Rising Fire

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “And delivered by the most beautiful woman in the room. No man could ask for more.”

  “I can sit down and visit with you for a spell, too, if you’d like.”

  “Ah, I am corrected!” Malatesta said. “A man can ask for more. Please.” He held her chair for her and then sat back down across from her. “But you must share the wine with me.”

  “I can do that. It’s why I brought two fresh glasses.”

  “Allow me to pour . . .”

  A few minutes later, they clinked glasses and Malatesta sat back to enjoy both the wine and the company. This was where he belonged, he thought. If everything worked out as he intended, he might not ever have to leave, although he was always prepared for that contingency.

  Louis Longmont had asked him why he was in Big Rock, but the answer Malatesta had given him was not exactly the truth. Far from it, in fact.

  He was in Big Rock because he intended to escape his past, forever and at long last.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sicily, seventeen years earlier

  Twelve-year-old Giovanni Malatesta ran so hard up the hill that it felt as if his heart were about to burst in his chest. He heard the sheep bleating on the other side of the crest and knew he had to catch up to them before it was too late.

  He hadn’t meant to go to sleep. He’d been sitting under a tree, keeping an eye on the flock, but the heat of the sun splashing down over the rugged Sicilian hills had lulled him into a stupor. He had been distracted to start with by all the thoughts of Serafina Alcani that filled his brain night and day.

  Serafina was the same age as Giovanni and seemingly overnight had transformed from a spindly-legged annoyance into a gorgeous creature the likes of which he had never seen before. He had tried to persuade her to go with him into the shed behind his grandfather’s farmhouse, but so far his efforts had been unsuccessful.

  She was just being coy, Giovanni told himself. Sooner or later, he would convince her. He wasn’t exactly sure what would happen if he ever succeeded in his quest, but he was certain it would be glorious.

  Between the heat and dreaming of Serafina with her long dark hair and lissome body, he had forgotten all about his grandfather’s sheep and gone to sleep, only to jolt awake an unknowable time later and discover that the woolly idiots were gone. They had wandered off somewhere, and Giovanni sprang to his feet knowing that he had to find them.

  He had run this way and that and then stopped short as he heard them bleating. He had followed the sound, his legs pumping hard, his sandaled feet slapping the ground, sweat soaking his homespun shirt. The bleating grew louder. Just over the next hill, he told himself. He paused for a moment to drag in a couple of deep breaths, then resumed the chase.

  Now he could even hear the bell on the collar around the thick neck of the old ram. A few more lunging steps and he reached the top of the hill.

  He stopped short and looked down the slope. The sheep were headed along a winding road that was almost white in the brilliant sunshine. Their cloven hooves kicked up enough dust to form a cloud around them, but not so much that Giovanni couldn’t see the three figures around the flock.

  The sheep hadn’t simply wandered off. They were being driven away.

  They had been stolen.

  And it was those no-good Capizzi brothers, Alessandro and Lorenzo, who had done it, along with their dim-witted friend Luca. Alessandro and Lorenzo were a year older than Giovanni, while Luca was three years older and enormous. Together, they made a formidable trio who did whatever they wanted, terrorizing the other youngsters in the area.

  Alessandro and Lorenzo’s father was rumored to be an important man in the Cosa Nostra, so all the adults were afraid of him and advised their children to steer clear of the Capizzi brothers and their oafish minion if at all possible. Giovanni always tried not to draw attention to himself whenever they were around.

  At this moment, seeing the sheep that his grandfather relied on for a living being driven away, Giovanni didn’t think about any of that. Rage boiled up inside him, and with an incoherent yell, he charged down the hill after them.

  Alessandro was closest, heard the shout, and turned to see Giovanni sprinting toward him. He called to his brother and Luca, asking them for help. The younger boy was too close, though, and moving too fast. He left his feet in a diving tackle that carried him into Alessandro. Both of them crashed to the ground among the suddenly startled sheep. Bleating crazily, the animals stampeded. Hooves hammered against Giovanni.

