A/N: If there was ever a contest to see who could own Chuck, I wouldn't win. I don't win stuff.
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Body clocks being what they are, the friends were up early the next day. They had a car drop them in the center of Rome and began to explore. Sarah had been to Rome many times, but this was the first time she could enjoy the luxury of just being a tourist with her friends. Lou had been born there, but had the native's habit of ignoring the "touristy" sites around town, so she was as excited to explore as any of them. Chuck and Morgan, of course, were thoroughly thrilled to see in person the famous places and structures they had only seen in pictures or movies.
The Roman Coliseum was built in the year 80, and when they thought about how young their own country, much less their city, was in comparison, they were awestruck. They took dozens of pictures. Morgan, with his trusty guidebooks, gave them a running commentary on all the most interesting things about the sites they were visiting. He told them that, unlike the depictions in the gladiator movies, real Roman gladiators had been pudgy guys. It seemed that the layer of fat was a level of protection against sword blows.
They visited the famous and beautiful Trevi Fountain. Each couple took pictures of the other couple kissing in the foreground with the Fountain behind. As is custom (from Morgan's book) they threw coins into the water using the right hand over the left shoulder. Morgan told them the coins would be collected and used to fund a local food bank for Rome's needy.
They saw the Pantheon from the year 126 and marveled at its classical beauty. Once again, Morgan told them that the design, the square columned front with the circular dome behind, had been copied by Thomas Jefferson for the Rotunda library at the University of Virginia.
As they walked through the Piazza Navona, both Morgan and Chuck felt the need to recount the movie National Lampoon's European Vacation for the amusement of Sarah and Lou.
Even the walks between the attractions were fascinating for Morgan and Chuck (and fun for Sarah and Lou too). Although it wasn't warm, maybe 10°C, and the Californians were all wearing light jackets, there were dozens of street vendors and open store fronts. Chuck even found the sound of spoken Italian to be strange and exciting.
By midday, they were footsore and hungry. For lunch, Lou led them to a small side street and down a few stairs. If there were signs advertising this establishment, Sarah didn't see them. It was a small dimly lit place with the archlike ceiling design of a basement. A bored kid met them at the foot of the stairs and gestured to the tables, saying something in Italian, which Chuck took to mean 'sit wherever you want.'
They followed Lou to an empty table. As Sarah arched an eyebrow at Lou, the other woman said, with a grin, "Trust me."
A disgruntled looking fat man with an apron stretched over his massive belly came over to the table. From a tray, he put down two bottles of sparking water, two bottles of red wine in clear unlabeled containers, and eight glasses. He didn't say anything until he'd finished. Then he said to Lou, without expression, "Sei tornato." [You're back.]
With a bit of an impudent grin, Lou said, "So che ti sono mancato. Ammettilo, Matteo." [I know you missed me. Just admit it, Matteo.]
The man grunted and shrugged. Chuck thought he and Casey could have a delightful conversation, exchanging grunts. Thinking of Casey reminded him to send his friend a text and ask if he was having fun with Marie.
Lou turned to the others and asked, "You trust me?" They affirmed that they did. She smiled and said, "Excellent." Turning back the man standing beside the table, she grinned and said, "Caesar salade e bucatini carbonara, per favore. Per quattro." The man nodded, grunted and walked away.
Morgan took the wine and poured it into the four glasses. Chuck noticed that they weren't wine glasses, but shorter glasses even smaller than a bartender might call rock glasses. Each of them took a glass and raised it. "To Rome," said Morgan.
"Salute," said Lou. [Health] They all clicked their glasses together.
They began to discuss the morning, the places they had visited, the people they'd seen. Chuck and Morgan took out their phones and began to show the others the pictures they'd taken. They were laughing and teasing each other when the salad arrived. Family style, with one big bowl and four serving bowls.
Morgan served it out for them and everyone dug in with expectation. They were not disappointed, and it was delicious. Morgan frowned a little in concentration, while Lou looked at him with a tiny smile, expectant. After his second bite. "This is the same Ceasar dressing you use on your Ceasar wrap, back home," said Morgan with surprise and excitement.
