CHAPTER 35
"The house that was a refuge became a fortress. I crossed the gate as a wife for the first time. And the first name I heard was a dead man's."
Valentina MORETTI
The Posillipo gate was doubled.
I counted without meaning to.
Before the war, two men. After the attack, four. That morning, eight. Two at the gate, two on the ramp, two in the lower garden, two in the upper garden. And the garden, once green, once with my great-grandfather's grapevine, once with Donna Beatrice's lemon tree—empty. No gardener. No one.
Tonio drove; he didn't say a word the whole way from Positano. Madonna santa, I thought, his name still screaming inside me.
He didn't do anything. He just drives.
But I knew I was going to look at him that way for a while.
The house appeared at the bend.
White. Enormous. Shut.
Donna Beatrice was at the main door with Nonna Adelina.
I swallowed hard. The nonna hadn't gone back to Capri.
"Nonna," I said, getting out of the car, with eleven kilos of luggage in Donna Lucia's hand behind me.
"Signora Moretti."
Her black eyes swept my face, my coat, my left hand with the wedding band.
"You've lost weight."
"Sì, nonna."
She opened her left arm and pulled me in.
It was short. It was strong. It was the first time.
"Coraggio, signora."
"Sì, nonna."
Luca went past us to talk to Donna Beatrice. I turned to listen.
"Padrone," she said, low. "Pasquale."
Luca stopped.
"What?"
"Yesterday morning. In Salerno."
I went still.
Pasquale. The soldier who stayed at the grapevine gate. The one who laughed with Donna Beatrice about the lemons. The one who brought me a glass of water that afternoon of the seamstress, on the second day of my life in Posillipo.
Luca said nothing, only closed his eyes for half a second.
Then he opened them and looked at Donna Beatrice.
"His wife?"
"Told. Padrone, the brother is coming from Caserta."
"Have Lina make the black suit. I'll go."
"Sì, padrone."
I washed his shirt on the marble of the main bathroom sink.
Not the one from that day, another one. The one he'd worn to his father's study with Raffaele after lunch. There were two stains on the right cuff—not his, he'd confirmed. Dried blood. Brown.
He was on the edge of the stone tub. No shirt, the tattoos exposed.
"Whose?"
"No one you knew."
"Luca…"
"One of Salvatore's men. In Capodimonte. Yesterday."
"The shirt stays."
He stood and came up behind me, resting his chin on my shoulder, his hand on my hips.
"Bella mia."
"Sì."
"Get out of here."
"No."
"Bella mia."
"No."
He laughed quietly against my neck. It was a short laugh, held back, the way he did it.
His hand moved up my waist. I pulled him by the damp cuff—that man was going to destroy me, I thought, and I was going to let him—and he pressed me against the edge of the stone tub, both hands open on my face.
He kissed me.
Slow at first, then with more weight. His hand moved down the neckline of my dress, and my hand slipped inside his robe.
Cazzo, I thought. I've become a mafioso's wife. I'm kissing a man who still has blood under his thumbnail.
And I wanted him anyway, but he stopped.
His hand was open on my face, his forehead against mine. His breathing was fast.
"Not today."
"Luca."
"Bella mia, not today."
"Why?"
"Because tomorrow I have to kill a friend of forty years."
I went still.
I didn't ask who; I understood I would find out. I knew he'd tell me before he did it.
I kissed his mouth lightly. I rested my forehead on his chest, over the Latin tattoo.
"Va bene," I murmured.
"Brava."
He carried me to bed in his arms, slept with me held against his chest, and the white shirt stayed forgotten in the sink, with the stain almost out.