Heart still hammering, Cassie brushed by her, intending to go to the suite. Its heavy furniture and gloomy draperies might not make it her favorite place, but at least it offered some sort of sanctuary. Elvira never ventured up there, instead preferring to confine herself to the two lower floors.
Today, however, she seemed as anxious for Cassie’s company as Cassie was to be rid of hers, and kept pace with her as she climbed the stairs. Exasperated, Cassie stopped on the first landing and spun around to face her.
“Leave me alone!” she cried, past caring about keeping the peace a moment longer. “I’ve got nothing more to say to you.”
“But I have much to say to you,” Elvira taunted, her eyes blazing. “You think to trap my son with this child you claim is his, but it will take more than such a ploy to tie him to you.”
“I’m not tying him against his will, Elvira. He chooses to be with me.”
She tried to push past, but Elvira blocked her passage. “He longs to be free of you! Why else do you think he spends as much time as possible away from this house? He cannot wait to escape your incessant neediness.”
“I have never once tried to keep him from attending to business.”
“No?” Elvira clutched both fists to her chest in a melodramatic gesture of pleading. “Oh, Benedict,” she chanted, her voice rising from its usual contralto to a maddening parody of Cassie’s lighter tone, “I’d so love to spend an afternoon with you at the Museo Nazionale in Reggio Calabria…. Benedict, your sister tells me there are some marvelous Byzantine ruins in the area. When are you going to take me to see them…? Show me where you went to school, Benedict…where you played with other boys your age.”
She dropped her hands and assumed her usual tone. “And so it goes,” she sneered, “day after day, hour after hour!”
“Did it never occur to you that I’m merely showing an interest in my husband’s birthplace, and trying to learn something of his life before he met me?”
“Rubbish! It is all about you. You want to be catered to, you spoilt child. But Benedict does not need a child for a wife. He needs a woman.”
“Does he really! Someone like Giovanna, I suppose?”
“Not someone like her.” Elvira’s direct look was honest in its enmity. “Simply her.”
“But Giovanna doesn’t want to be with him. Unlike you, she respects our marriage.”
“She understands him. She knows him, in ways you never will. She completes him. But you…you pull him apart.”
Was it true? Did she whine and complain all the time? Ask too much? Perhaps give too little?
Suddenly uncertain, Cassie said haltingly, “It’s never been my intention to do that. I just want—”
Elvira advanced on her, mouth pulled back in a horrible facsimile of a smile. “You want everything, all the time! You want him all to yourself, but he is not yours to have. He never will be!”
“Stop it!” Cassie cried, chilled to the bone by that manic stare, that poisonous, implacable hatred. “If Benedict knew the things you’re saying—”
Elvira loomed closer. “Yes?” She planted both hands squarely against Cassie’s shoulders and gave a sharp push. “What then, americana?”
Stumbling from the unexpected contact, Cassie reached behind to steady herself on the banister. But she’d stepped too close to the edge of the landing and instead found herself clutching at thin air.
In horrific slow motion, she felt her body tilt off balance and swing backward down the stairs. She heard a scream and thought it must be hers because, above her on the landing, Elvira stood with her mouth closed, watching composedly.
The stone banister lacerated her knuckles as Cassie fought to retain her balance. Her groin stretched painfully as one leg became hooked between two balusters, while the other continued its perilous downward slide. But, merciful heaven, it slowed her fall enough that she managed to grab hold of another baluster, and come to rest in an ungainly heap about a quarter of the way down the staircase.
Shaken to the core, she whispered, “Good grief, Elvira, you could have killed me!”
Face expressionless and eyes frighteningly blank, Elvira started down the stairs toward her, and for the space of a horror-filled second, Cassie thought the woman intended to finish off what she’d started.
She did not. She stared straight ahead, stepped over Cassie with the casual disregard any sane person might display toward an ant, and disappeared into her office at the rear of the lower hall.