"Yup. You got it. Good job, Sweetie. I worked here after school and in the summers when I wasn't visiting my Mom's family in the States. This is where I learned to cook," said Lou with a smile. "Now I really hope you like the place...the food."
"I love it. But, you worked here?" Morgan asked, looking around. He was thinking about the daughter of the owner of the hotel chain working in a basement restaurant.
"Yeah. Matteo and Mia used to work at one of my dad's hotels. When they wanted to start a place of their own, he staked them the start-up money and here we are," she responded, with a fluid gesture around the room.
"Is your dad still a partner here?" asked Chuck.
"Oh, no. They bought him out when I was a little girl. No. But we're still close to them. Don't let his grumpy act fool you. They are sweet as honey."
"Well, this salad is fantastic," said Sarah.
Salad finished, Matteo brought them a big bowl of bucatini carbonara, again family style.
"Oh, my God," exclaimed Sarah after the first bite. "Oh, my God. This is heaven. It's so good," she half said and half moaned. They agreed that she was right and the pasta was superb. Most of the rest of the pasta was consumed with few words other than "Good," "Oh, man," and "More, please."
When they had finished Morgan said, "Lou, this is the best carbonara I've ever had. Can you get me the recipe?"
Lou laughed and said, "Oh, come on, Sweetie. Let's talk to Mia." She took Morgan's hand and walked him into the kitchen, clearing the table of the used plates as she went.
Sarah said, "Rich parents, but she worked in a restaurant. Lou was raised right. Megan and Tony didn't spoil her."
"They didn't. I liked her before, but I think I like her more now that I know she could have been a stuck- up rich girl and isn't at all," said Chuck.
"I wonder how she ended up running a sandwich shop in LA?" said Sarah.
"Well, we'll be with her for a while, so I'll bet we find out," said Chuck.
Matteo came back and, putting plates on the table, said, "Cheesecake...ricotta."
Sarah gave him a huge smile and said, "Grazie mille, Signore Matteo." Which earned her a half smile from the fat man. To Chuck she said, "You are going to love this."
Chuck couldn't believe how delicious the ricotta cheesecake was. He was used to the cheesecake in America, made with cream cheese. This was so much better. Sarah was smirking like she'd eaten the canary. She had a crumb of the sweet ricotta on the edge of her lip. Chuck said, "You have a crumb," and pointed.
Her tongue snaked out and licked the wrong side of her mouth. She smirked at him some more.
"No," he said. "You missed it. It's there." He pointed again and she stuck her little pink tongue out and licked the top lip, slowly and sensuously. He almost groaned aloud at the sight. Knowing exactly what she was doing to him, she licked the bottom lip and again deliberately missed the crumb of cake.
"You're really gonna make me do this, huh?"
"Do what?" she asked innocently. Her blue eyes were laughing with mischief, and she cocked her head to the side. She was so beautiful. So sexy. His reluctance to engage in PDA evaporated.
"Alright, then. Ok, fine. We'll play it your way." He leaned forward and licked the crumb of cheesecake off her smiling lips, lingering there for a moment or two. Her eyes closed, Sarah began to giggle.
There was a grunt from behind them and the grumpy Matteo was at their table again. The grunt sounded displeased, but he was smiling at their antics. He put an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid on the table with four glasses and said, "Grappa." Morgan and Lou rejoined them from the kitchen, chattering excitedly.
The "quick" meal took almost two and a half hours and was, beginning to end, as wonderful any they could remember.
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Sarah finished putting on her make-up and combing out her hair, then moved across the room to put on her black cocktail dress. Chuck was sitting at a desk on the side of the room working on his computer. He was in his suit and tie, but the jacket was draped on the back of the chair behind him.
"Almost finished?" she asked him.
"Yup. Texted Casey to see if he was having fun...he told me to leave him alone." Sarah laughed at that. "Checked my emails. Checked for our friend in Moscow, our 30 friend, and just finished Ellie's questionnaire." He hit a button on the keyboard. "There. We are good to go."
