by Diana Fraser
“Where the hell was she?”
She’d said she wouldn’t be late and he’d told her the meeting was at ten. It was, in fact, later, but she wasn’t to know that. He’d needed some excuse to get her back to him early.
It was now ten past eleven and there was no sign of her. She was always one hour late—no more and no less. He’d sometimes reckoned her body clock was in a different time zone—one of her own making. But, whatever, it wasn’t like her.
Something was wrong.
And where the hell was Allegra? She’d disappeared off the face of the earth. What the hell was going on?
He double-clicked icons madly, trying to work out where things had been filed. It was all too logical—he didn’t understand it. He couldn’t find a thing.
His staff didn’t know—hadn’t been involved because of the secrecy—and were running around trying to appease him. It was driving him mad.
“Let me have the mouse, signore, I’ll try to find what you’re looking for.”
“Here,” he yanked the mouse from its connection and tossed it to one of his executives. Then he took the laptop and pitched it in the wastepaper bin.
“You find her work. I want it here—on paper—when I get back.”
Within minutes he was in his car driving back to the Palazzo. He’d felt strange earlier on, leaving her by herself. He cursed himself. He shouldn’t have listened to her. He’d always worked on gut instinct and he should have followed it then.
The car bounced over the potholes and juddered as he sped over the paved streets in the old city. He blared his horn at a group of young people, not a care in the world, who were dancing in the square, stopping all traffic. Cars tried to overtake and he was soon hemmed in—stuck with nowhere to go.
Damn. The phone went suddenly. He glanced at the screen. Allegra.
He listened for a few moments.
“How long since he was last seen?”
He cursed roundly, furious with himself, and threw down the phone.
Icy anger filled his veins. He revved the engine and drove between cars, turned around and sped off the wrong way down a one-way street.
Giovanni looked briefly up at the Palazzo Visconti. The window was cracked. He jumped out of the car and ran up the front steps.
Then he stopped. There was none of the usual signs of Rose’s occupation: no window open, no sounds of opera. Only silence. Something must have gone wrong.
He entered the palazzo stealthily, his mind racing, his body moving quietly, with deliberation. Once inside he pressed the lift. Nothing. No whirring sound, no movement. Quietly he pulled open the grille and saw the bottom of the lift was stuck on the upper floor.
The sight made him sick with fear. He started to run for the stairs but cursed, remembering they didn’t yet exist—still under repair.
Then the cold realization hit him. Rose was in the attic suite with Alberto and there was no way in.
He was about to slam his fist into the lift but stopped. That would only alert Alberto to his presence—if he didn’t know already.
He had to think.
The attic. There had to be other ways to access the attic.
He closed his eyes with relief when he remembered. He had a vision of darkness and safety: the smell of mothballs, decaying papers and wood and the sound of scurrying rodents. But, above all, he remembered the feelings of safety when, as a young boy, he’d climbed from attic to attic, to get away from the violent arguments of his parents. He was safe because no-one, including his younger brother, knew about how the attics opened one upon another—a throwback to the war in case of invasion—to enable people to move around unseen.
He turned round and quietly closed the front door.
“Awake yet?”
Rose groggily sat up in bed. She’d been stripped down to her underwear and was lying, covered by a sheet, in bed.
Her head pounded and she tentatively felt the encrusted blood. She swallowed dryly. A strip of towel had been tied tightly around her mouth as a gag. She tried to scream.
“What are you trying to say? I can’t hear you. Just lie back and enjoy because you’re not going anywhere for a long time. I’ve been very patient waiting for you to wake up. You know, I don’t like it when people are mean to me. And you were mean to me, weren’t you, that last time? First, you wouldn’t let me kiss you. And then I had to make you. Second, not wanting me to make love to you. And then, well, we didn’t quite make it that far did we? Shame. Still, I helped out old Giovanni with getting rid of the baby. He should be thanking me, not trying to frame me.”
Rose brought herself up on the bed but had to lie down again because the room was spinning. Slowly Alberto came into focus. It was the first time she’d really looked at him. He was the same, smoothly handsome man, all golden hair, golden skin and broad, white smile. The same, that was, except for his eyes: his pupils were dilated and his eyes shifted constantly and his hands shook. She recognized the signs instantly from her mother. She wondered how long he’d been hooked; whether his early attempts at violence were because of drugs or the drugs were in response to his perversions.
“And then, you top the insults off by try to prove that I’ve been stealing from the family. What that’s to do with you, I’ve no idea. You’re a nobody. Always was and always will be. You’re simply useful to my brother. I mean, you can’t think he loves you. It’s obvious he only came to get you when he needed you. Not before, did he? Now don’t look like that.”
She tried to wriggle away from him but he pinned her down with his arms, and the throbbing of her head increased until she thought she’d faint again. She needed to remain conscious.
“I want to see your mouth Rose. Promise me that you won’t make a noise.”
She nodded. He reached over and undid the scarf and she took a deep lungful of air and screamed.
She didn’t feel the pain of his blow until several minutes had passed, disguised as it was by the existing pain.
