Seasons of Sin: Misbehaving in summer and autumn... (Series of Sin)

by Clare Connelly

  “You cannot live your life thinking of death,” he responded tautly. “It is an old adage my grandfather taught me. You cannot ever enjoy life if you’re always scouting for the end on the horizon. Why can you not simply enjoy this for now?”

  Her smile was wistful. “I like that. You cannot live your life thinking of death. But that wouldn’t work for me.” Her delicate throat knotted as she swallowed to keep her emotions at bay. How many times had she been forced to contemplate death? As if to recall the worst of her pains, she lifted a finger to her temples and felt the small scar there. She’d passed out after the fifth blow. She remembered, because she’d counted, as each press of the empty wine bottle had crushed against her. “I know this place doesn’t look like much, but to me, it’s perfect. I’m free here.”

  It was a curious turn of phrase. “When have you not been free?” He pushed thoughtfully.

  “That doesn’t matter. The point is, here I am free and I am happy and I think … I can see a time when you could make me more miserable than I’ve ever been.”

  “So you are saying no to what we share simply because it will end at some point?”

  “You’re the one who said it was time to get back to reality. Well, this is it for me.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. You can’t stay here. You must come with me.”

  She shook her head. “It’s not that easy. Being back here reminds me of who I am. These last couple of days have been a fantasy. A wonderful, crazy, erotic fantasy. But not real life. I … I’ve learned that I have to be … careful. About who I trust.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “I’d trust you with my life,” she promised truthfully. “But not my heart.” And after two short days, she already understood how much of it he possessed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She awoke with a start somewhere around four in the morning. She was drenched with sweat despite the coolness of the night. Her blonde hair was plastered to her brow and her heart was hammering like a jackal crossing the desert. There was something in the air that night that had made her dream of him.

  Her father.

  She tasted metal in her mouth and from experience she knew it to be fear and adrenalin. She pushed up from the bed, every single nerve ending trained on her surrounds. Her eyes, even in the dim light cast by the pale, cloud-wrapped moon, sought out shapes in her bedroom. Her coat rack. Her clothes. Her door. The picture on the wall of her best friend.

  Usually, Emma’s face brought a smile to Kate’s. But not now. How long had it been since their last chat? Weeks. They had to be careful. Emma was the only person from Kate’s old life she’d dared stay in touch with. It was a red herring; one she couldn’t give due consideration to in that fear-charged moment.

  She sat perfectly still, listening, waiting for her heart to stop racing so that she could hear something other than the torrent of her pounding blood.

  It was Benedetto that had done this. He’d made her feel vulnerable. And for some reason, being with him had made her think of her past.

  He was nothing like her father, and yet he was. He was dominant, though in a wholly different way. He was powerful and successful, and both men had achieved that through sheer intelligence and hard work. But it was not for their similarities that she brought Augustine to Kate’s mind.

  It was for their differences.

  With Benedetto she had felt safe. She had felt fearless and empowered. Even though he was strong and physically dominant, and he had dominated her physically, it had never once entered her mind to fear that he might use his power and strength to diminish hers. If anything, he’d felt like a magnifying glass to her own inherent character. All that was good in herself had seemed larger and more obvious with him.

  A noise sounded from the kitchen and her heart began to pound once more. Her eyes darted to the bedside table. Was that knife still there? She’d put it in the drawer after the break in.

  No. With a silent groan she remembered pulling it out to slice a beautiful piece of prosciutto she’d bought at the Mercato.

  She had hairspray though. In her bathroom, and that was only a few steps away. Surely that could be turned to some purpose, to give her the air of advantage. She swallowed, listening again.

  There was nothing now.

  In another hour, people would begin moving down the street. In her neighbourhood, life started early in the day, with many of her neighbours working shift jobs at the nearby airport. If she screamed, someone would hear her.

  And yet she had never, not once, not in all the years of her life – so many of them dogged by terror and abject fear –cried for help.

  The thought poured courage down her back and she stood, cursing the bed that creaked noisily into the silence as she moved.

  She was alone.

  For two days, she had glimpsed what it might be like to have someone you could rely on and share things with. But it had been a stupid fantasy. A completely baseless fantasy that her heart had indulged before her mind could realize what idiocy was occurring.

  Benedetto had told her it was time that they got back to reality, and she had.

  And Kate’s reality was that she was alone. No one was going to come to her rescue. She’d learned that time and time again.

  She was slight and small; she moved like a pale breeze to her bathroom and grabbed not only the hair spray but also her tweezers and a pair of pantyhose she’d been drying on the towel rack.

  Then, fast as she could, she crept out of her bedroom and into the lounge. She kept her back to the bedroom door, and switched the light on.

  The room was tiny; it took her only a moment to flash her eyes across each corner and realize that she was alone. Her apartment was exactly as she’d left it before going to bed. A single plate was dry, where she’d left it draining on the side of the sink, and a solo wine glass, from which she’d enjoyed soda water and a spritz of lime

  The blanket was as she’d arranged it, neatly folded and resting over the armrest.