He turned and looked at her in her party dress with her hair up. The look of love and awe on his face when he suddenly saw her dressed up never failed to make her warm inside. She was, for the millionth time that day, amazed at how lucky she was to have found this wonderful loving man.
"Wow. You are so, so beautiful. Way to make every guy in the place hate me with a vengeance," he said with a loving smile.
The Palone family had arranged for a party at their home to celebrate Lou's return to Rome. Chuck pulled on his jacket, buttoning the button as he did so. Sarah came to him and said, "Well, you don't look half bad yourself, Mr. Bartowski." She looked at him with what might have been a touch of hunger and ran her hands down the center of his chest, to smooth out his already perfectly smooth jacket. Feeling the broad flat muscles of his chest under her fingers, her breath hitched for a moment. Pausing her hand, she looked up into his delicious chocolate eyes.
He knew Sarah well enough and took her hand from his chest to kiss it. He said, "If we keep going down this road, we are going to disappoint Megan and Tony." He gave her a little smile.
She shook herself to break the moment and said, "Of course. You're right. Later maybe?" The look she gave him would have tempted the nearby Pope.
"You know it," he responded as they headed out of the room. He still found it hard to fully accept that this was his ...woman...no, that sounded in his own mind possessory. His...partner ... in life? Yeah, that one was better. She's choosing to be with him. Freely. She could have any guy in the world with all she had going for her. Any guy at all. And, somehow, unbelievably, she had chosen him. He knew, without a moment of doubt, that he was the luckiest guy in the whole world. For the umpteenth time since he bought the ring, even now sitting in his pocket, he wondered when the right time was going to be to get the question out. To ask her to be his wife. The idea both thrilled and terrified him.
Downstairs they met Lou and Morgan, already standing in the huge living room with glasses of wine in their hands, the party just starting. The waiters had finished setting up. Just about when Chuck and Sarah joined Morgan and Lou, Pietro Caron came over to them. He looked tight and alert.
"Good?" he asked.
"Good, Pietro. Thanks. Mom and Dad?"
With a grin, he said, "She's fussing about his suit, but they'll be fine."
"Thanks, Pietro," she said. "They'd be screwed without you."
He gave a quick smile and moved on.
"What's his story, Lou?" asked Sarah. "He used to be a cop or something? He seems pretty squared away."
"Not cop, military. He was in the Army but when he got out and Ginni, his wife, was working here, he took Dad's offer and came to be with us...with his wife."
"He seems pretty cool," said Morgan.
"Oh, yeah. I love him. He's the best," said Lou with a nice smile watching Pietro walk away.
Party guests started to trickle in. Tony and Megan arrived and made their way through the guests to Lou and her friends.
"Well, don't you guys clean up well?" said Tony, giving his daughter a quick kiss.
"Thanks, Dad," said Lou.
"That's a lovely dress, Megan," said Morgan.
"Oh, this old thing?" she said with a teasing smile. She laid a soft hand on his arm and said, "Thank you, Morgan."
Guests began to approach and engage with Lou, the guest of honor after all. Mostly old family friends and business associates of Tony's. For the most part, everyone was completely charming and gracious. Most of them spoke English out of courtesy to Chuck and Morgan, although there were the occasional few which did not speak that language and conversed with Lou and Sarah in Italian. Lou complimented Sarah on her command of Italian.
An older man, maybe in his mid 60's, came to join them. Both Sarah and Chuck noticed two serious looking men with the tell-tale bulges of concealed weapons hovering a few feet away. They didn't join in the conversation and kept sharp eyes scanning the rest of the party. Whoever this man was, he had armed bodyguards even at this private event.
Lou gave him a huge smile, "Luciano. I didn't know you were coming."
"Well, I had to pull some strings, but I wouldn't let my goddaughter visit without giving her a kiss to welcome her home," he said with a smile, kissing her on the cheek.
