The Princess Bride

by Rebecca Winters

  Had there been other women before Donata, and she’d happened to be the unlucky one who’d gone off the bridge with him?

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker. Maybe I misunderstood about him not being married.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’m quite sure you didn’t. When did he join this club?”

  “About a year ago.”

  A whole year?

  Struggling to remain composed, she pulled the wallet from her purse. Inside was a little photo holder. She showed him the one of Jim.

  The other man stared at it, then nodded. “Just a sec and I’ll get what he left here.”

  Half a minute later he came out of his office with an unfamiliar looking silver laptop. The power cord had been taped to it.

  He tore the attached slip in half. “Sign here.”

  Ally complied, trying her best not to tremble.

  “Thank you for the call, Troy. I’m anxious to keep anything that belonged to my husband.”

  “Of course. I’m glad you came when you did, otherwise we’d have sold it. I really am sorry about your husband.”

  “So am I,” she muttered in a dull voice.

  She’d known nothing about the purchase of this laptop. Jim’s company had supplied him with the one he’d always used to do business.

  The only reason for this computer to exist meant he’d had something to hide.

  She would have to take it to Europe with her. She didn’t have time to go back home. After she returned to the States, she’d look inside. If she discovered painful secrets, hopefully by then she’d be better able to handle them.

  After going out to the cab, she packed the laptop in her suitcase then told the driver to step on it.

  As she sat back in the seat, she shuddered to realize that her husband had been working out in a gym for eight months, and she’d had no knowledge of his activities. He must have stopped by either coming or going to Switzerland on business.

  It was one thing to recognize that the two of them had drifted apart, but quite another to realize he’d been living a separate and secret life. How humiliating to be confronted by the truth in front of Troy, a total stranger to her.

  Oh, Jim. What happened to the man I married? Did I ever really know you?

  Ally was beginning to wonder…

  With the aid of the staff, Gino helped his grieving Sofia and her father into the limo outside the local parish church. They’d just buried Donata in the adjacent cemetery. It had all been carried out in secret while word of her death had finally been announced by the media.

  One day when the furor had died down, he would have her remains removed and buried on the grounds of the Montefalco estate in the family plot.

  “I’ll join you at the farm in a few minutes, sweetheart.”

  Sofia’s face was ravaged by fresh tears. “Don’t take too long.”

  “I promise. I just want to say goodbye to a few people and thank the priest.”

  She nodded before the farmhouse caretaker Paolo drove the car away.

  Vastly relieved this part was over, he turned swiftly to Carlo whom he’d asked to wait until they could talk in private.

  “The onslaught has started in earnest, Carlo.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “One of the security guards at the palazzo just left a message that a woman claiming to be Mrs. James Parker tried to get in to see Marcello a few minutes ago. It’s another ploy on the part of the paparazzi to ruin my family.”

  The other man pursed his lips. “I must say I’m surprised they’d be audacious enough to impersonate the wife of the deceased.”

  Gino grimaced. “Nothing surprises me anymore. She came in a taxi. As a precaution, the guard wrote down the license plate number.”

  Carlo’s brows lifted. “Want me to track her down and have her vetted?”

  Gino was way ahead of him.

  “If you could locate her, I’d like to do the interrogating for a change.”

  “What’s your plan?”

  “How long could she be held at the jail?”

  “Only twelve hours. If you can’t make the charges stick, then we’d have to release her.”

  Gino’s eyes glittered. “Don’t worry about that. She’s going to wish she’d never ventured into my territory.”

  Carlo pulled out his pocket notepad. “Give me the plate number. I’ll alert the desk sergeant at the jail to cooperate with you.”

  “As usual, I’m indebted to you.”

  “Our families have been close for years. I’m not about to see you and Sofia destroyed.”

  Those words meant more to Gino than his friend would ever know.

  “Grazie, Carlo.”

  There was a jarring knock on the bedroom door.

  “Signora Parker?”

  Ally had only been in bed an hour and groaned in disbelief. Her long connecting flights from Oregon to Switzerland, then Rome, had been bad enough. But it was the horrendous day she’d spent on a hot, overcrowded train to reach the hilltop town of Montefalco that had done her in.

  To compound her troubles, every hotel in the town had been booked months in advance for some festival. If her taxi driver hadn’t taken pity on her and brought her to his sister’s house to sleep, she would have been forced to return to Rome for the night. Perish the thought!

  The rapping grew louder.

  “Signora!”

  Ally couldn’t work out what was happening.

  “Just a moment!”

  She sat up, unconsciously running a hand through her short, blond curls. They made her look younger than her twenty-eight years.

  Grabbing her robe lying across the end of the bed, she slipped it on, then hurried over to the door and opened it.

  The elderly woman looked tired. Ally thought she sounded out of breath.

  “Quickly! You must get dressed! A car from the Palazzo Di Montefalco has come for you.”

  Ally’s green eyes widened. “But that’s impossible!”

  Earlier in the day she’d been turned away from the palace gates by armed guards. No one knew where she’d gone after she’d gotten back in the taxi.

