Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Giovanna
T he thunder rolled around directly above us. Growling and grumbling as its forks of lightening discharged through the black clouds above us. But I knew I preferred that to the sounds of the gunshots and violence that had recently ripped through the luxury boat. We’d been travelling in blissful ignorance of what was about to unfold around us.
Now, it seemed the storm had deliberately chosen Sicily to become its target. Because what had seemed to be a fast-moving storm when we were out at sea, had almost ground to a halt over the island we had finally managed to dock at.
As far as I understood, me, my mama and her two bodyguards were the only ones still alive. They’d taken care of everyone else.
Once again, the rain started, discharging large droplets all around us. In a matter of minutes, it had begun to soak through my clothes, to my skin. As I involuntarily shivered, I cursed my body’s reaction, not wanting to appear weak and scared in front of her. Normally, I enjoyed the cathartic release but not at that moment.
As a hand once again pushed in between my shoulder blades, I fell painfully down onto the ancient looking quay. Understanding that being on my hands and knees meant my concealed weapon may become noticeable to them, I jumped back up as fast as I could, and rubbing the graze on my hand the fall had caused, I turned back to face my mama and her henchmen.
‘Start walking,’ she instructed, raising her voice above the strength of the wind and holding a gun pointing in my direction. I moved forward without argument.
‘Are we going into Syracuse?’ I knew the cove we’d managed to moor in was slightly north of the place we’d been aiming for.
Receiving no reply, I tried another tactic.
‘Is Peter dead?’ I decided to play the gullible and pliable daughter she thought I was. I knew Peter was dead. I’d seen the minute either her or one of her bodyguards had entered the saloon and had wordlessly blown his brains out of the back of his head. I’d felt as his cerebral matter had attached itself to the hairs on my bare forearm. Then, as I had frantically brushed at the repulsive substance, I’d forced myself to swallow down the sick that had risen to the back of my throat. They’d waited, while I lay gagging on the floor from my own bile, as the captain and his crew expertly brought us in as close to shore as they dared, before shooting through the soundproof glass and killing them all.
‘Yes. Now walk.’
I placed one tentative foot in front of the other, and tried hard not to focus on the power of the sea rushing underneath the planks of rotten wood that we were walking across.
‘But he’s your husband,’ I carried on.
‘Giovanna, you have always been a disappointment to me.’ I looked ahead, surprisingly still feeling pain from her attack. ‘But I never understood you to be stupid.’
Oh, I’m not.
‘Didn’t you love him?’ It was hard trying to sound interested in the questions I was asking when I already knew the answers, but I was trying to buy myself time. Focussing once again, I concentrated hard on not putting a foot down one of the many different sized holes in front of me. Her laughter found me first, and even without turning back to face her and seeing her facial expression, I ascertained it sounded a little manic.
‘He was just another man in a long line of men who thought they knew me; thought they could control me. When only one man has ever been man enough for that.’
Even before I gave him his title, I knew I was wrong, but I managed to ask ‘Papa?’
‘No, not him… I gave him all of me, and he gave me a bastard son sired from a whore in return,’ she angrily replied.
‘Salvatore?’ Mistakenly, I looked over my shoulder at her as I spoke my eldest brother’s name. In the distance, I could see another boat. But even though I wanted to stare harder at the approaching vessel, I didn’t allow my gaze to fix on it; too scared to, in case I alerted her and the two men walking beside her.
Please let it be you, Dante, I pathetically hoped, as once again a loud rumble of thunder travelled overhead.
My mama’s arm swung fast, in reply to me daring to mention Salvatore’s name, and the butt of the gun in her hand struck just above my top teeth. My head moved backwards so fast, I was sure I would have whiplash from the force. Blood filled my mouth instantly, and my tongue ran around my teeth as I checked they were all still in place. Thankfully, they were intact.
‘Don’t speak his name to me—keep walking,’ she hissed.
‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ I lied, resisting to spit out the blood that was now collecting inside my mouth in case I upset her any further, because it wasn’t the ladylike thing to do. Instead, I allowed it to dribble from the corner of my mouth.
‘I took care of his mama, your papa’s whore.’ I could sense the vehemence in her voice.
‘You did?’ I questioned, as I placed a foot in the wrong place and feeling the wood beginning to break up, I altered my footing and tried again. ‘You took her?’ I grimaced at my question, knowing it could throw her over the precarious edge of sanity.
‘Yes, her and many others. We ran a very profitable trafficking business right under the Ferraros and the De Lucas noses.’
It was her? The crime that my papa had been killed for. The same one that Dante’s papa had been accused of. She was mentally ill; I was certain of it. But shockingly, I realised that what she’d just imparted didn’t surprise me in the slightest. Ever since I’d been a child, I had been aware that she and I weren’t in any way alike. She was hard to love, hard to please, and closed off, even to her own children. One day, years after Salvatore had arrived in our lives, Romeo, Gabriel and I, were talking about how angry and bitter she still was, which we appreciated could be her trying to cover up her hurt at my papa’s bastard son, but what we couldn’t understand was her constant need to lash out at us, her own children.
‘That’s where Gianni went wrong,’ she carried on. ‘Until then, I was devoted to him.’ I was convinced I could hear pain in her voice. ‘In my eyes, very soon after he became a pathetic excuse of a man. Not the son of a future Don. Our family needed a replacement. I needed a replacement.’