  Kate’s breathing began to relax, but she hadn’t yet checked the entire flat. With a residual degree of trepidation, she pulled the cupboard doors open and held the hairspray at head height.

  But only her vacuum cleaner and a couple of business suits stared back at her.

  “For goodness sake, Katherine,” she grimaced. “Calm down.”

  She checked the windows were as firmly closed as they could be and then, with a sense of relief but not calm, went back to her room.

  Sleep, thereafter, was a futile exercise.

  Her mind was wired, her eyes wide awake.

  She gave up after lying prone for almost ten minutes, and instead returned to the kitchen to stir the kettle to life.

  It brought back memories of the way they’d made tea at his villa, boiling water in an old pot, suspended over a fire. Was there anything more rustic or romantic than such simple pleasures?

  Her own state of the art kettle finished heating the water quickly and she steeped a tea bag into her favourite mug. Cradling it in both hands, she cuddled up on the sofa and waited.

  For dawn to break over the city.

  For peace to return to her heart.

  And for the sense of desperate need that was ripping through her to abate.

  How could she feel such a powerful lust after such a short acquaintance?

  Her desire for him, and the way he’d made her feel, had been totally unexpected.

  And so what?

  She couldn’t pursue it.

  There was danger in feeling for someone what he’d made her feel. There was an inherent risk in befriending anyone. It was the reason she’d steadfastly avoided getting close to anyone, male or female.

  It was why she moved around. Why until meeting Melania she had refused to even take a proper job.

  And it was why she knew she had made the right decision.

  And why she realized she’d lost complete sight of her sanity for a moment. She’d actually wanted him to tell her that she
mattered more to him than sex.

  She’d wanted him to say that he thought she was special and that she mattered to him.

  Kate sipped her tea and focused her eyes on the white linen that fluttered in the pre-dawn breeze.

  Benedetto might have thought her apartment wanting, but Kate was comforted by its familiarity.

  When she’d dreamed of moving to Italy, this is what she’d seen. Rustic, down-at-heel, charming terracotta buildings with clothes strung from window to window, neighbours who cooked one another meals, elderly women who still dressed to the nines for their evening promenade and young men who returned to Nonna every Sunday for family lunch.

  This was the Italia she’d craved.

  When had she first decided she would live here?

  Her lips lifted into a wistful smile. She’d been young. Not even ten. Augustine (even then, that had been how she’d thought of him) had needed to work late, and unable to find a babysitter on short notice, he’d brought her with him to the intimidating chambers at the courthouse. His business was private. She remembered the procession of well-dressed men moving into his office, each one with a different coloured bow tie or a particularly impressively brushed comb over. But her eyes had drifted to a magazine left curled up and wedged in the seat opposite. When she’d finally dared to cross the tiled floors and wrap her fingers around it, the meeting had finished. Her heart had begun to race for the illicit discovery and she’d crushed it beneath her clothes, tucking it into her underpants. It was only a flimsy thing, so she was easily able to disguise it beneath the jumper she’d worn that night.

  She kept it hidden as she’d brushed her teeth, but she’d known it was there and that fact alone had brought the ghost of a smile to her face.

  Augustine wouldn’t have approved.

  She was only allowed to have books, and even then, only books that he’d selected.

  No daughter of mine is going to have her head filled with the dross and idiocy of popular culture.

  Katherine had curled up in bed like a conch shell, her slender body almost doubled in two, as she slowly turned the pages.

  It was a travel brochure, and not a magazine, but it was from a proper agency so it was thick and glossy and loaded with pictures. She’d studied them all. Photographs of little terracotta pots stuffed with vibrant geraniums, tables set with white linen and lavender, heavy with pizza and wine; artful shots of Vespas parked against a dilapidated brick wall; the sun cresting over Brunelleschi’s Duomo, bathing the sentinel of Florence in gold.

  She had traced the outlines of famous statues and fantasised about a time when she could inject herself into the pictures. When she could climb the steps of the Duomo herself, tour the Vatican and stroll the galleries of the Ufizzi. When she could take her first tentative step into a gondola and marvel at Venice from its best angle.

  That travel magazine became a beacon to a young Katherine.

  Three years later, when Augustine laid his first blow against her flesh, she still had the magazine hidden in the bottom of her drawer. It was the magazine that she stared at while she waited for the pain to subside.

  It was the magazine she thought of now, when she looked outside of her window and saw the tumbling geraniums, drying laundry and Italians going about their days.

  She had walked out of her life – her foul, painful life – and into this one! It was serendipity indeed that she had found the magazine. It had offered her an escape before she’d even known she would need one.

  Her tea was hot; she sipped it gratefully and continued to stare at the pre-dawn sky. Had there ever been a time when she’d felt safe?

  Augustine had been a strict father. Some of her earliest memories involved Punishments, though usually that had come in the form of a blistering rage that had seen spittle-laden invectives rain down upon her head; or in the alienation of any attention, praise and affection, until she’d proven herself sufficiently apologetic and remorseful.

  When he’d become violent, she hadn’t really been surprised. She’d felt the same flinches of fear for a long time beforehand, as if she’d been bracing for something that she instinctively knew was coming.