Shivering all over, Cassie remained with her arms wrapped around the baluster, afraid to move in case she did herself more harm than good—and terrified for the well-being of her baby.
At last, and mostly because she was even more afraid that Elvira might return, she eased herself to her feet. Despite a lingering soreness at her ribs and the throbbing ache in her groin, she appeared little the worse for wear. But the baby…?
A fresh wave of horror washed over her, fueled by shock and fear of the unknown. How susceptible to injury was a fetus at this stage of pregnancy? Could a sharp blow cause brain damage? Spinal deformity?
“Oh, Benedict!” she mourned, feeling so alone that the tears poured down her face as reaction to the whole ghastly incident set in. “Why aren’t you here when I need you so badly?”
But the fact remained, he wasn’t, which meant it was up to her to protect their child. And the only way to do that, she realized sorrowfully, was to remove herself permanently from a situation which had deteriorated from unpleasant, to downright dangerous.
Even though it broke her heart to leave Benedict after she’d promised him she’d stay, the baby mattered more. And that being so, she had to get herself out of this hell house and seek medical advice. She needed to find a doctor skilled enough to assess the progress of her pregnancy, and determine whether she was fit enough to make the long journey back home—and with the ability to communicate his findings to her in English.
Then, once assured that it was safe for her to travel, she’d be on the first flight back to the U.S., half a world away from her deranged mother-in-law. Enough was enough! She’d had all she could take of Elvira Constantino.
To carry out her plan, though, she had to get herself to Reggio Calabria, and there was only one way she could do that. Making her way up the second set of stairs, she let herself into the suite, made sure her passport and wallet were in her handbag, then opened the top drawer of Benedict’s dresser, praying that she’d find there what she desperately needed, to carry out her plans.
Dusty and tired, Benedict drew up to the low arch leading to what had once been the Constantino stables. They’d been converted long ago to a vast garage for housing the farm vehicles, with a section at one end reserved for the family autos.
Nudging the truck into its customary spot beside the east wall, he jumped down from the cab. The sound of the door slamming closed boomed through the empty building like a cannon shot, then faded into silence.
Although the air of desertion about the place did not at first strike him as unusual—his mother and Francesca were probably still at work in the office wing, and Cassandra was most likely down on the beach enjoying the afternoon sun—still, as he turned to leave, something tugged at his brain, begging for attention. Something about the garage that wasn’t quite the way it should be….
He slowed on his way out, waiting for whatever was amiss to register more fully, but when it did not, he shrugged and headed for the house. If it was a matter of importance, it would come to him later.
He’d been gone four days. Most of that time he’d spent in mountainous la ‘ndrangheta territory, trying to broker an agreement with Angelo Menghi, leader of a gang of outlaws who hid out in the network of caves found in the area. Angelo’s younger brother, Darius, was the man Elvira hired when the foreman who’d worked for the family for nearly twenty years decided he’d had enough of her misguided rule.
Darius, though, had been an unwise choice from the first. Sly, shiftless and without consci
ence, he’d undermined what little stability remained with the rest of the Constantino employees, and when Elvira fired him for insurrection, his swift and malevolent retaliation had been a foregone conclusion.
Benedict had no doubt that Darius was behind the vandalism which had taken such a toll on the fruit orchards, and was equally certain he’d been aided and abetted by Angelo and his lawless affiliates.
Having to negotiate with such scum had left a very sour taste in Benedict’s mouth, but he knew there was only one way to put an end to the situation, and that was through negotiation. So he’d held his nose, metaphorically speaking, and done what had to be done. Now, having succeeded, all he wanted was a long, cleansing shower, a bottle of good wine, a meal, and an evening spent with Cassandra.
He had missed her, not so much during the day, when tracking down Angelo Menghi and effecting some sort of armistice had been uppermost in his mind. But at night, lying under the bright stars, he’d thought of her soft, warm body and her sweet generous mouth, and been glad of the cold mountain air stealing inside his sleeping bag.
