by Cathy Ace
After leaving the table, Antonia’s great pleasure and enthusiasm upon opening Doug’s gift caused raised eyebrows around the room, but not quite as many as when she pulled a shawl about her shimmering claret gown and guided Doug out of the ballroom, into the chill air of the garden. The moon was full, as was Doug’s heart. He didn’t question Antonia as she steered him toward a small grotto set to one side of the garden.
‘It is not the Pitti Palace, but it is my own lovely grotto,’ she told Doug as she struck a match to light an oil lamp that hung at the entrance to the carved and bejeweled cavern. ‘My father have men make this for me and my brother when we are children, but my poor little brother he is always scared of the dark cave. Me? I like to hide inside. He would call to me – “Toni, Toni, come now and play!” – but I would wait until he was gone, then run out to laugh at him in the sunlight. Ah, poor little Gianni, he is gone from here now and controls a big company in America, in Chicago. I miss him so much. He left here after my father died. He is what they call an Internet Giant. He sells Italian clothes, and Italian things for the house and the kitchen, to American housewives – he is very good at this. Maybe one day I visit him, but I cannot leave my home for now, because I want to find what my father leave here for us. Gianni, he says my father has spent all the money that the government does not take, but I believe my father when he says he leaves wealth for me and Gianni.’
Doug didn’t really understand what Antonia was talking about; he found the sound of her voice almost hypnotic, but had to admit to himself that following what she was saying wasn’t uppermost in his mind. Doug had seen photographs of the famous grotto at the Boboli Gardens, and intended to visit it, but he knew nothing would ever compare with Antonia’s grotto: the light from the oil lamp bounced off thousands of tiny shimmering stones, lumps of multi-colored glass, and mirror-chips that had been set into the man-made coral-like finish of the walls. Doug was entranced. But even more than being bewitched by his magical surroundings, Doug knew that at any moment he would reach out to take Antonia in his arms and kiss her in this other-worldly place, and that his life would never be the same again.
Antonia took Doug’s hand, and pulled him deeper into the cave-like structure. They turned a corner so that the view of the garden, and any light from the moon, was lost to them. This was it, Doug knew it. This was his moment. Antonia’s hand was still in his, and he squeezed it. She turned to face him. Her skin glowed in the lamplight, and the corners of her lips curled upward with a hint of a smile. Her eyes sparkled. She glanced down, to rest the lamp safely upon a stone bench beside them, and Doug waited for her to look up again, to gaze deep into his eyes . . . but, instead, she let out a guttural wail that pierced the night, and his aching heart.
Letting go of his hand to clasp her face, she wailed, ‘Gianni! Gianni!’ and ran out of the grotto, screaming, leaving Doug standing in the dim lamplight, peering down at the floor where she had seen whatever had horrified her. There, lying in a pool of something that glistened black, was a man’s contorted face, eyes staring. A thick, shining gash encircled his neck. Doug couldn’t see the rest of the body beneath the stone bench, but he didn’t need to; he bolted into the night air where he found Antonia was howling in agony at the top of her voice.
Antonia looked at him, her beautiful face contorted by anguish. ‘Is my brother. Gianni. My brother.’ She shouted something in Italian while shaking her fist at the heavens. Doug had no idea what to do – Antonia didn’t seem to want to be comforted; she was like a madwoman, and she started to tear at her shawl. All he could make out were the words ‘eliminare’, ‘immondezza’ and ‘ambrosi’ which she kept repeating over and over. He had no idea what the words meant, but he knew she wasn’t singing someone a love song.
Within seconds a tall, slim, grey-haired man, Doug knew to be named Paulo, arrived on the scene. Doug assumed he was asking Antonia in Italian what had happened. Paulo looked blackly at Doug, and shouted at him to keep back. It hadn’t occurred to Doug for one moment that anyone could imagine he might be the reason for Antonia’s distress, but he soon realized this was exactly what Paulo, and several of the other men running toward his screaming companion, suspected.