"Guys," she said, turning to her friends, "I'd like you to meet Luciano Monte. My dad's oldest friend and my godfather."
Introductions were exchanged and Lou said, "They let you out just to see me?"
"Let me out? I'm not a prisoner you know," he said.
"Seems that way sometimes. The people you arrest seem to have more freedom than you do," she said.
Looking at Sarah, Chuck and Morgan, Monte said, "My Louisa is teasing me."
"What do you do, Mr. Monte? If I may ask?" said Chuck.
"I am a judge in the Italian court system," he said.
"Like guy with the robe in the front of the room?" asked Morgan.
"Not exactly, Morgan. In Italy what we call call judges are not exactly what you call judges in the States. Our's also work as the prosecutors. Our role is not separated as opposed to the English common law traditions that the United States inherited. So, I am working at the moment as a prosecutor and investigator. The Italian criminal element can be very dangerous, and I am assigned Carabinieri protection." He gestured over his shoulder at the bodyguards.
"So, you're like investigating the Mafia or something," asked Morgan.
"Well, of course I cannot talk about ongoing investigations. But the movies have a simplistic view of organized crime here. There are actually four major branches, the Sicilian Mafia being only one of them."
"What are the others?" asked Sarah.
"There is the Sacra Carona Unita out of Puglia, the Camorra out of Naples, and the 'Ndrangheta out of Calabria. It's only the Sicilians that get the media attention, though. Which actually suits the other organizations just fine."
Tony joined them and said to Monte, "Come with me, Luciano. Roberto wants to say hello before he leaves."
"You will excuse me, please, for a moment," said Monte, being led away by Tony.
Once he was gone, Morgan said to Lou, "What's the Carabinieri? His bodyguards."
"It's technically part of the military, but in practice it's our national police force. Very well respected. We saw some of them on the street today in uniform. He's perfectly safe with those men watching over him."
"Yeah, they look like pretty tough guys," said Chuck.
A man approached them, somewhat tentatively. He was about Morgan's height, but somewhat fat. He was going bald, although he seemed about their age. He wore granny glasses and a hesitant smile. "Ciao, Lou," he said.
She turned to look at him and stopped dead with surprise. After a slightly awkward pause, she said, "Hello, Enzo. Please speak English. Not all of my friends speak Italian." She didn't sound happy to see him.
"Of course, please pardon me," he addressed himself to Chuck, Morgan and Sarah.
"Luciano just went that way," she gestured to the side of the room.
"I know. I was hoping to say hello to you, though," he said.
With a distant expression, she turned from him and said, "Let me introduce my friends. Enzo Grillo, this is Chuck … and Sarah."
"How do you do?" he said as they shook hands. He seemed genuinely pleasant.
"And," Lou continued, "this is my boyfriend, Morgan." She put her arm through his and pulled him close to her.
"Hi," said Morgan, shaking the man's hand.
"Nice to meet you, Morgan," said Enzo with a friendly smile. Turning to her, he asked, "How are you, Lou?"
"Great. More than great. I have a business in Los Angeles, a terrific boyfriend, friends. A good life. And you can't beat the weather."
"All I know about California is what I see on television, but it looks nice. I'm glad you are happy," he said.
Chuck and Morgan weren't at all sure about the strange dynamic between Enzo and Lou, but Sarah was just about certain he was an old boyfriend...and a serious one at that.
"How about you, Enzo? How is your family?"
"Oh, just the same, thanks. Nothing new."
"And work?" she asked.
"Luciano keeps me very, very busy. I don't have time for much other than work." At the mention of Luciano, Sarah and Chuck looked around and ...yes, there he was. Enzo had a bodyguard of his own. Unlike the older man, it seems Enzo only had one and this one hung further back.
"I understand. Well, you are doing important work," she said.
He shrugged and said, "I hope so. Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus, but I'm glad to be helping as I can."
