Free Gang of Lovers by Massimo Carlotto, Antony Shugaar

love.
    In a couple of months I had set up our parallel lives as a pair of clandestine lovers. I chose the Veneto because we both had interests in Venice so our travels were amply justified. But we couldn’t be seen together in that city because the risk of being noticed was too great. And so, making use of a rather complicated series of financial machinations, I bought an apartment in the center of Padua.
    One year, six months, and eleven days of happiness. Until the day that Guido failed to keep an appointment. It was the very first time. The cell phone with a Swiss service provider that he’d given me for our communications was turned off.
    Disappointed, wounded, and terribly annoyed, I decided to leave, but while I was waiting for my train, my cell phone rang. I recognized the number. It was Guido.
    The voice, however, belonged to a stranger, who informed me that my lover was in their hands and that unless I “coughed up” three hundred thousand euros inside of a week, they were going to kill him.
    He put Guido on the line; sobbing, Guido begged me to pay.
    The situation was too absurd to be real. It had to be a prank in very poor taste, and I hung up.
    The stranger called right back. He told me that he knew that I couldn’t lay my hands on that kind of money in cash, otherwise my husband would find out about it. He’d be willing to settle for some portion of my jewelry. He described the items and I realized that he must have seen them in photographs published in newspapers and magazines. A ribbon-cutting at a shopping mall, a few weddings, art openings, and the usual social occasions where people put themselves on display.
    I objected that Ugo would find out anyway. The man shot back that I’d have plenty of time to dream up an appropriate excuse and what mattered most was that I’d have Guido back. He ordered me to keep my phone turned on and said that he’d call back in a couple of days with the details of the exchange.
    I got onto the train and found a seat, moving automatically. The blood ran so cold in my veins that I could barely move my arms and legs. By the time I got off the train in Milan I’d made an irrevocable decision. I turned off my cell phone. And I used three different trash cans to get rid of the parts.
    None of it concerned me anymore. Guido must have made some mistakes and broken the rules I had imposed. He had only himself to blame . . .
    You think you know people, but you can never really trust them completely. Perhaps my lover had debts, and he was in cahoots with someone to get my money.
    In any case, one reason kept me from involving myself in any way. And that reason was my husband. If Ugo ever found out about what happened, he’d throw me out of the house, and I’d lose everything, including my daughter.
    Turning to the police would have meant attracting the interest of the media. I’d wind up in the news and our beautiful love story would be transformed into a squalid affair, just sex and betrayal. Even my own family would repudiate me, and I’d be forced to flee Switzerland.
    No. It made no sense to ruin my life just to save Guido. That is, if it even was an actual kidnapping.
    I went back to Massagno and waited for Guido to turn up, a corpse in a ditch somewhere, once the deadline had passed. But more than anything, I feared the criminals might take revenge by publicizing my illicit love affair. Instead, nothing happened at all.
    Professor Di Lello was officially reported a missing person. The Italian press talked about it at length and even now, more than a year later, every so often that show on the RAI brings the case back up. His fiancée, Enrica, can’t seem to let it go. Nor can his family and his colleagues at the university. They can’t figure out why he would have decided to abandon his loved ones and his profession. Police investigations have produced no results. They’ve only ascertained one fact, through