  But something had changed around the time she turned twelve. He had lost control completely. She had become an expert at reading his moods, and at remaining as silent and submissive as possible to escape his rages.

  Often times though it was out of her control. Even the slightest perceived wrong could end in Punishment. Kate remembered the time he’d accused her of forgetting to pass on an important phone message. She’d written it on a note, and placed it in the middle of his desk, but he insisted she should have told him herself. He’d thrown her against the railing until she was doubled over and then he’d kicked her legs – high up enough that any bruising would be hidden by her school uniform – but he’d kicked her until she’d almost passed out from the pain.

  How he’d never done worse than sprain one of her bones was almost a miracle, surely.

  Kate set her tea aside and stood up. The memories had brought pain to her. She ran her hands over her stomach, as if to assure herself that she was fine now. She had escaped. She had disappeared into thin air and he could never hurt her again.

  She just had to be careful. And getting involved with someone like Benedetto was foolish and impulsive and most definitely not careful.

  * * *

  Benedetto did not want to admit to himself how much his day was dragging by. He paced to the other side of the concrete floor, staring out at the sprawling view of Rome beneath him. In the distance, if he squinted, he could see the area she lived in. Low urban sprawl earmarked by billboards atop buildings topped with red terracotta tiled roofs.

  On one of the floors below, the jackhammer fired up again, adding to the cacophony of urban sounds that constantly filled Rome.

  “The delay is inevitable,” Luigi Santoro spoke slowly, his expression grim. “The artefacts are valuable, and they are precisely where the drain was to be laid.”

  Had she dreamed of him? Had she dreamed of the Villa? Had she woken up smiling, imagining the day they would share amongst the quince and olive trees, only to realize that they had come back to earth?

  “The city has sent their top advisor to inspect the site; we will know by this evening where an alternative drain can be placed.”

  Benedetto had thought of her all night. He’d lain in bed, wondering about her in that tiny, ice-box of a bedroom. He’d lain there wondering how a girl born to a man such as Beauchamp could end up in such humble surrounds. And he’d realized that none of what he knew about Kate made any sense.

  She had gone to one of the most plum public schools in England. She’d been accepted into a top university. She’d been given an apartment in Chelsea. Certainly the photos he’d seen of her had shown a woman with an air of entitlement that perfectly fit the model of what he’d expected.

  So why was she living in what could generously be described as a shanty building in the heart of a downtown slum? No amount of crisp white bed linen and beautiful flowers could change the fact that her apartment was woefully unsuitable for her.

  “Ben?”

  “Yeah.” He snapped his head around to face his long-term employee. “Sure as hell wouldn’t happen in Dubai, eh?”

  “No artefacts where we’re building in Dubai,” Luigi grinned.

  Benedetto nodded slowly, but he was already drifting back into his real problem. “Listen, I need a couple of men to do some minor work on an apartment downtown. You can spare them?”

  “Of course. It’s not like they’re doing anything here until this is sorted out anyhow. What kind of work?” But Benedetto was already moving away, formulating a plan that might get him exactly what he wanted. “Ben?”

  Benedetto, though, was gone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The stupid milk had a hole in the carton. Only a small one, because Kate hadn’t realized until she was three blocks from the market. By then, enough milk had leaked out that it
had weakened the paper of the bag, bursting a hole in the base sending three eggs and a lovely fennel bulb onto the footpath. The eggs had cracked and the fennel landed in something suspiciously moist but she’d put it back into the bag and gripped it underneath. Her arms ached by the time she reached the front door to her apartment building.

  It was propped open, which wasn’t unusual on Monday nights. Signora Verdi from the upstairs flat had her grandchildren every Monday evening while their parents caught up for a child-free dinner. The noise was always loud in Kate’s apartment – the sounds of dozens of feet scampering in the cramped space, laughing and fighting, and playing for hours and hours. Kate loved it. She would listen and imagine how different her own childhood might have been with a little more noise and frivolity.

  When she reached her apartment though, a sense of fear began to tremble in her gut. She couldn’t have said what provoked it, but her instincts were going haywire. Her heart was pounding as she shifted so that she could lift her phone from her handbag and juggle it in one hand whilst still keeping a tight hold of the groceries. She dialed her boss’s number out of desperation – Melania was ill with tonsillitis but she was still the best person to go to in a crisis. Well, except for … she swallowed. Benedetto.

  Did she even have his number? With surprise, she realized she didn’t. Which meant she had no way of contacting him, even if she wanted to.

  Her fingers shook a little as she slid the key into the lock.

  All day she’d had the strangest sense that something bad was about to happen. And all day she’d told herself that she was overreacting. That her emotions and nerve endings were supercharged. Nothing else.

  But now, some ancient source of adrenalin had kicked up a gear.

  She took in a deep breath and then pushed the door inwards, her whole body coiled for action. Her eyes scanned the room quickly. Everything was different, and yet somehow the same. The lamps had been switched on in the lounge area, casting the room in a soft, warm glow, and another bunch of flowers had been added to the coffee table. No, not flowers. They were blossoms. Orange blossoms, she’d have guessed, from where she stood.