  “You have to be a very important person for the Duc Di Montefalco himself to send for you. Hurry! You must not keep the driver waiting,”

  “I’ll be out as soon as I can. Thank you.”

  Unless one of the guards had followed the taxi here, Ally was mystified as to how he’d known where to find her.

  But that didn’t matter now. In a few minutes she was finally going to meet with the man she’d flown thousands of miles to see. After her futile attempts to reach him by phone from Rome before boarding the train, and then the fiasco that took place earlier in front of the palace, she’d almost given up hope.

  She shut the door and reached for her suitcase. In a few minutes she’d donned fresh jeans and a green print blouse. At one-thirty in the morning she didn’t feel like dressing in the suit she’d brought.

  Once she’d put on her sneakers, she finished the little packing she had to do. Before leaving the room, she found her purse and left two hundred dollars on the dresser.

  One more look around to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind and she joined the older woman who stood in the foyer waiting.

  Ally rushed up to her. “I’m so sorry you had to be wakened at this late hour because of me. Especially after you were kind enough to take me in. I’ve left money on the dresser for you and your brother. Thank you again for everything, including the delicious meal and the chance to shower. Please tell your brother thank you, too. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

  The other woman nodded impatiently. “I’ll tell him. Now you must go!”

  She opened the door onto an ancient narrow alley. The woman’s house was one of several built at street level. Yet all Ally could see was a gleaming black sedan parked right outside the door.

  The light from the foyer illuminated the gold falcon insignia of the Montefalco crest emblazoned on the hoo
d.

  As Ally ventured over the threshold, a man dressed in black like the palace security guards stepped away from the stone wall connecting the houses.

  Since Ally was only five foot five, she was immediately aware of a tall, solidly built male with hair black as night. Something about his imposing demeanor and the almost hawkish features that distinguished him from so many other Italian male faces she’d seen today sent a little shiver of alarm through her body.

  With breathtaking economy of movement he relieved her of her purse and suitcase.

  “Give that back!” she cried. Ally tried to wrest the suitcase from his hand, but it was no use. She was no match for him. Besides, he’d already stashed everything in the trunk.

  She felt his glance mock her before he opened the rear door.

  The interior light revealed a broad shouldered man of unquestionable strength. The sun had darkened his natural olive toned skin. He was more than conventionally handsome. The words splendid and fierce came to Ally’s mind before she climbed in the back seat.

  Following that thought she wondered if she wasn’t crazy to let a total stranger whisk her away from her only place of refuge in this foreign country. She didn’t know a soul here except the taxi driver and his sister.

  Worse, she’d somehow lost her cell phone during the train ride, so she couldn’t call for help. Someone had probably pilfered it.

  The premonition that she might need a phone to the outside world was growing stronger as he climbed in behind the wheel and set the locks.

  After he turned on the engine, they shot down the empty alley to the main road. Three blocks later and Ally sensed she was in trouble.

  Instead of climbing to the top of the hill, the driver drove them through the lower streets of the town. He appeared to have a destination in mind that wasn’t anywhere near the ochre-colored ducal palace clinging to the side of the cliff.

  Rather than leave the old woman’s protection at such an unorthodox hour, Ally should have obeyed her instincts and stayed in her room until morning.

  She leaned forward in the leather seat. “This isn’t the way to the palace.” She’d said it in as steady a voice as she could muster.

  “Please take me back to that woman’s house.”

  The enigmatic guard ignored her demand and kept driving until they entered another alley behind some municipal buildings.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “All in good time, signora.” The first words out of his mouth were spoken in impeccable English with only a slight trace of accent.

  He pulled in front of a steel door with a single light shining overhead. In the next instant he’d come around to her side of the car and opened the door for her.

  “After you, signora.”

  She lifted her proud chin, refusing to budge. “Where have you brought me?”

  His heavily lashed eyes looked like smoldering black fires.

  “The Montefalco police station.”

  Police? “I don’t understand.”

  “Earlier this evening you asked to speak to the Duc Di Montefalco, did you not?”

  “Yes. Are you telling me I didn’t have the right?”

  “Let’s just say he doesn’t grant interviews.”

  “I didn’t want an interview. I’ve flown a long way to talk to him in private.”

  He shifted his weight, drawing her attention to the play of raw muscle power in his arms and chest.

  “Anyone who wants to make contact with him has to go through me.”

  That explained why she could never get anywhere on the phone or in front of the security guards.

  Ally couldn’t prevent her gaze from traveling over his distinctive masculine features. Those piercing eyes were framed by startlingly black brows. Never had she looked into such an arresting face.

  “Are you a police officer who doubles as one of his bodyguards or something?”

  A dangerous smile curled the corners of his mocking mouth. “That’s one way of describing me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A STRANGE chill rippled across Ally’s skin. “How did you know where to find me?”

  “The guards took down the license plate of your taxi. A simple phone call to the driver told me what I needed to know.”

  As easy as that.

  “I told the palace guards who I was. They didn’t even try to help me.”

