Chapter 8 - The Shadow of the Past
The peace lasted four months.
In July, the heat came down from the mountains like a hot iron, turning the lake into a sheet of silver glass that burned the eyes by noon.
Ana was in her eighth month now. She spent her days in the shade of the fig tree behind the kitchen, her feet swollen, her body heavy with the slow, rhythmic movement of the child inside her.
Nico had left for Milan three days earlier to finalize the sale of the Casaro shipping interests in Genoa—the last link to the old business that he was systematically dismantling, piece by piece, like an old ship being broken up for scrap in a dry dock.
It was two in the afternoon when the car came up the mountain path.
It wasn't Nico's dark Mercedes. It was an old Alfa Romeo, grey with road dust, its exhaust sputtering in the thin mountain air.
Julian came out of the kitchen, a heavy iron poker from the fireplace held low behind his thigh.
The car stopped beside the stone wall.
A man got out. He was old—sixty at least—with short grey hair that stood up like wire bristles and a face that looked as if it had been carved out of dry olive wood with a blunt knife. He was wearing a dark wool suit despite the heat, his tie pulled loose at the collar.
His name was Donato.
He had been her father's underboss in Naples before the money disappeared. He was the man who had given her father the passport that had turned him into Arthur Vance.
He didn't look at Julian. He didn't look at the house.
He walked straight to the terrace where Ana sat under the fig tree, stopped five feet away, and took off his grey felt hat.
"Elena," he said. His voice was like two millstones grinding together without grain between them.
"Donato," she said softly.
"Your father owed me three hundred thousand dollars," the old man said. He didn't sound angry; he sounded tired, like an old bill collector who had come to the end of a very long ledger. "Not the Bari money. His own money. The money he promised me for keeping the police out of the harbor the night he put you on the boat."
Julian stepped onto the terrace, the iron poker raised six inches from his hip. "Get off this property, old man."
Donato didn't even turn his head. "I have two men at the bottom of the path with rifles, young man. If I don't walk back down in twenty minutes, they're going to put three holes in that pretty boat your brother keeps at the dock, and then they're going to come up here and burn this house down to the cellar."
Ana looked at Donato's eyes.
There was no hatred in them. That was the terrible thing about men like Donato: they didn't kill out of anger or revenge or pride. They killed because an account was open, and an open account was a weakness that invited other men to come and take what was left.
"The money is gone, Donato," she said. "It went back to Bari."
"I know," Donato said. "I read the papers. Nico Casaro thinks he's a saint now because he gave six million dollars to some widows in Puglia. But saints don't pay debts, Elena. Men pay debts."
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an old, yellowed piece of paper.
It was a promissory note, written in her father's neat, copperplate handwriting, dated October 14, 1999.
I owe Donato Rossi three hundred thousand dollars, to be paid upon the recovery of the Naples assets.
"He signed it in blood," Donato said, holding the paper out toward her. "Not because he was dramatic, but because we didn't have an pen that worked in the back of the truck."
Ana looked at the red smear beside her father's name—faded now to a dull brown that looked like rust on an old nail.
"I don't have three hundred thousand dollars," she said.
"Nico has it," Donato said. "He sold the dock concessions in Genoa on Tuesday for eight million Swiss francs. I know the buyer. He's my nephew."
May you like
He stepped closer, his shadow falling across her lap, blocking out the bright glare of the lake.
"Give me the paper for the Genoa account, Elena," Donato whispered. "And I'll go back to Naples and die in my own bed, and you can stay here and raise your baby in the mountains like a real lady."
