Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ian stood on the banks of the Arno River and evaluated the spires of the church of Santa Maria della Spina. He ruminated over the sheer number of churches where he ended up doing the devil’s work.
“Quite a spot you’ve chosen,” Sunderland murmured from beside him. “They remade this entire building a few years ago. River flooding was compromising it, so the city of Pisa dismantled the thing. Put it back together in a higher spot.”
“It brings a certain poetry to what we’re doing.” Ian’s lips curved.
“I doubt anyone will appreciate it.”
“They’re all assembled?”
“Including the men of the cloth. Let’s hope they don’t shoot first and ask questions later.”
“They won’t.” The scheme was Diana’s idea, and Ian had absolute faith in it.
He disliked executing her plan without her, but she was still recovering from the fever. The neanderthal in him was relieved; he never wanted her to breathe the same air as Costa or Titus ever again.
When he and Sunderland entered the church vestibule, two priests approached them with a woven basket and gestured for their guns. They graciously placed them inside, per the terms all parties had agreed to, and proceeded into the church.
Titus and Costa stood in front of the altar, flanking the bishop of Pisa.
“Dragging me to a church on the arse end of nowhere won’t stop me from killing you,” Costa greeted them.
“True,” Ian conceded. His eyes flicked to the bishop’s paling face. “But murdering me won’t help you win the emeralds.”
“You’re here representing the Tarka?” Titus asked in a calmer voice.
“In this matter only.” The Tarka capo was halfway back to Malta and had gladly accepted a generous incentive to agree to their plan. He’d confessed to Ian they were looking into new lines of business, which Ian hoped meant severing their ties to the trafficking trade.
“How do we know you have the necklace?” Costa asked.
Ian flicked the gems from his hand with a smooth motion. He supplied a jeweler’s loupe in his other hand and offered it first to Titus, then to Costa.
“We cannot play here.” Costa gestured wildly to their surroundings.
The bishop confirmed it with a stern nod.
“I’m not here to play, I’m here to negotiate,” Ian said.
Titus barked a laugh. “That’s not how this works.”
“Why?”
Costa grumbled beneath his breath about Ian’s stupidity. Titus expounded that Ian possessed bigger coglioni than a bull, before the bishop chided them all for their language.
“Signori, let me make things crystal clear,” Ian said. “The rules of Il Gioco pass down from famiglia to famiglia. There are no contracts. No binding regulation.”
“It’s tradition,” Titus declared. “That is how we do business.”
“Yes. You make the rules,” Ian said. “The game has already changed a great deal in its history. There’s nothing that stipulates we must enforce the current rules.”
“Idiota!” Costa jeered. “It’s an insult. If people bend and break rules, they have no authority. We have no authority.”
Ian nodded slowly, as if Costa had convinced him that change was impossible.
Instead of inevitable.
“You want to play for more than the emeralds, and the assets staked to them,” Ian said.
“We play to win,” Titus confirmed.
“I have a proposition, then.” Ian walked to a small linen-covered table and handed the crystal decanters for wine and water to the bishop before spreading the emerald necklace across the table. “No one truly knows what this necklace looks like. It’s never been painted or photographed.”
“I recognized it,” Costa retorted. “Anyone who was at the last Il Gioco would.”
Titus snorted. “You were too drunk to remember your own name. I was sitting directly behind the players and barely got a glimpse.”
Ian withdrew another coil of glittering jewels from his pocket and placed it above the emerald necklace. “Then it would be difficult to determine which one of these was the Il Gioco prize.”
He handed the loupe to Titus and Costa so they could examine it.
Both men required a second look. And a third.
Eventually, Titus said, “This new necklace. The stones are twice the size.”
“It belonged to the same Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal. Which makes it worth…” Ian turned to Sunderland. “Five times as much as the other necklace?”
“Seven,” the duke corrected him.
The sudden quiet that fell over the church made Ian purse his lips together to prevent himself from smiling.
Costa tossed a hand. “Even if the gems are worth more, it is not an equal swap. The first necklace is tied to bounty beyond the gems.”
“True.” Ian turned to Sunderland, who handed him a small ledger. “This is the list of assets my father recorded, the year he won Il Gioco. The Tarka still possess most of them and will transfer them to the new necklace.”
He placed a scrap of paper on top of the ledger. “This is what remains of my father’s stake in the docks and its current market worth.”
On top of that, Ian placed a smaller card. “This is a bank account with that same amount of money. It will also transfer with the new necklace.”
Titus’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a lot of capital to raise quickly. You must have mortgaged everything.”
Without Diana’s investment, Ian would have. “The money is there. The bishop has verified it.”
“Mae de deus,” Costa spat. “None of this matters. The emeralds cannot be bought or sold.”
“But they can be traded,” Ian said. “No one needs to know.”
“Everyone is expecting us to play Il Gioco—”
“So we play,” Titus interrupted. “With the new necklace. And the money.”
The Manu Rosso capo paused. “And without Holt.”
Titus turned back to Costa. “He’s impossible to beat without cheating. Less trouble for all of us if he surrenders his claim.”
Costa reached for the bank slip. His lip curled as he raised his eyes to meet Ian’s. “I never want you near my business or my family ever again.”
“Likewise,” Ian agreed.
The rain clouds hovering over the Tyrrhenian Sea were so beautiful, it made Diana wish she knew how to paint.
Through the view of the French doors in San Genaro's dining room, she detected whitecaps on the waves. The storm would arrive within the hour. She tried not to interpret it as an omen of the day to come.
“There you are.”
Ian padded into the room in his stocking feet. He’d bathed and dressed but had foregone a necktie. A splash of his ink peeked through his open collar.
