The Honest Affair (Rose Gold Book 3)

by Nicole French

  The girls were quiet for a long time. Seconds passed. Then minutes. Matthew shuffled next to me, rubbing his fingers together, and vaguely, I wondered if nervous anticipation was making him want a cigarette again. I certainly felt like it might help.

  Finally, Lucrezia spoke. “It is a lot,” she agreed. “I think my sister and I, we need to talk about it. Perhaps…maybe we could take your phone number?”

  “Would you let me take yours too?” I asked.

  With a quick glance at Rosina, Lucrezia nodded. “Yes. Okay.”

  Relief washed over me as the girl took out her phone and we traded contact information. It wasn’t much. But it was also better, maybe, than I had anticipated.

  Afterward, the girls walked Matthew and me both outside. They were clearly eager for us to leave—ready to discuss the bombshell I’d just dropped in their laps, beyond the prying eyes and ears of strangers. But I felt, well, if not good, then at least somewhat hopeful.

  “It’s just a thought,” I said as I stood at the open passenger door, peering back at the farm. “But if you need some help with the taxes, perhaps I can be of service. You wouldn’t have to sell. Not immediately, anyway.”

  “Oh, no,” Lucrezia began. “We could not accept—”

  “Oh, please,” I pushed. “It’s the least I can do, and it would be no trouble. You can have some time to decide what you really want to do with the place. And perhaps if I bring Olivia to Florence—if you’re willing, of course—you could meet her here. I think she would like it, meeting her sisters on the farm your shared family has owned for so long.”

  The girls glanced at each other. Rosina didn’t bother to hide her pleading eyes.

  Lucrezia turned back, looking defeated, but also a bit relieved. “Okay. We would appreciate that. Very much.”

  I smiled. “I’ll be in touch.”

  The girls waved goodbye, and Matthew and I got into the car.

  “You’re going to buy that villa for them, aren’t you?” he asked as the girls went back inside.

  “I don’t need to buy it for them,” I replied. “It’s already theirs. But if they are willing, I might be interested in going into the olive oil production business. Help them replant, if they like, or rehabilitate the land so it’s at least sustainable.”

  Matthew glanced back at the farm. Something remarkably close to jealousy sparked in his eyes. “So you want to keep coming back here, don’t you?”

  I softened, then slowly reached out and turned his chin back so he was looking at me again. Vulnerability shone through those deep green eyes. I wanted to kiss it all away.

  “I don’t want the farm for me,” I said. “My time here was fleeting. Beautiful for a girl of twenty, but I don’t need those memories anymore. I have new ones. Much better ones now.”

  The jealousy flickered, but it was a flame that was going out.

  “I want it for Olivia,” I said softly. “So that when she is ready, she will have a place to see her family’s history. To meet her sisters, if they want. To know her father in the only way she can. She’ll need that, don’t you think?”

  Matthew was quiet for a moment. Then he lifted my hand and pressed his lips to my knuckles.

  “You are a wonderful mother, Nina,” he said. “It’s one of the many reasons I love you.”

  The simple words lifted my heart. They truly made me fly.

  Once again delightfully uncaring of who might be watching, I placed my hands on either side of his beautiful face and pulled him in for a kiss—delicate at first, but one that eventually spoke of the longing that both of us had for closeness. Matthew’s tongue twisted around mine, and I opened to the kiss, suddenly needing to be closer than I had ever been before.

  With no small effort, I broke the kiss, pecked one more on the tip of his slightly crooked nose, and smiled.

  “I love you too,” I whispered. “Now, please. Take me away from my past. From here on, I only want my future.”

  Matthew grinned and started the car. “With pleasure, baby.”

  But before we could leave, there was a quick rap on my window. I jumped, and we turned back to find Rosina standing there, gesturing for me to roll it down.

  “Hello,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

  She looked unsure, harried, as if she had run out without telling Lucrezia.

  “There is something more…I think you should know,” she said. “Lucrezia doesn’t want me to say, but she is wrong.”