Doug was all but held back as Antonia screamed at Paulo; the man’s expression changed to one of shock, then he let go of Antonia’s bare arms and ran into the grotto. When he emerged, he looked grim; he walked away with sagging shoulders, pulling out his mobile phone. He gathered the people who were coming toward the grotto as he walked and talked. Doug noticed him trying to drag away one man in particular – the short, bald man Doug had seen Antonia greet earlier in the evening, whose name he couldn’t recall.
Upon catching sight of the small man, Antonia flew into an even greater rage; she screamed ‘assassin’ at him, threw her shawl to one side and began to run at the man, clearly intending to do him harm. Even though he didn’t really understand what was happening, Doug knew he had to stop Antonia from hurting anybody, herself included, so he rushed to catch her in his arms, and gathered her into his body. As he looked at her tear-stained face, and saw the anguish and anger in her eyes, it pained him that this was how it should be as he held her close for the first time. He was sharply aware of the loss of a moment that had never happened, and it shocked him to realize he felt even more helpless than he had on the day of his wife’s funeral. He couldn’t begin to comprehend how that could be, but he knew it was the truth.
‘Gianni, Gianni,’ sobbed Antonia onto Doug’s shoulder. Her body shook, and she let out cries of pain that cut through the night air. Dogs began to bark in the distance.
‘Antonia, I am so sorry,’ was all Doug could muster. He didn’t know how to say anything that mattered in Italian, so he pulled back, and nodded toward the grotto. ‘That’s your brother in there? Gianni?’ He wanted to be clear.
She nodded and sobbed. ‘Why he is here? And why is he dead?’ Doug reflected on the same questions.
‘I am so sorry, Antonia,’ he whispered. He wiped away her mascara-laden tears with the silk handkerchief one of the assistants in the rental shop had placed in his breast pocket. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this. I believe Paulo has phoned the police. They’ll be here soon.’
‘I do not need the police. I know who has killed him,’ she hissed, turning toward the bald man, who was being held back by some of the other partygoers. ‘This man, this viper, he has done this. Ambrosi! Assassin! Essere dannato!’ she screamed.
‘What are you saying?’ cried Doug, ‘I don’t understand what’s going on – who is that man? What are you saying to him?’ If ever there was a time Doug wished he could speak Italian, this was it.
Antonia spat out, ‘He must die. This murderer must die; his family has vendetta with my family. He has killed my brother because of my family’s treasure. He must die, Genovese scum. I kill you!’ She shook her tiny fist, and reverted to Italian. Doug was locked, once again, within his dark world of incomprehension.
As the night air grew more frigid he waited, holding Antonia close to him; finally the police arrived and illuminated the garden with lamps that bleached everything white, or threw it into inky shadow. He held her as they took away her brother’s body, and as she sobbed her account of their evening to the detectives. He could tell, through a few words in Italian and Antonia’s translations, that she continued in her insistence that her brother had been assassinated by this Alessandro Ambrosi, from Genoa, whom she had invited to her birthday party despite the fact she claimed that the Genovese Ambrosis and the Fiorentino de Lucas had a vendetta that dated back to her great-grandfather’s day.
‘I believe it is right to have you enemies closer than you friends, but if I have not invited him, then my baby brother Gianni is alive now,’ she wailed.
Finally it was Doug’s turn to answer questions; Antonia helped, still weeping, with translation and interpretation, and he was able to confirm her account of the evening. When the police made ready to leave, An
tonia finally agreed to return to the house, which, though it blazed with the same chandeliers as it had at her birthday dinner, offered no comfort to the implacable woman, or Doug.
When he knew Antonia was safe, the door to her apartment on the top floor of the hotel locked and bolted, Doug finally went back to his own room, where he fell onto his bed. It was almost dawn, and he was utterly exhausted. Just twenty-four hours earlier he’d been standing at the front door of his cottage in Scotland, wondering if he’d packed enough socks for a two-week sightseeing holiday in Italy. Now, as he stared at a painted ceiling that told a symbolic tale of redemption, he was totally spent, and too tired to even organize his thoughts. He fell into a fitful sleep, his dreams populated with glittering ballrooms and threatening shadows. At one point he saw Antonia fall from a cliff that had appeared at the front steps of the hotel, then saw himself, strangely disembodied, running along a pathway he believed led to a museum that housed religious relics – but found it to be a never-ending bar piled high with pirate gold, and he was surrounded by policemen who kept shouting at him in gibberish. They kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming . . .
Doug awoke to the sound of birdsong after an hour of sweaty sleep with his heart pounding, a full bladder, and a desperate need to know that Antonia was safe. He was horrified to see the crumpled mess his rental suit – which he’d slept in – had become, and decided he’d better get himself cleaned up before he did anything else. A shower partially revived him, and he donned the linen suit he’d rather cavalierly purchased the previous evening. As he checked his new self in the mirror before leaving his room, he realized he might feel exhausted but at least he looked fresh.
He grappled with the temptation to telephone Antonia, then wondered if he should check how she was with the hotel manager; finally he decided to simply go to her rooms and see her, face to face, for himself. Doug was nervous, unsure what sort of a state she’d be in; he hoped he’d have the strength she’d need to feel supported. He knocked timidly at first, then more heartily, then, having received no response, with complete panic.
Finally Antonia pulled open the door and stood before him. She looked magnificent; no bleary or puffy eyes, no blotchiness of complexion. Doug couldn’t get over the fact that she looked perfect; her hair was coiled in a bun at her neck, her make-up was flawless, and she wore a vivid orange outfit that both fitted beautifully and complemented her dark coloring. She had told him the night before that she was turning forty-five, mocking his mere thirty-seven years, but at that moment she looked younger than Doug by a decade, his baggy eyes and strained expression adding years to his appearance.
The sobbing woman he had held close to him in the chill of the night had disappeared. Doug had come to Antonia to be her hero, her rock; he almost felt a little disappointed that here was a woman who needed no support – she was completely in control of herself, and, he suspected, would soon be completely in control of everyone about her.
‘Caro mio, Dooglass,’ Antonia cooed, and she reached out to Doug, pulled him toward her and kissed him slowly and softly on each cheek. Doug’s stomach flipped; he tried to convince himself it was because he was tired and hungry, but he knew it was an even more basic instinct at work.
As Antonia pulled back from him, he whispered hoarsely, ‘You look wonderful. I thought you’d be . . .’ He didn’t quite know what to say.
Antonia replied sharply, ‘I look this way because I must. If I am a mess, then no one takes me seriously. No man respects a woman when she is in pieces – no man will do what I ask if I cannot master myself. I need to prove Ambrosi is a killer; today the police will believe me when I tell them this. Last night I am weak; they see a woman screaming, crying. They ignore her. Today they see that Antonia de Luca is in control, and she is right. I hope Ambrosi he has not already escaped. The police said he must stay at his home, that they will watch him, but I think he will go away somewhere. No Ambrosi listened to anyone else, ever. They are trouble. All of them.’
As Antonia talked, she marched down the carpeted marble staircase that led to the main entrance. Doug followed in her wake. She greeted the manager and a couple of the employees with kisses and comforting gestures – Doug assumed she was assuring them that she was quite well – then the manager led her to a small car parked beside the main entrance.
‘Dooglass, you come with me.’ Doug knew he couldn’t have left her even if she’d not invited him to join her, so he slipped into the passenger seat. He was still grappling with his seatbelt when Antonia sent gravel spraying from accelerating tires.
Doug let out a little cry.
‘Do not worry, Dooglass, I am a very good driver. No one else can drive but Italians.’ They shot out of the hotel grounds and onto the road without the slightest hesitation, screeching around the corner. Doug was terrified, but, as she threw the steering wheel this way and that, he had to admire Antonia; she didn’t so much drive the car, as ride it. She was almost at one with the vehicle, and she kept her eyes on the road even as she talked to him and rooted around in her handbag for cigarettes and a lighter. As she talked, and drove, and smoked, her mobile phone rang. She answered with one hand, her other holding the steering wheel and the cigarette, ‘Pronto,’ she answered, then listened, shouted a curt, ‘Si, fra mezzora,’ and dropped the phone back into the little cubbyhole beneath the handbrake.