Alberto turned her to face him and she could do nothing else but what he asked. She was too weak to fight him any longer. She could see the features, similar to Giovanni’s but diluted in their fleshiness and insipid in their coloring. He was a shadow of a man.
Then time seemed to slow.
At the same time as the sound of splintering wood reached their ears, panic and fear filled Alberto’s eyes.
Shouts and voices, more than one, filled the room and Alberto was hauled off the bed by unknown arms.
She moved then, risking unconsciousness, to see who the arms belonged to. Five policemen surrounded and held Alberto. Behind them, surrounded by other policeman stood Giovanni, his face livid with anger.
“Giovanni?”
Pray God he wouldn’t do anything stupid and endanger himself. She couldn’t lose him now.
“Rose.” He was beside her in an instant, gently touching the places where she’d been hurt—her cheek, her chin. She saw the blood on his hands. There mustn’t be any more.
“Giovanni. Don’t,” she winced as he touched the open wound with a cloth one of the officers had given him.
“Shush, don’t speak. Let me deal with this.”
“No. Don’t do anything. Don’t hurt him, Giovanni.”
Giovanni looked at Rose in disbelief. And then he looked up at his brother and stepped back. He wanted to hurt him as he’d hurt Rose but more than that he wanted to kill him.
Alberto’s scared face melted into a smirk.
“You see big brother, your wife doesn’t want me hurt. Isn’t that touching? And you thought I had her here under duress. Well, her words say it all.”
Rose lay back, white-faced and weak. Giovanni smoothed the blood-matted hair off her face. “Did he do anything else to you?”
“Just this,” she touched her head. “I fell…”
“She fell, you see brother. Why would I hurt my darling sister-in-law.”
Giovanni let the pounding in his veins slow before turning to the policemen. “S
end for the ambulance.”
“They’re on their way up, Signore.”
Giovanni walked purposefully over to Alberto.
“No, Giovanni!” shrieked Rose.
But Giovanni ignored her cries, opened up Alberto’s jacket and pulled out the missing lift part. “This will make it easier for them.” He handed the part to the police.
He could see Alberto relax with relief. He’d thought Giovanni was going to hit him. Well, he’d learnt a few things since he’d met Rose. He began to walk away.
“She didn’t tell you about her and me? About the last time we were together? This isn’t the first time you know. I know Rose intimately. We spent her last evening at the Palazzo together. Downstairs in your bedroom.”
Giovanni and Rose exchanged glances. All Rose could do was to shake her head.
“But it didn’t end nicely for your Rose did it? Poor girl was upset that I didn’t want her any more. Looks like she’s been trying to get back at me for rejecting her, with all this sleuthing work.”
“Shut up Alberto. You’re lying. You may have wanted to, but you haven’t touched her. Rose has told me everything.” He turned to her. “Haven’t you Rose?”
“Giovanni, I—”
“Haven’t you Rose?”
Somehow the pain had turned his voice cold.
Alberto laughed. “You really think it was coincidence that she disappeared after your return from those months overseas? She disappeared because she couldn’t bear to be with you after she’d made love to me.”
“She has never been with you.”
“Yes she has, brother. And very nice too. But, you know? I didn’t want your leftovers.”
“Rose. Why didn’t you tell me?”
But there was nothing but blank shock and pain on her face. It said it all.
Something strong sapped out of Giovanni then and he turned, balled his fist and threw it into his little brother’s face. The pain inside dulled the pain of the punch as he left the room.
He turned to the policeman. “Charge me if you must.”
“Why, signore?”
“I’ve assaulted my brother.”
“None of us saw anything, signore.”
Giovanni entered the lift and fell back on the metal cage. As the lift slowly grated its way down to his room, all Giovanni could hear were the pathetic screams of pain from his brother and the quiet sobbing of his wife.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It was the silence that awoke her the first time.
After trying to follow Giovanni out into the night, after refusing to go to hospital and after dismissing the nurse that Giovanni had arranged, the doctor had given her a strong shot of sedatives and pain relief that had knocked her into a long and dreamless sleep.
But then, too soon, the drugs had worn off. It was in the early hours that she’d awoken to hear the sound she’d dreaded—silence.
There was only the hum of the ever-constant traffic; the sudden shout from people returning from a long night of revelry and the distant, repetitive thud of a drum beat. But those sounds were ever present, the background, white noise of city life.
What she wanted to hear—and didn’t—was the sound of someone moving close to her; someone’s breath flowing in and out beside her ear; someone calling her name.
Not someone, she realized, but Giovanni.
She turned over painfully, the absence in her heart greater than her physical hurts.
She squeezed her eyes closed as if to shut out the pain. But it was contained within. The heavy, humid night air had been as oppressive as the silence.
She’d lain awake for some hours before taking more tablets to numb the pain of her thoughts and heart.
Oblivion had eventually claimed her and now the soft light of morning filtered through her window once more.
The silence was different however.
It was the weighty silence of someone else in the room—someone watching but not speaking—that awoke her.