He’d returned from the showdown with Costa and Titus in the middle of the night, and after kissing Diana and telling her the plot she’d hatched had succeeded, he’d collapsed onto the bed in a fatigued stupor. And slept for the better part of the day.
Diana bid him a good afternoon. The brush of his lips silenced her for several moments while their mouths and tongues became reacquainted. He kissed her as if they’d been apart for years, instead of days.
“You look so much better,” he murmured.
“I am better. And your color is much improved.”
“Who knew sleep could be so restorative.”
She laughed and gave him a playful shove. “It’s almost time for luncheon, but I’ll ring for coffee and coronetto.”
“No need, I’ve already had both.” He lifted her up from the chair, sat down in it and pulled her into his lap. “I thought I might convince you to return to bed.”
“Maybe later.”
He stroked a hand down her back. “What has your clever brain been fixating on that’s made your shoulders so tight?” His hand brushed against her forehead. “Are you feeling poorly?”
Truthfully, her stomach was in knots. “I have something I need to tell you. And I’m worried it’s going to upset you. It will upset you, and I hate it.”
To her immense horror, tears pricked her eyes.
“Oh, love.” He dabbed them away with his handkerchief. “It can’t be that horrible.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She gave a shaky laugh. “All I do these days is wobble.”
“You’re making up for all those years of perfect composure.” His hand massaged her neck, and at the utter of her soft moan, he whispered in her ear, “I prefer you undone.”
“Remember precisely how much, with what I’m about to tell you.”
He nipped her earlobe. “Tesora mia, I came dangerously close to losing you. I’m still not convinced you’re out of the woods yet, and that terrifies me more than any secret you could be keeping.”
She drew a breath. “Do you like the villa?”
He blinked at the abrupt turn in the conversation. “This is the first I’ve seen of it, beyond our suite.”
“I want to give you a tour.”
He stroked a finger down her cheek. “I’d rather stay here.”
“Stop indulging me.”
“Actually, I’m indulging myself right now.”
“Ask me why.”
He sighed. “Why do you want me to tour the villa?”
“Because it’s yours,” she whispered. “You own San Genaro, Ian.”
His mouth slackened, and his eyes quickly darted away from her to study the breathtaking view of the ocean and the damask curtains framing the French doors. Then his stare slowly moved to the polished walnut table, and the blue and white porcelain bowl topped with apples.
For an impossibly long moment, Diana waited, holding on for dear life to all of her hopes and dreams.
Eventually, his gaze returned to hers, and in an even voice, he demanded, “Tell me.”
“Your parents spent time here. I didn’t know until we arrived, and I recognized that.” She gestured to a candlestick table bearing a silver vase filled with fresh flowers.
Ian brushed his hand over his mouth. “That’s the view from my mother’s painting.” The single piece of art that hung in his London home.
Diana nodded. “When your father was dying, he wanted to buy San Genaro for you. But he didn’t have the funds. And he couldn’t break the trust that was set up to convey the business to Jared.”
“I know.”
“Yes, of course.” She swallowed. “Your father had a small sum of money he’d put aside. Barely a third of what the owner wanted for San Genaro. He gave the money to my father and asked him to invest it for you. So that it would grow to a sum large enough for you to buy the house.”
“And neither of you thought to tell me I had an inheritance?” His voice rose in justifiable outrage.
“I threatened to when I found out.” It was the worst row she’d ever had with her father.
They’d gone weeks without speaking. “Papa said that there were explicit legal instructions created to penalize you from withdrawing the sum from the investment before maturity. It could have made the money your father left you worthless.”
She’d consulted three solicitors and none of them could find a way out of it.
“After Father died, I asked Amelia for help, and she made the money grow faster. When there was finally enough for San Genaro’s owner to consider an offer, it took months to settle things. The sale only went through the day I left London.”
Ian gave a strangled laugh. “What would have happened if I had stayed in London?”
“If you hadn’t followed me on this wild chase, I left instructions to deliver the deed to you. But you did follow me. And I kept saying to myself that I’d tell you once I knew you were safe from my mother. And, well, everyone else.”
She blew out a breath. “And then, for a short while, I deliberately didn’t tell you. Because I thought if you knew, you would leave. And that was wrong of me.”
“It was,” he said softly. “I had a right to know.”
“You did,” she agreed, with as much strength in her voice as she could muster. “Of all the secrets I’ve had to keep, this was the second worst one.”
“The first being your mother.”
“No, Ian. There was another reason my father did all of those things for yours," she countered gently.
"Eight years ago, I sat by your father’s bedside.
And he read me that letter my mother had sent to manipulate all of us.
But the charade that my father insisted we play out for my protection, and the ploy my mother made me seize on for her own machinations…
it was all made under the false presumption that everyone believed. Including you.”
She cupped his face between her hands and felt the pulse in his neck beat out a tattoo that marched in time with her own thumping heartbeat. “The promise was never about Jared. It was always about you.”
He stared at her with such heartbreaking longing, she was sure he’d misunderstood her.
“Did you hear me?” Her voice escalated in mild panic as she searched his face.
“The pledge I made was to marry you, Ian. I made that vow willingly. Not because you needed looking after, although you do. Your father wanted me to make that promise because he saw that we were besotted with each other before either of us could admit it. He thought that together, we would be unstoppable.”
Ian’s eyes glistened. “He was right.”
Relief and warmth and a joy unequal to anything Diana had ever known radiated through her. “You believe me?”
“God, yes.”
His mouth descended on hers, and her body folded into his, like a key fitting into a lock.
"Together, we are unstoppable," he echoed.