  I frowned. “What is it? You can tell me.”

  “My father. Do you know how he died?”

  A sharp ripple of something etched up my spine. “I—it was heart failure, wasn’t it?”

  Rosina nodded. “That is what the doctors said. I was only eleven, so I only knew from my mother. But when I got older…well, I am in medical school now. I looked at the autopsy report.” She sighed. “And there were significant amounts of poison in his system. Not enough to be an overdose immediately, but later, to mimic a heart failure. No one would have known if my mother had not insisted on the autopsy.”

  I pressed a hand to my chest. “I hadn’t known that. My God.”

  “My mother, she told me later. There was an investigation. The university said a man visited him in his office. But they never found him. And…there was an alibi for him, I think.”

  Beside me, tension radiated off Matthew’s entire body. I could hardly breathe.

  “What happened with it?” Matthew asked. “Is the investigation closed?”

  The girl shrugged. “Unsolved, they said. My mother said we should move on, that Babbo was maybe just an addict. Maybe she thought one of you gave him this drug. But I never stopped thinking about it. I was young…but I don’t think my father was an addict. I wondered if maybe you knew.”

  She looked directly at me, her dark gaze unwavering. The question was clear: Had I known about her father’s drug problem? Was I, the impetuous student with apparently no moral compass, perhaps responsible for it?

  I cleared my throat. “I—no, Rosina. I never knew Giuseppe to do any sort of illegal substance.”

  She gave me a hard stare for a moment more, then finally stood up, seemingly satisfied.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s all I know.” Then she glanced over the car, noticing for the first time its expensive make. It’s apparent wealth. “Goodbye, Nina.”

  I raised a hand in farewell, startled at the sound of my name issuing from her mouth. Maybe because she looked so much like her father. It felt like Giuseppe himself was the one wishing me farewell.

  “Goodbye, Rosina,” I said. “And good luck with the farm.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Matthew

  Nina was quiet for the entire drive back to Florence. This time, I didn’t press her to talk, sensing she needed a minute to process. It’s not every day you introduce yourself to the daughters of your married former lover. Most people would rather jump off a moving train.

  I was proud of her. I was. She looked her mistakes in the eye and took it on the chin like a champ. But I couldn’t lie to myself either. Seeing that farm and the way Nina’s gaze traced lovingly over its worn interior and admittedly picturesque grounds, sick trees and all? Listening to her all but offer to buy the damn place, to keep that part of her life forever? It was hard. More than hard.

  I had my own relationship with this country. With Naples, and parts of Rome, where my grandmother was from, and Sicily, where I was stationed. Before today, I’d dreamed countless times of visiting the land of my ancestors with the woman I loved, sharing in its culture and history with her, making the kinds of bonds that last a lifetime, all swimming in what Italians called la dolce vita: the sweet life.

  But today made me want to get the hell out of Italy. Take Nina someplace else. But not back to New York either. Somewhere we could start fresh. Where we could maybe lose the ghosts of our pasts and get a real chance at a future together.

  Jobs. Family. Secrets. None of that seemed to ma
tter to me anymore. All I wanted was freedom. For her. For me. For us, together.

  But here she wanted to anchor herself to those ghosts for Olivia’s sake.

  Or maybe her own?

  I shook off the idea. It was jealousy, plain and simple. Nothing more.

  Still. She was the one who brought up secrets on the way to the farm and asked for mine without offering any of hers. And while I still believed everyone had rights to their own, it did make me wonder what she might be hiding. I wanted to believe the time for secrets between Nina and me had passed, but I wasn’t a fool. I’d hurt her. She had plenty of reason to hold things back.

  So it wasn’t a huge surprise when we reached the pensione, and Nina dawdled a minute outside the two rooms we had paid for—one of them still completely unused. Then she asked quietly if she could have some time to herself.

  I tipped my head. “You sure, doll? You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want.”

  Nina nodded. “I’m sure.”