  He thrashed around and fought his way clear of them. The stench of the sheep combined with the swirling dust choked him. He coughed and pawed at his eyes. He couldn’t see anything.

  A fist shot out of the dust and slammed into his jaw, knocking him onto his back again. A weight landed on top of him. Desperation made him buck it off. He rolled onto his belly and even though his vision was blurry, he made out Alessandro lying a few feet away. Alessandro had to be the one who had punched him.

  Giovanni scrambled toward his enemy. Alessandro and Lorenzo were a year older than him but roughly the same size. He was willing to fight them, even two against one, as long as he could stay out of Luca’s grip. The fifteen-year-old was slow and lumbering. Giovanni thought he could outmaneuver Luca. He could certainly outwit him.

  Alessandro hadn’t made it to his feet when Giovanni rammed a shoulder into his chest and knocked him flat on his back. Giovanni straddled the other boy and hammered punches into his face as rapid footsteps sounded nearby. A glance to his left told Giovanni that Lorenzo was almost on top of him. He ducked and threw himself to the side.

  Unable to halt his charge, Lorenzo sailed through the space where Giovanni had been a heartbeat earlier. He landed on his belly with a loud “Ooof!” His legs were on top of his brother, keeping Alessandro pinned to the ground momentarily.

  Giovanni took advantage of that opportunity to kick Alessandro in the head, driving the heel of his sandal against the other boy’s temple.

  Over the frenzied bleating of the sheep, Giovanni heard a bellow of rage from Luca. He rolled, sprang to his feet, and darted to the side as Luca charged at him with arms outstretched. If Luca ever managed to get those arms around him, the larger boy would squeeze mercilessly until Giovanni’s ribs cracked and splintered. He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Once Luca got some momentum going, he had a hard time stopping. Giovanni thrust his leg out and Luca tripped over it, pitching forward so that his face plowed into the dusty road. Giovanni knew that wouldn’t stop the giant for long, but he seized the few moments’ respite it gave him and whirled toward Lorenzo, who had pushed himself up on hands and knees and was trying to make it to his feet.

  Giovanni clubbed his hands together and brought them down as hard as he could on the back of Lorenzo’s neck. Lorenzo collapsed and groaned. Alessandro was still senseless from the kick to the head.

  Giovanni swung around. Luca was trying to get up. Giovanni searched rapidly for a weapon of some sort. He spotted a good-sized rock half buried in the hillside not far away and ran to it. He got hold of it and tried to pull it loose. As he worked at that, grunting from the strain, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Luca had made it to his knees. Giovanni’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace as he redoubled his efforts.

  The rock came loose just as he heard Luca pounding toward him. He turned with the rock in both hands, swung it up over his head, and pitched it at his attacker. Luca was too dumb to get out of the way. The stone smashed into his forehead. He went down like Goliath.

  For a second, Giovanni believed he had killed the fifteen-year-old. Then he saw Luca’s broad chest rising and falling in a ragged rhythm. The older boy was alive but out cold. Blood welled from the gash that the rock had opened on his forehead.

  Alessandro and Lorenzo were still down, too, and too stunned to pay any attention to Giovanni. He looked at the rock, which was lying on the ground where it had fallen next to Luca. If he acted quickly, Giovanni could use that s
tone to batter the brains out of all three of his enemies. They were too senseless to stop him from killing them.

  For a moment, he considered it. But if Giuseppe Capizzi really was a member of the Cosa Nostra, killing his sons would be inviting too much trouble. Giovanni left the stone where it was and ran around the sheep, herding the flock together and starting it back toward his grandfather’s farm. As he prodded the creatures along, he looked back over his shoulder. The other three boys were still down. If they didn’t regain their senses for a while, he might actually have a chance to get away.

  But this wasn’t over, he told himself bleakly. Probably Alessandro and Lorenzo had decided to steal the sheep just for fun, but it wasn’t fun anymore. They would be furious that Giovanni had not only dared to stand up to them, he had actually defeated them and taken the sheep back. They would regard that as a humiliation, and they couldn’t allow that because it might loosen the grip of terror they had on all the other youngsters in the area. If Giovanni got away with what he had done, others might be emboldened to defy the Capizzi brothers.

