Chapter Fourteen Guinevere
Chapter Fourteen
Guinevere
Raffa did not let me join him for his meeting with the Albanian Mafia.
“If you were my partner,” he said with an easy shrug, “it would be different. I would introduce you to the Albanians so they knew who reigned with me. As it is, it is better for you to remain unseen. We do not need more criminals with a memory of your name and face than are necessary.”
It irritated me, but the only person I could be annoyed with was myself.
I wanted to be there beside him, both because I wanted to support Raffa and because I was rabidly curious about the inner workings of his business.
With every subject I learned about, there were that many more questions to ask.
I turned the idea of the Camorra business structure over and over in my brain like a Rubik’s Cube, studying its bizarre and wonderful complexities.
I thought that, if given the chance, I might have a lot to offer such an outfit.
I wondered if Raffa knew what he was doing in keeping me away, stoking the fires of curiosity and hidden desire until they burned under my skin.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I whispered to myself as I banged my head back against the seat.
“Mi dica, signorina?” Philippe asked from the front seat.
“I need to go for a walk,” I said, suddenly desperate to get out of the car. “Can we?”
My bodyguard/driver peered at me in the rearview mirror, obviously weighing my desires against whether or not his boss would crucify him for taking me away somewhere.
“I can text him to let him know where I’ve gone,” I suggested. “He might not see it right away, but it will mean he won’t worry. Please, Philippe, I don’t know when I’ll be back in Florence.”
He sighed, rubbing a hand over his buzzed head. “I see why the boss likes you,” he muttered. “Americans are persuasive.”
I huffed a shocked breath of laughter. If I was more persuasive, I would be at the meeting with Raffa, Renzo, Carmine, and Martina.
We were close enough to the Duomo that I headed there automatically.
Even in mid-October, the city was thriving, packed with tourists looking through their telephoto lenses and locals swerving deftly through the masses.
I loved the hodgepodge of Italian, English, and other languages, the sound of a street performer singing one of Raffa’s favorite songs by Pavarotti.
Philippe followed soundlessly behind me, but his presence didn’t feel oppressive. After what had happened in Impruneta, I was grateful for a bodyguard.
When we reached the Piazza del Duomo, I ducked into the cathedral, which was free to the public, and wandered the illustrious interior.
It gave me goose bumps to think about the first stone being erected in the 1200s, to know that so many lives had touched this place and been touched by its existence in return.
It didn’t surprise me that my feet took me to Domenico di Michelino’s painting of Dante and scenes from The Divine Comedy.
It was ironic that Raffa had read to me from the volume and that we both liked to quote the famous Italian poet when the story had specifically been crafted as a warning to people not to sin and forfeit their immortal souls.
Each of the nine circles of hell had its horrors, and none of them were sugarcoated.
Did I want my liver pecked at by a bird of prey every day for the rest of time?
Did I want to be as Sisyphus was, eternally rolling a boulder up an endless hill?
Raffa liked to say he was the only god in his life and he made his own rules, and something of that philosophy must have rubbed off on me.
Because I truly believed there was no deeper level of hell than a life without Raffa Romano at my side.
Even if, in the end, when I closed my eyes to greet death, I faced eternal damnation. Better to have lived free and well than not at all.
I had to think even Dante, with all his moral wisdom and posturing, would have sinned with his beloved Beatrice if he had been given the chance.
It was easy for him to write that he “never allowed Love to govern” him when he had never once met the object of his affection.
Knowing her, being intimate with her, could he still have allowed reason to rule?
I was a reasonable person, a numbers-based, fact-oriented thinker.
Yet the love I had for Raffa and the feelings he had unearthed inside me about life and myself defied all my previous expectations and experiences.
Knowing him and loving him made it easier to know and love myself.
And the truth was, we were not so different as I thought we should be.
He was a good man born to the dark, and I was a girl born in the light who had always yearned for something peeking out at me from the shadows.
Eravamo come due gocce d’acqua.
Two drops of water. Made of the same substance.
Anime gemelle.
Identical hearts or twin souls.
“Scusi,” a female voice said from over my shoulder.
I turned, startled out of my reverie to see an elderly woman staring at me with wide eyes. She was dressed entirely in black, her silver-streaked dark hair a vivid contrast, her eyes a brown so deep they seemed almost black.