Her senses prickled with awareness.
“You’re there aren’t you Giovanni?”
She could feel his presence without seeing, or hearing him.
A chair scraped heavily on the floor and footsteps approached the bed.
She closed her eyes with relief.
“You really should stop watching me while I sleep. It’s becoming a habit.”
She turned and looked up at him, a smile ready on her lips. But he looked worse than she felt. Dark shadows lay below his eyes and his clothes were disheveled and still damp from the morning air. He looked as though he’d been awake all night.
He ignored her attempts at humor. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard them.
“How do you feel?”
“My head will recover. That’s not my main concern.”
She pulled herself up in bed, wincing as her head throbbed with the effort.
He reached over to the medical supplies on the table, soaked some cotton wool and gently blotted away the fresh blood that had sprung up at her temple.
But he was too calm, too proficient.
She looked into his eyes, the brown almost charcoal in the cool light of morning. He was so close and yet so distant now. It made her realize that, this time, it was over.
Twice she tried to speak and twice he shook his head, silencing her.
“I have things to do now Rose. I suggest you rest. I just came to make sure you are recovering.”
“I’m fine but we need to talk.”
“About what? It seems there is little you wish to confide in me.”
“It wasn’t how Alberto said, we didn’t—”
He brought his hand to her mouth to stop her from saying anything further. “No.” He shook his head and walked away. “I don’t want to hear any more. The details are unimportant.”
“Giovanni. I’ve tried to tell you before. But I was scared. I tried, Giovanni. It was too difficult.”
“It is not so difficult if you really love someone, really trust someone. I think you do not love me enough.”
Stunned, the words vanished from her lips. His face was like a mask to her. Suddenly it didn’t seem like him, not her Giovanni. He was talking to her with the same polite, distant manner he reserved for casual acquaintances. The words were a parody of the intimacy they’d once shared.
He obviously took her stunned silence for agreement.
“I thought that might be case.” He got up and walked to the door. He shook his head as she tried to follow. “You need to rest. You’re still in shock.”
“No listen—”
“It’s too late.”
“When are you coming back?”
He shrugged. “What does it matter to you? Very little it would seem.”
“How can you say that?”
“How? Because I have seen nothing to suggest you feel otherwise.”
“Come back. I can explain then. I need you Giovanni.”
“Need, but not love? I can’t live with that.” He turned away briefly and she couldn’t see his face. But the change in his tone spoke volumes: rasping, emotional, final. He’d gone from her. “Rose, it is so difficult, loving you. I’ve made so many changes, tried to show you what life could be like if you’d only trust me. And you haven’t listened to, or understood, a word. And you’re not prepared to make any changes for me. This is not the behavior of a woman in love. You put yourself and your needs first. You are a selfish woman.”
“I’ve had to be selfish, Giovanni. My whole life. I couldn’t trust my own mother. It was the only way I could survive; the only way to make sure I didn’t slip into her dependent ways. If it wasn’t drugs, she was dependent on men, even me in the end.”
“Don’t think I don’t understand, Rose, because I do. But you had me. You had me, but you didn’t seem to notice or care.”
She flinched at the past tense.
“It’s hard to change. It’s hard to feel safe. I still felt there was no-one I could trust more than myself.”
&
nbsp; “There was our love. Couldn’t you even trust that?”
She shook her head. “That night when Alberto…” She trailed off, not knowing whether Giovanni had discovered exactly what had happened that night.
“I know the truth about what happened. It is surprising how a little pain, and the threat of more, loosened my brother’s tongue. I am so sorry for what he did to you. But you should have trusted me with the truth then.”
“I know.” She looked down, pleating the covers with her fingers, trying to say the words she should have said years ago. “It was just that our love seemed too good to be true, too good to last. Deep down it felt that, somehow, a mistake had been made. Nothing had lasted in my past before, why now? When he attacked me, a part of me thought: yes, that’s right, that’s how it ends.” She looked over at Giovanni but he was gazing fixedly out of the window. “But you’re wrong. It wasn’t selfishness that stopped me from telling you about Alberto. I did it for you.”
He turned to her in disbelief.
“You did it for me? You thought that I needed protecting from myself? That I would endanger myself in some way because of what Alberto had done to you?”
She nodded.
“You think I am a fool, Rose?”
“No of course not. I think you are a passionate man who sometimes allows his passion to over-ride his sense.”
He sighed. “Truthfully. I don’t know what I would have done. Maybe it would have been as you say. Maybe not. But not to trust me with this? It undermines everything. There is no possibility of a future now. It’s gone. You’ve destroyed it.”
She didn’t see his face again.
He slammed the button on the lift and waited head down, leaning his weight against the grille, with his back to her.
In despair she turned away, her head in her hands, her legs slowly pulling up to her chest until she lay curled and sobbing, listening to the lift clank its way down the shaft, taking with it her last hope at happiness.
When she heard the front door slam shut, she stumbled over to the window, her legs nearly buckling under her, her hands propelling her along the smooth desktop.