They fell silent for a few beats and Enzo said, "Well, good to see you Lou. You look great." He started to lean forward to give her a kiss on the cheek, but she pulled closer to Morgan in response. He got the message and backed off. To Chuck, Sarah and Morgan he said, "Very nice to meet you. I hope you enjoy your stay in Rome." He and his bodyguard melted back into the party crowd.
Lou said, fury in her voice, "I'll be back. I need to talk to my mother." Letting go of Morgan's arm she headed into the crowd like a warship at battle stations with all guns ready to fire.
"Oh, boy," said Sarah with a bit of an eyeroll.
"What was that about?" asked Morgan. "He seemed like a nice guy."
"Yeah, but...Morgan, I think Lou's mom invited Lou's ex-boyfriend to the party and she's about to catch holy-hell from a very pissed off Lou," said Sarah. "I'm just guessing, but I'm pretty good at this."
"Oh," he said, his face falling. "Well, I guess I know what Megan thinks of me, in that case."
"Don't jump to that conclusion, Morg. This party was planned long before she met you. I'm willing to bet Enzo's being here had nothing to do with you," said Chuck.
"I don't know...maybe...hey, you mind if we get some air? I could use a breath of cool night air at this point," said Morgan. He looked pretty dejected. Chuck felt bad for his buddy and determined to cheer him up as soon as he could.
They went through the front door and stepped out onto the semi-circular stairs at the front of the house. Two parking valets stood off to the side and stepped forward, but Chuck waved them off. They went back to whatever had been keeping them occupied.
Tony, Luciano Monte and his two bodyguards came out of the door behind them. Monte saw them and smiled, "Ah, my American friends. I must wish you goodnight."
One of the valets stepped forward, but was again waved off. One of the two Carabinieri bodyguards jogged down the driveway to the street.
Luciano said to Tony, "Non lasceranno che i parcheggiatori abbiano la macchina, capisci?" [They won't let the valets have the car, you understand?]
"Certo, molto sensato," said Tony. [Of course, very sensible.]
As Monte's car pulled up into the driveway with one of the bodyguards driving, Tony and Luciano hugged each other and murmured their goodbyes. Chuck heard Lou's name mentioned a couple of times. Monte turned to the Americans and wished them a pleasant stay in Rome. Then, accompanied by his guard, he got into the back of the sturdy looking sedan.
As he drove away, Chuck said to Tony, "He seems like a pretty good guy, Tony."
"Oh, he is, Chuck. He is. The best. If we ever have a chance of beating these criminal assholes, it's because of men like him and Enzo. They are taking tremendous risks and doing great work for us all."
Monte's car turned out onto the road. The others were just turning to go back inside when there was a huge explosion at the front gate of the property. A part of the wall crumbled inward and the fire ball rising from the road turned the night sky bright.
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A/N2: I remember a "quick" meal in Italy with some Italian friends. A full hour. Previously, a quick meal, to me, meant a four minute slice of pizza while standing on the sidewalk. Matteo's restaurant in Rome is based upon a place I stumbled into with a friend in Pisa. What a delight it was. Along those lines, it's unexpected to learn that I have the build of a Roman gladiator. Who knew?
A/N3: Nicola Gratteri is an Italian prosecutor targeting the 'Ndrangheta organization (as of 2020). He travels between home and office in a bulletproof car and otherwise never ventures out. He could not even attend his own father's funeral. In December of 2019, he orchestrated the arrest of over 300 people throughout Europe and that investigation continues to be ongoing as of 2020. Italian prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were assassinated by the Sicilian Mafia in the early 1990's. Conversely, I am old enough to remember when, in connection with the Vatican bank scandal of the 1980's, American organized crime guys were horrified when their Italian cousins proposed the killing of a federal prosecutor from New York's Southern District. The rules are apparently very different depending on where you live.
A/N4: There are anti-mask forces out there. I was interested to see that the Anti-Mask League of San Fransisco was formed in 1919 in response to the Spanish flu. I would like to point out that all of its members are now dead. I don't know if it had anything to do with their refusal to wear masks, but it certainly didn't help. Wear a mask, please.