‘We see the police in half an hour, Dooglass, but first I will see Ambrosi. I will bring him to the police with us – or he will pay the price.’ Antonia revved the engine and the little car shot forward at an even faster pace; Doug gripped the sides of his seat with anxiety. They crossed the River Arno within a few minutes; Antonia clearly knew where she was going – and how to get there – but at every turn there seemed to be innumerable lanes of traffic to cross to reach the next street which she’d race along, before becoming all but immobile within another knot of vehicles.
They flew past glorious Renaissance buildings at an alarming rate, their route circumnavigating magnificent piazzas filled with people enjoying their breakfast coffee, and taking them along cobbled streets Doug knew were hundreds of years old, but which now became no more than a nuisance, causing Antonia to skid as she cornered, cursing in Italian as she did so. As he held on for dear life, Doug felt he should speak his mind.
‘You can’t just face down this Ambrosi man, Antonia. What’s the point? Let the police do their job. Let them bring him in. Besides,’ Doug had a flash of brilliance, ‘it can’t have been him who killed your brother, because he was with us at the dinner table all night. You know it and I know it – we are his alibi. The police doctor said Gianni had only been dead a couple of hours when we found him. It can’t have been Ambrosi.’
Doug felt rather pleased with himself, but Antonia shouted, ‘If not this Ambrosi, then another Ambrosi, or someone they pay. You do not know them. They stop at nothing. They destroy my father. They tell the government about him and he lose everything in taxes and fines. They destroy life for me and Gianni, and now they kill my poor Gianni.’
‘But why?’
‘Vendetta,’ was Antonia’s angry reply, as though that one word communicated volumes.
For Doug, it didn’t; he didn’t really understand the whole concept of a vendetta, except in the broadest sense. True, they’d read Romeo and Juliet at school, but at the time he’d thought it was all a bit soppy and hadn’t paid much attention except for the bits where there was fighting, or the odd slightly smutty joke.
‘But what does that mean?’ he begged.
Antonia slammed on the brakes to stop at a traffic light. She looked across at Doug and narrowed her eyes. ‘You Scottish. Is not the same for you. For me and my brother, it is life, and death. The de Luca family hate the Ambrosi family. The Ambrosi family hate the de Luca family. It has been this way for a long time. Me? I try to be a friend, I try to stop the vendetta because it is not a good way to live today, in this century. But the Ambrosis are all mad men, they will not sto
p. They will kill me too, if I do not kill them first.’
With that threat hanging in the air, the lights changed and once again they were tearing through the streets until Antonia finally screeched to a halt in front of an unimpressive, yet clearly ancient, brick building. ‘We are here. You come now – or stay. If you come, then you are in vendetta with me. You cannot go back from that. But I have only one gun, and this gun is for me.’
Doug was horrified. Where on earth had she got hold of a gun? He couldn’t imagine knowing how to go about getting one. Good grief, it might be Antonia herself who lost her life! Doug had to stop her. The seriousness of the situation had finally dawned upon him; this was a real blood feud – whether Alessandro Ambrosi had killed Antonia’s brother or not, Antonia was about to embark upon a course of action that could result in another life being taken, and he couldn’t risk her doing that.
Pretty sure that gentle persuasion wasn’t going to work, Doug grabbed Antonia’s arm as she started to unbuckle her seatbelt, then he pulled her toward him and kissed her, forcefully. It was all he could think of doing. She returned his kiss with equal passion, and, as his moment of heaven was complete, Doug’s heart thumped in his chest, making him worry a little about how healthy he really was.
Doug was determined to tell Antonia that – whatever it meant – he would stand by her, but that he really believed going after Ambrosi with a gun was not a good idea . . . but, before he could say a word, he felt something hard and cold being pushed against the exposed part of his neck. Antonia’s eyes looked past him, and widened with shock and fear. Doug’s heart continued pounding, but now for a different reason; he had no idea how he knew it, but he was quite certain someone was pushing the barrel of a gun into his flesh.