  His lips twisted unpleasantly. “Any woman could claim to be Mrs. James Parker.”

  “But that’s who I am! I have my passport to prove it.”

  “Passports are a dime a dozen. I believe that’s the American expression.”

  She shook her head in exasperation. “Why are you being so hateful to me? I came to Italy expressly to meet with Mr. Montefalco for very personal reasons. You act like I’ve committed some crime.”

  “Trespassing is a crime,” he muttered just loud enough to heighten her anxiety.

  “This is impossible! I demand you call the American Embassy and let me talk to someone in charge.”

  His mouth formed a contemptuous line.

  “No one there will be available before morning.”

  “In America you’re innocent until proven guilty!” she flung at him, starting to feel desperate.

  “Then you should have stayed there, or wherever you really came from, signora,” he retorted in a voice of ice.

  Trapped and painfully tired, Ally made the decision not to fight him. He was too formidable an adversary. This was all a terrible mistake, the kind you were supposed to be able to laugh about after you’d returned home from being abroad.

  Once this man went through her belongings and found out the truth of her identity, she didn’t expect an apology. However she could hope for a quick release and the chance to talk to Mr. Montefalco before too much more time passed.

  Wrapping her dignity around her like a cloak, she got out of the car and waited for him to open the door.

  He pressed a button on the wall of the building. In a minute the door swung open electronically.

  She’d never been inside a jail of any kind. In the small reception area there were two armed police officers, one of them seated at a desk.

  They nodded to her captor.

  After an exchange in Italian she couldn’t possibly understand, he left her in their charge and disappeared out the door.

  “Wait—” she called out to no avail.

  At that point she was photographed, fingerprinted and escorted down a passageway to a tiny room with a cot and a chair.

  The door closed behind her, leaving her to her own devices.

  The whole situation was so surreal, she wondered if she was hallucinating on the painkiller she’d taken before going to bed. It had been a preventive measure to ward off another sick headache.

  Suddenly she heard the click of the electronic lock and the door opened. She swung around in time to see the driver who’d abducted her step inside. The door shut behind him, enclosing her in this tiny closet of a holding cell with a man who could overpower her before she took her next breath. He’d brought her purse with him.

  “During your interrogation you have your choice of the chair or the bed, signora.”

  She was feeling pretty hysterical about now.

  “I’d rather stand.”

  “So be it.”

  He opened her purse. After examining the contents including her wallet and bottle of medication, he pulled out her passport.

  She watched him study the picture that had been taken three years earlier. At that point in time she’d been a radiant fiancée with long blond hair and sparkling green eyes, anticipating a skiing honeymoon in the French Alps with Jim.

  Ally could no longer relate to that person.

  The stranger’s enigmatic gaze flicked to her face and hair. He scrutinized her as if trying and failing to find the woman in the photo.

  He put the passport in his pocket, then tossed her purse with its contents on the cot next to the pathetic looking lump that was sup
posed to be a pillow.

  Only now did she realize her suitcase was still in his car.

  “I’d like my luggage. There are things I need,” she explained. “I have to have it, you know? Like clean clothes?”

  “First things first, signora. Until I get the answers I’m looking for, we’ll be at this all night. Since you already appear unsteady on your feet—no doubt from fear that you’ve been caught in the act—I suggest you sit down before you pass out.”

  “In the act of what?” Ally questioned, totally shocked by his assumption she’d done something wrong.

  “We both know you’re one of the unscrupulous paparazzi, willing to do anything for an exclusive. But I’m warning you now. After trying to impersonate someone else, you’re facing a prison sentence unless you start talking.”

  “I am Mrs. James Parker.”

  “Just tell me the name of the tabloid that sent you on this story.”

  Heat swept through her body into her face. “You’re crazy!” she blurted in exasperation. “My name is Allyson Cummings Parker. I’m an American citizen from Portland, Oregon. I only arrived in Rome from Switzerland this afternoon, or—or yesterday afternoon. I’m all mixed up now about the time. But I’m the widow of James Parker. He was a ski clothes salesman who worked for an American manufacturing company called Slippery Slopes of Portland. He died in a car accident outside St. Moritz, Switzerland, with Mr. Montefalco’s wife four months ago!”

  “Of course you are,” he said in a sarcastic aside that made her hackles rise.

  Her breathing grew shallow.

  “Since you tracked me down through the taxi driver, he’ll tell you he picked me up at the train station, and had to do all the translating while I tried to find a room because I don’t speak Italian.”

  Her captor nodded. “He admitted you put on a convincing performance. That is…until you gave yourself away by asking him to drive you to the palazzo. That was your fatal mistake.”

  Her hands curled into fists. “How else was I supposed to talk to Mr. Montefalco? He doesn’t list his phone number. When I reached Rome, I was on the phone with an Italian operator for half an hour trying to get a number for him.”

  “He doesn’t talk to strangers. If you were an innocent tourist who didn’t have a place to spend the night, you would have been much more concerned about that than brazenly attempting to ramrod your way into the ducal palace that has always been off limits to the public.”