  She fingered the edges of my jacket for a moment like she was considering pulling me close. But then she released them.

  Part of me wanted to fight it. Wanted to wrap my arms around her and make her accept that she had a partner whether she wanted one or not. But that’s not partnership. That’s force. I’d decided back in December that I would do whatever I could to show Nina I wasn’t going anywhere. That if she needed a champion, she had me. On her terms, not just mine.

  And right now, Nina needed some space. Well, that was all right. I had some questions of my own that needed answering.

  “I’m going to walk, then,” I said as I delivered a quick kiss to her cheek. “Stretch my legs. I’ll be back in time for dinner around eight.”

  “Don’t hurry,” she answered, then slipped into the room and closed the door.

  “Mattia Zola?”

  “Sono io.” I stood from the small chair as the door to the office of Silvana Ruggeri opened.

  Ruggeri, a chief prosecutor in Florence, was an attractive, if slightly intimidating woman that reminded me a lot of the female Marines I had known in the service. Unflinching.

  “You’re very persistent,” she said as she locked her office door. “The secretary said you were waiting for the last hour and a half.” She turned and looked me over. “You look like your cousin when I knew him. Yes, I can see the resemblance.”

  I tipped my hat. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  But Ruggeri wasn’t flirting. The opposite in fact: this woman was hard as nails.

  As soon as I’d left the hotel, I’d called my cousin Marcello, a detective with the polizia di stato in Naples, about Giuseppe Bianchi’s death. If the girls were right and some kind of investigation happened, there should be a record of it. It had been a pure stroke of luck that the investigator assigned to the case still worked in Florence—and happened to be a friend of the family.

  “Zola told me you wanted to know about the Bianchi case?” she asked, referring to my cousin much the same as people did me back home—by our shared last name.

  I followed her into the main stairwell of the old building. Our footsteps echoed down the steps.

  “I know it’s a long shot, but I’m only here a few more days. I spoke with his daughters today, and they had some interesting things to say. I wondered if you could corroborate.”

  She eyed me curiously. “Zola said you’re a prosecutor in America?”

  I nodded. “I was, yeah. On leave right now. Law enforcement runs in the family, I guess.”

  “Why do you care, though? That case has been closed for years. There is no hope of solving it.”

  We exited onto the street, where a rush of people filled the sidewalk of the busy street in the San Lorenzo district, forcing us to stand a little closer than necessary.

  I paused, wondering just how much I should give away. Fuck it. Marcello had vouched for Ruggeri, and Nina’s secret was out in the open. I had nothing to lose by asking.

  “I’m here with a friend,” I said. “An American woman who had an affair with Giuseppe Bianchi a year before he died. When she went back to New York, she was pregnant, and she had the baby. She was on her way to tell Bianchi when he died.”

  Ruggeri’s face remained stoic, but her eyes flashed with interest. Yeah, she saw the potential connection there as much as I did.

  “And you think she might have something to do with Bianchi’s death?” she asked finally.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t planning on giving anything away myself. “Seems a little strange, don’t you think?” I held up my hands. “I just have a couple of questions. I don’t want to stir up trouble.”

  Her sharp black gaze raked over me, as intense and critical as any inspection I’d ever endured in boot camp. I half expected her to fine me for the scuff on one of my shoes.

  But instead, she checked her watch.

  “I have an hour for a drink. There’s a cafe around the corner. I’ll tell you what I can.”

  I tipped my hat again. “I’ll take whatever you have to offer. And drinks are on me.”

  The story Ruggeri told me over a couple of aperitivi was at first similar to other unsolved homicides I’d encountered back home. Rosina’s story was true: after the autopsy, foul play was suspected due to traces of toxins found in Bianchi’s system.

  “We spoke to his wife, his friends, many others. Searched his office too. There was no sign of any drug use. And his behavior was not consistent with an addict,” Ruggeri said before taking a sip of a Negroni. “Not that it mattered, since what was found turned out not to be any kind of narcotic. So I don’t know why the girl thought that. Maybe her mother gave her another story.”