  So he knew he was still in danger, but at least he could get his grandfather’s sheep back home. Later, he would figure out what to do about Alessandro, Lorenzo, and Luca.

  But with a sigh, he realized he was already starting to regret that he hadn’t bashed their brains out when he had the chance.

  CHAPTER 15

  Giovanni’s grandfather didn’t realize that the sheep had ever been missing, which was a relief. The old man had been kind enough to take Giovanni in when the boy’s mother and father had both succumbed to a fever that swept through Sicily a couple of years earlier, but he also had a temper and had been known to take his walking stick after his grandson when Giovanni did something to displease him. He would have been very upset to know that he had almost lost the entire flock.

  But the old man might be even more upset if he knew that Giovanni had earned the enmity of the Capizzi brothers. All the way back to the field where the sheep grazed, Giovanni had debated what to tell his grandfather. In the end, he decided to say nothing about the incident.

  For a few days, it appeared that was the right decision. Giovanni halfway expected Giuseppe Capizzi to show up at the farm to kill him and the old man, but Giuseppe didn’t appear and neither did Alessandro and Lorenzo. When Giovanni went into the village with his grandfather, he paid particular attention to the gossip in the marketplace, figuring that what had happened to the Capizzi brothers and their friend Luca would be big news.

  No one mentioned it, as far as Giovanni could tell. Maybe when Alessandro and Lorenzo regained their senses, they had decided to keep quiet about the whole thing. Luca would do whatever they told him, of course. They might see ignoring it as the best way for them to hang on to their power—as long as Giovanni didn’t go around boasting about what he had done.

  He didn’t say a word. If fate had presented him with a way to avoid further trouble, he was going to take it. He was no fool.

  Then, at Mass on Sunday, he laid eyes on his enemies for the first time since the encounter. They might not be talking about it, but it was obvious that something had happened.

  Alessandro had a bruise on his head where Giovanni had kicked him. He kept his cap pulled down except while he was in the church, but it didn’t conceal the mark completely. Also, he sort of shuffled along when he walked, and Lorenzo kept a hand on his brother’s arm to steady him. Alessandro’s eyes had a dull look to them, as well. Giovanni remembered seeing a man in the village who had been kicked in the head by a mule. That was what Alessandro looked like. It frightened Giovanni that he had done that, but at the same time, it made him a little proud.

  Luca wore a bandage wrapped around his head, covering the gash the rock had given him. Other than that, he seemed normal, though. Giovanni supposed it was difficult to damage something that didn’t work all that well to start with, such as Luca’s brain.

  Giuseppe Capizzi had a dark scowl on his face during Mass, but that was nothing unusual. He always looked like that, as if he was angry at the entire world. The fact that his sons had gotten into a fight wasn’t necessarily the cause of his ire. Giovanni wondered just how much Alessandro and Lorenzo had told him. With Alessandro in the state he was in, they wouldn’t have been able to pretend nothing had happened.

  But despite that, Giovanni clung to the hope that maybe things wouldn’t go any further—until after the service, when the brothers came up to him outside the church.

  Lorenzo did the talking, low-voiced and intense. “Don’t think you’ve gotten away with it,” he told Giovanni. “You’ll get what you’ve got coming to you.” He added a few colorful curses, making sure he spoke quietly enough that the priest, standing over in the doorway of the church, wouldn’t overhear.

  Alessandro didn’t say anything, just stood there looking at Giovanni. Now that Giovanni was closer, he could tell that Alessandro’s eyes weren’t dull after all. A fierce hate burned in them as he cast a hooded, baleful glare at Giovanni.

  “He hasn’t said anything since the other day, and sometimes he can’t move right,” Lorenzo said when he saw Giovanni staring at Alessandro. “You did that.”

  Giovanni was scared, but he was also defiant. “You shouldn’t have stolen my sheep. What did you expect me to do?”

  “We weren’t stealing them. We would have left them somewhere you could find them. It was a joke, you idiot.”

