He’s just making a fuss.
He’s coming less and less and soon he’ll be bored to
come.”

Daniel’s nasty words still
resonated in her ears; he had never been—no matter how big their
fight—so mean to her or used crude language towards her. His
transformation gave her the chills, but still, she couldn’t picture
him as a violent person.

Alessandro took her hand
and sat on the sofa, then pulled her into his arms.

“
I’ll be sick with worry
knowing he roams around and I can’t always be here to protect you.
I leave in a few days, what if he comes again?” He stroked her
shoulder, played with her hair, then wrapped his arms around her
rocking her gently.

“
I’ll be fine, I promise
I’ll be cautious.”

“
What if you talked to the
police? Doesn’t Romania have a law that protects people from such
things?”

“
Yeah, right. Our
legislation here is the same we had during Communism. The new
Government changed a word or a title here and there, but in reality
nothing really changed. We have a saying about the wolf that
changes its hair but not its habit... We don’t have rights here; we
have obligations. And women haven’t ever been taken seriously, we
are considered second class individuals.”

Tessa stood. Alessandro did
the same.

“
Here, take
this.”

He gave her a small, black
square box. She opened it and looked at the object inside, then at
him then back at the object.

“
I’d rather have you stay
at my place while I’m gone. I had this spare key made a week go,
but couldn’t find the right time to give it to you.”

Her rapid breaths and the
look on her face must’ve been expressive because he continued right
away, “I understand you aren’t ready to move in with me; I’m not
pressuring you to do anything that you aren’t comfortable with, but
let’s make a compromise here.” He closed his eyes, keeping them
shut for a moment, sighed, then opened his eyes again, while his
warm palms held her shoulders, rubbing them tenderly. He looked at
her and spoke in a soft voice, “Tessa…from the moment I first saw
you in that cable car a year ago, I felt a strong attraction for
you. I tried to forget you, but you kept haunting my days and
nights no matter how hard I wanted to get you out of my mind. And
then, I found you again, and I am here with you and I can’t allow
anything or anyone to harm you.”

Alessandro took her head
between his hands and stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. She
turned her head slightly, put her left hand on top of his and
kissed the inside of it. She couldn’t control the tears filling her
eyes, but she didn’t care. This was the closest thing to a love
declaration since they got together and happiness almost choked
her.