He’d heard her voice in the murmur of the wind, smelled the perfume of her skin in the wild flowers clustered in rocky ridges of the lower slopes. He was impatient to see her again; to hold her, however tame the embrace had to be, and bury his face in her hair. To feel the mound of their growing child pressing against his belly.
But when he emerged fresh from his shower, the third-floor suite was still empty, and so, as he went down to the main floor, was the rest of the palazzo. At least, it appeared so, at first glance. And that’s when it struck him that the atmosphere was too still, too silent.
He wasn’t a man prone to superstition. Dealing in tangibles as he did—contracts, shipments, excise duties, import restrictions, all defined by cold, hard facts and figures—he couldn’t afford to be. But, at that moment of awareness, an irrational sense of foreboding stole over him.
Suddenly, he was striding from room to room, calling out—Cassandra’s name, Francesca’s, his mother’s—and hearing only the echo of his own voice responding.
He came across Elvira in the salon, purely by accident. She sat stiffly in one of the high-backed chairs facing the sea, and appeared completely oblivious of her surroundings, or him.
“Mother?” He approached her cautiously; touched her hand where it rested on the carved wooden arm of the chair. “Can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond, instead remaining so immobile that, for a shocking moment, he thought she might be dead. Then her eyelids fluttered in a blink, and he saw the rise and fall of her chest as she drew in a faint, trembling breath.
So quietly that he had to stoop to hear her, she said, “I am afraid of growing old and becoming useless, Benedict.”
“You’re fifty-nine,” he told her. “Hardly in your dotage yet!”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. Spread her fingers, fanlike, across her brow and buried their tips in her hair. “But inside my head here, my mind doesn’t always work. Sometimes, it seems not to know…things it should know.”
His uneasiness grew. He’d never heard her sound so defeated, so utterly unsure. “Are you ill, Mother?”
“Not I. Cassandra, though…!” She covered her mouth with shaking fingers, but not soon enough to stop a little moan of anguish. “I think she’s hurt, Benedict. She fell down the stairs. I think I pushed her.”
His heart jolted laboriously and when he spoke, his voice seemed to roar from a great distance. “For the love of God, why?”
“I can’t remember,” she said, lifting piteous eyes to his.
Hanging on to his sanity by a thread, he tried to speak more calmly. “Where is she now, Mother?”
Elvira lifted her shoulders in a ghost of shrug. Of what? Indifference? Ignorance?
Neither was tolerable, and in a sudden overwhelming rush of fury, he grabbed her by the shoulders. Only by dint of extraordinary self-control did he restrain himself from shaking the truth out of her. “Answer me, Elvira! Where is my wife?”
“I looked and couldn’t find her,” she replied vaguely. “She’s not here.”
Not here…!
Like a camera lens clicking sharply into focus, his mother’s words gave shape to his earlier niggling sense of something being amiss. The place where he always parked the Lamborghini had stood empty when he rolled the truck into the garage!
Sweat prickled his skin and he turned cold all over. If Cassandra, hurt and distraught, had driven the powerful car over the treacherous, unfamiliar coastal roads, she could be lying at the bottom of a cliff, broken or burned beyond recognition.
Anguished, desperate, he turned again to his mother. “Where’s Francesca? Could she have taken Cassandra to the village to see a doctor?”
Before Elvira could answer, a door opened somewhere in the main hall and Francesca called out cheerfully, “Hello? Anyone home?”
A moment later, she appeared at the threshold of the salon. “Uh-oh,” she muttered, taking in the scene in one sweeping glance, “now what’s happened?”
He knew how it must look—their mother slumped in a chair with him towering over her, so consumed with anxiety and rage that he was practically frothing at the mouth. Controlling himself with an effort, he turned away and addressed his next remark to his sister.
“Elvira claims she pushed Cassandra down the stairs,” he said tightly. “Can you, by any chance, shed some light on this?”