“Io ti conosco,” she murmured, reaching out with a shaking hand to clutch at my forearm. Her knuckles were like the gnarled roots of a tree, big diamonds winking from a ring on every finger, even her thumb.
I know you, she’d said in a thin, wavering voice.
“I’m sorry,” I said in Italian, placing my hand over hers. “You don’t. I am just visiting from America.”
“No,” she insisted, and suddenly her frailty fell away like a shroud, her grasp on my arm painfully tight, her thin lips twisted into a snarl. “I know you. Why do you lie?”
“I’m not lying,” I argued, gently but firmly trying to pry her hand off my arm.
Philippe moved forward from where he had taken a seat to wait for me in a pew just a handful of yards away, but I shook my head. She was just a confused old woman. I didn’t want to frighten her with big, stern-faced Philippe.
“Why do you lie?” she repeated, her voice getting louder so that we were starting to draw attention. “Why did you leave without saying goodbye?”
“Nonna.” A preteen boy who was all limbs and knobby bones appeared at her side, taking her arm and shooting me a helpless smile that was half grimace. “I am so sorry. My grandmother is not very well.”
“It’s okay,” I said as he helped remove her hand from me. “Just a misunderstanding.”
“My baby’s baby,” she whimpered, clutching at her grandson even as she kept her eyes pinned on me.
“Signora Pietra.” An older man wearing clerical robes hustled out a side door and offered his arm to the elderly woman. “Please, why don’t you come sit in my office for a moment and calm down.”
Something in the back of my mind lit up, an internal alarm I wasn’t even aware I had set up.
“Pietra?” I asked, stepping forward as they started to move away.
The preteen boy shot me a wary glance and helped hustle the group faster toward the door, then closed it behind them with a resounding thud without answering my question.
There was something working at the back of my brain, chewing over a problem I half remembered.
It had started germinating when I’d seen Beatrice’s supposed tomb.
“Pietra di Beatrice” had been inscribed on the side.
Pietra. Another word for “stone.”
Sasso, masso, roccia, Leo had said before he was cut off.
He might have finished by adding pietra.
My heart tripped into a sprint, knocking so hard against my rib cage it ached. I scurried over to Philippe, who was standing just on the other side of the pew, having watched the entire interlude with the elderly woman.
“Philippe, can you take me to the Uffizi?” I asked in Italian. “Raffa said they would be a while, and there is something I would like to see.”
He frowned at me. “They will be done soon, Guinevere. I think it best if we go back to the car and wait as Signor Romano wanted.”
“Please?” I asked, utilizing the doe eyes that Raffa liked to refer to so much. “It won’t take long.”
He sighed wearily but nodded, walking toward the exit with his hand on my arm to keep me by his side through the swarms of warm bodies.
I bit my lip to keep giddy laughter from escaping, my knee jiggling with restlessness the entire drive to the Uffizi’s Historical Archive and Research Department.
Usually, you needed an appointment and a supervisor to visit the archives, but a quick search on my phone helped me figure out a plan to get through the protocols.
As soon as we parked, I leaped from the car even though I was aware that Philippe was shadowing me.
“Buongiorno,” I greeted the woman at the front desk. “I know you typically need an appointment to visit, but I was hoping to visit my aunt Simonetta. I’m visiting from Pistoia as a surprise.”
“Oh.” The receptionist, who wore a name tag that read Paola and looked almost as ancient as some of the records she guarded, beamed at me. “That is so sweet of you, dear. Margharita, isn’t it?”
“Frederica,” I corrected, just in case she was testing me instead of showcasing some memory loss in her older age. “But my sister’s name is Morena—maybe that’s who you are thinking of.”
“Ah,” she said, even brighter than before, sinking slightly into her chair as she relaxed. “Of course—Morena is off at school in the south. Well, Simonetta should be in her office. I assume you know the way?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Well then, just sign in and I’ll let you through.”
She pushed the attendance sheet toward me and watched as I carefully wrote “Frederica Abate.”
“Thank you, Paola,” I said with a warm smile as I started to move toward the turnstiles, holding my breath for a moment before they gave way and let me through into the archives.
I turned to see Philippe frowning after me before he reluctantly took a seat in the reception area to guard me from there.
I was grateful for the space, because I had no idea what I would find if my hunch was right, and I wanted to be able to process it in peace.