  Giovanni didn’t believe that for a second. They would have kept the sheep, all right, and sold them. Or perhaps driven them off a cliff out of sheer meanness. He wouldn’t put anything past the Capizzi brothers.

  “You shouldn’t have fallen asleep while you were supposed to be watching them,” Lorenzo went on. “If you’d been doing your job when we came along, we wouldn’t have bothered them. But when we saw you sleeping, we figured it would be funny to think about the look on your face when you woke up and realized the sheep were gone. So it’s all your fault, everything that happened. And you’ll pay for it.”

  “You don’t scare me,” Giovanni said, even though actually he was so frightened he thought his knees might start knocking together. The fear got even worse when Alessandro leaned closer to him, still not saying anything, but Giovanni could hear the rasp of his breathing now.

  “Just remember,” Lorenzo said. “You’ll pay.”

  He took his brother’s arm, and they walked off. Giovanni stood there and after a minute dragged the back of his hand across his forehead to wipe away the beads of sweat that had sprung out there.

  Despite the threats, nothing happened. Days dragged past. A week, then two. When Giovanni saw the Capizzi brothers at church, he thought Alessandro looked better. Steadier on his feet. Still silent, though, and when he looked at Giovanni, chills went down the younger boy’s back. His enemies—were still his enemies. But all he could do was remain watchful.

  After Mass the third Sunday following the fight over the sheep, Giovanni was outside the church with his grandfather when he heard his name being called. He looked around and saw Serafina Alcani standing with some other girls. She waved at him, and when he returned the wave, all the girls giggled and started whispering to one another. He wondered if they had dared Serafina to call to him.

  She kept talking to her friends, but while doing that, she glanced around at him again, and the smile that passed briefly over her face when their eyes met made his heart start thumping harder in his chest. He felt his face getting warm.

  His grandfather cuffed him on the back of the head, hard enough to get Giovanni’s attention. “Come on, boy,” the old man growled. “We’ve attended to the spiritual, now we must attend to the physical. There’s work to do, even on the Sabbath.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.” Giovanni followed the old man, but he cast a last look over his shoulder at Serafina, standing there slender and beautiful in a pale blue dress, the sunlight gleaming on her hair, dark as a raven’s wing, her head thrown back slightly, her lips parted as she laughed at so
mething one of her friends had just said.

  He had never seen a more beautiful sight in all his life.

  * * *

  Late that afternoon, his grandfather sent him out to check on the sheep, who were grazing today in a fenced meadow about a quarter of a mile from the house.

  Giovanni had a stout tree branch he took everywhere on the farm with him these days. He had cut it and trimmed it and kept it close at hand. His grandfather laughingly called it his walking stick, but actually it was a beating stick, or it would be if he had to fight off another attack by the Capizzi brothers and their dim-witted friend. He wished he had a knife, but until he could get his hands on one somehow, the branch was a better weapon than nothing.

  The sheep were in the meadow, just like they were supposed to be. Giovanni leaned the branch against the fence, then rested his arms on the top rail and looked at the woolly creatures without really seeing them. He conjured up that image of Serafina standing outside the church again. She had been on his mind all afternoon.

  He knew better than to let himself get too distracted, though. A part of his brain remained alert. Because of that, he was aware of the Capizzi brothers approaching him before they got too close. As he turned, he snatched up the branch and held it with both hands at a slant across his chest, ready to strike if he needed to.

  Lorenzo held up his hands, palms out, and laughed. “Take it easy, Malatesta,” he said. “We’re not looking for trouble.”

  Alessandro stood beside him, smiling but not saying anything.

  “Then why are you here?” Giovanni asked, making an effort not to allow his voice to tremble. His hands clutched the branch so hard it felt like he was going to snap it, even though it was thick enough that that wasn’t possible.

  “We’re tired of the bad blood between you and us. We want to call a truce. And just to show you that we mean it, we brought you a present.”

  Giovanni frowned. Neither of them held anything—not that he believed for one second the Capizzi brothers would be sincere about giving him a present.