  “Then what was it?”

  Ruggeri studied me for a moment. “Did you say that your friend, she tried to contact Bianchi just before his death?”

  Okay, evasion. She was trying to see if I was the real deal. Well, I had nothing to hide.

  I nodded. “She wrote him a letter, but her family intercepted the reply. As far as I know, Bianchi never knew about the baby.”

  Ruggeri twisted her mouth around. “I see. Hmm.”

  “So, any suspects, then?” I prodded gently.

  Ruggeri examined me again, then relaxed, seeming to decide I was either harmless or maybe helpful. “One, in fact. There was a man who was checked into Bianchi’s office building by security approximately four hours before he died. Not an Italian. But too old to be a student.”

  That didn’t necessarily mean anything. There were loads of expats and tourists in Florence at any given moment.

  “His name wasn’t Calvin Gardner, was it?” I asked, just on a hunch.

  “No, it wasn’t American.”

  I slumped as Ruggeri took another drink.

  “It was Hungarian,” she finished.

  I sat up straight. “Any chance you remember what it was?”

  Ruggeri gave me a dry look that said “Are you kidding?” more clearly than if she had spoken the words. “It was ten years ago, Mr. Zola.” But even so, she screwed up her brows in thought. “Although maybe…” She snapped her fingers again and again, as if it would conjure the name by magic.

  A bolt of steel scampered up my spine. I edged forward slightly in my seat.

  “I only remember because the name, it was catchy. Something like Carol…”

  “Károly Kertész?” I supplied.

  She snapped loudly and pointed at me. “Yes! That’s it.” Then she frowned. “How did you know?”

  I held up my glass, almost as in salute. “I’ll tell you when you’re finished. Please go on.”

  “Well,” she said as she clinked her wedding ring against her glass. Ruggeri was a fidgeter. It was her only tell. “In the end, we had two problems: the first was that it took several days for the labs to confirm that the cause of death wasn’t simply heart failure, but a rare nerve agent that is difficult to detect. You are familiar with Novichok?”

  I tipped my hat up in surprise. “The chemical age
nt the Soviets used against their spies in England last year?”

  Ruggeri nodded in satisfaction. “Yes, that’s it. Very powerful. A delayed release, though if it was strong enough to kill Bianchi within an hour, we still don’t know how he was exposed. Perhaps his espresso, but we think if he drank it concentrated like that, he would not have made it home.” “Maybe he didn’t drink it until he was home,” I said. “Maybe it was slipped in a water bottle or something. Or another product he had with him. There was the British agent that was killed when it was put into a perfume bottle. It killed someone else too who handled it.”

  Ruggeri’s eyes flashed. “Yes, there was. Interesting.”

  I set my empty glass back on the table. “Very.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it won’t do us any good now. The other problem was that Kertész left the country immediately after. Interpol put us in contact with the police in Budapest, but because of the Novichok agent, it ended up with Hungarian intelligence—I don’t know how to say their name, so I won’t. But that, of course, got AISE involved too. Everyone was convinced the Russians were behind it. That maybe Bianchi was one of Putin’s agents.”

  I whistled, legitimately impressed. It was a solid red herring, to the point where I wondered if Calvin had really masterminded it. Use a potent black market agent notoriously created by the Russians to kill their own compromised assets, tie the whole thing up in international affairs, and slip away undetected.

  Essentially, what started as a potential run-of-the-mill homicide ended up garnering the interests of both the Hungarian and Italian versions of the CIA—all spooks, all secretive, and all suspicious as fuck. These were people more interested in intelligence assets than solving crimes. A dead professor wasn’t going to motivate them to do shit.

  “Did any of them ever get back to you about it?” I wondered. “The intelligence wonks, I mean.”

  “No. I only asked because an AISE pig made a grab for my ass when they came to take it over. So I wasn’t going to just let him take my case, too. I followed up with the Hungarians myself.”