He didn’t need a verbal response. Francesca’s open-mouthed shock spoke volumes, and pain clutched at his heart—a dry, bloodless, self-inflicted wound. As easily as he’d found Cassandra, he’d lost her. He’d brought her here against his better judgment, then kept her at a distance when he should have held her close. And it might have cost her her life.
Spinning on his heel, he made for the door.
Francesca found her voice. “Benedict, wait! Where are you going?”
“Where do you think? To look for my wife—and I pray to God that I find her and our child alive.”
“Child?” Francesca did a double-take. “Cassandra’s pregnant, and you never said anything?”
“Don’t start in on me,” he warned, brushing past her. “Right now, I’m in no mood to justify anything to anyone. I’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
“Such as rampaging through the countryside like a madman?” She caught his arm. “Stop and think for a minute! Cassandra might not have gone anywhere. She might be resting upstairs.”
“She’s not. She’s nowhere in this house, and my car’s gone from the garage.”
Francesca paled, but clung to reason regardless. “Then we start by phoning the police. There aren’t too many red Lamborghini Diablos in the area. If she’s driving around out there, she’ll be easy enough to spot.”
“And if she’s not?” He cast a savage glance at his mother, who sat with her head pressed against the back of the chair, and her eyes closed. As if, by her refusing to look, what she’d done would miraculously cease to exist!
“We’ll call the local clinic, and Dr. Vieri’s office,” Francesca said. “Stop expecting the worst and think about it, Benedict! If she’d been in an accident, we’d have heard about it before now. It’s just a matter of alerting the authorities and waiting for them to track her down. But if she decides to come back on her own, I think she’d feel a lot safer if she found you here waiting for her.”
It was no more in his nature to hand over control of his affairs to someone else, than he’d thought it was in his mother’s to physically attack his wife. Yet what Francesca said made sense. Better to cast as wide an official search net as possible while some daylight remained. Because if he didn’t have news of Cassandra by sunset, he didn’t know how he’d face the coming night.
Cassie stepped out into the late-afternoon clamor of the city, and inhaled deeply and luxuriously. For the first time in hours, her lungs were unconstricted by fear and, despite the stench of exhaust fumes, the air smelled incomparably sweet.
/> Her baby was alive and well. She had heard his heart beat; seen it on the ultrasound screen.
Behind her stood the hospital, no longer a site of potential threat to everything she held dear, but a benign, comforting presence designed to protect her. After compiling a thorough case history, and taking a battery of tests including a sonogram, the chief obstetrician on staff had told her, “Signora, your baby is in excellent health, as are you. The fall has left you with a bruise or two, but the pregnancy is not in danger.”
“And my cervix?”
“Is entirely as it should be at this stage. You and your husband may relax.” Eyes twinkling, he’d patted her hand. “He will be happy to hear this, yes?”
“Yes.”
But Benedict was out of touch, somewhere in the mountains of the interior, and much though she wished it could be otherwise, she had no intention of going back to the palazzo to wait for his return. If Elvira wanted a second shot at disposing of her daughter-in-law, she’d have to travel to San Francisco to get it.
As it turned out, the earliest Cassie could book a flight home was the following afternoon, but even that didn’t cast a cloud on her spirits. For the first time in weeks, she was free of the looming, gloomy presence of the Constantino estate and only now, with the bustle and noise of traffic and people swirling around her, did she realize how much she’d missed them.
Reggio Calabria might be the provincial capital, but a major earthquake early in the twentieth century had destroyed much of its antiquity, and the conglomeration of newer buildings offered little in the way of interest or beauty. Yet it possessed the sort of vitality and pulse only to be found in a city, and she relished it.
Consulting the tourist map she’d purchased, she located a hotel on a quiet side street. Though not ostentatious, it nevertheless had a certain charm. The room she was shown was clean, comfortable, had its own bathroom and a telephone, and looked out over a small rear garden set with umbrella-shaded tables. Furthermore, there was parking at the side of the building for the Lamborghini.
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