Replacement? Did she think that Ricco could fill that role?
‘But that made him easy to manipulate,’ she carried on. ‘I made sure he killed Lia Ranieri with his bare hands. And I watched him do it.’ My heart broke just a little more for my eldest brother.
‘You did?’ Even I couldn’t control the shock sounding in my voice as I discovered just how depraved my parents both were.
‘I did.’ She added a small laugh. ‘Gianni loved the drugs and alcohol I’d made certain he’d became addicted to.’
You evil bitch. He might have done the deed but sure as hell you might as well have pulled the proverbial trigger.
I lurched forward suddenly, as she shoved her hand in between my shoulder blades once again. My heart rate accelerated as I fought to stay upright. Swallowing down my pride in my bid for survival, I began to try to show her understanding.
‘I’m sorry he made you feel that way. He should have loved you better, he should have loved you more,’ I lied, and knowing we were coming closer to the shore I began to search the beach and surrounding area for someone, for anyone. In my peripheral view to the right, I saw a small group of men, possibly three or four of them, coming down a coastal path towards us. To the left, I was certain I could see at least three cars parked at the very top of the cliff surrounding the cove we’d sailed into.
Who each group were, I had no idea. Worry engulfed me and I pushed it away, knowing it had no place when all my senses needed to be honed on her, my mama. My coercive, murdering mama. Who, I now had absolutely no doubt whatsoever, would take my life, if it meant she could live.
‘Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a strong woman married to pathetic man?’ she unexpectedly asked.
I was just about to answer, when she answered her own question.
‘Of course you do… you married a Giordano.’ Again, she began to laugh manically, and I refused her an answer.
Pain began to tear through me, as my head began to thump out its displeasure at her earlier violence against me. But it wasn’t anything like the pain I was struggling to contain inside me, as I wondered if Dante and I would ever meet again. As I walked, I remembered, and I thanked God that we’d spent the last evening together. If I died, I now understood entirely what it was to love and to be loved. I remembered what it felt like to be held in his arms, the way his signature cologne enveloped me, and his touch on my skin. The way our bodies spoke wordlessly to each other, as though they knew they were meant to be together. The sky was shades of grey around us, but for those few seconds, all I could see was blue. I squeezed my eyes tight and dared to look deep into his vibrant blue eyes, the ones I’d been a little in love with since I was a small child, and I found that love returned to me.
I was loved.
You just need to survive, Giovanna. I’m coming, amore mio. I heard Dante’s voice and began to turn my head from side to side as I attempted to find him. But, of course, I didn’t find him because he wasn’t there.
I love you Dante, my husband.
‘What are you going to do with me, Mama?’ I forced myself to speak again and added her title to the question, not because she deserved it, but because I hoped it might make her remember that it was her that had given birth to me.
‘I have no idea what he intends for you.’
‘He?’ I questioned, already knowing the answer.
‘He… the only man who has ever loved and respected me.’
By chance, the sound of a phone ringing stopped our conversation. With her phone on speaker, I heard a male voice, which I recognised as Ricco.
‘Well done. You found the cove,’ he offered.
‘Thank you,’ she gushed. Sounding nothing like the woman I had lived with for twenty years. ‘Peter listened to me, just as you said he would.
‘They know.’
‘What?’
‘They know,’ he repeated the two words. ‘De Luca and Ricolleti,’ Ricco confirmed.
‘How?’ she screeched.
‘They have Lorenzo. They have our baby boy!’
Their baby boy? For a few seconds, I was stunned, then I comprehended that he was feeding her utter rubbish and that she really was that deluded. To have given birth to Lorenzo she would have been about ten years old. I understood it wasn’t impossible, but I was convinced it was far from the truth. She had given birth to Romeo ten months after she’d married my papa, and she hadn’t been seventeen.
Is this some kind of sick game of pretend Ricco has over her?
‘They can’t have him. He’s to be the next Don. He will rule over Calabria.’ Then she shrieked, ‘Move, get her to move.’ The men who had been walking calmly to either side of her found their way to both sides of me. They grabbed at my forearms and I was suddenly propelled forward towards the end of the quay. ‘We can get him back. We must be able to get him back.’
‘Is Peter with you?’
‘He’s dead. I killed him. I couldn’t have him getting in our way—in the way of the future for our family.’ Her voice was beginning to sound more manic with every word she spoke.
‘But you have Giovanna?’ Ricco asked, and my blood ran cold as all the pieces fell into place. Lorenzo wasn’t their son; he was yet another pawn in Ricco’s game of taking over the part of Italy I loved so much. And now I understood, me marrying Lorenzo would have been the icing on the cake.
‘Yes.’
‘Good girl. With her to bargain with, we will get him back and then we will get away from here. I promise you.’
‘Yes, yes! We will kill her if they don’t comply.’ I heard her speak, and attempted to find the part of me that I was convinced should still love her as my mama, however estranged we’d been over the previous few years. It hurt, albeit fleetingly, when I found nothing. It had taken years of her mental abuse and neglect to get us to this point. Understanding that she would kill me to satisfy her own wants was the final nail in the coffin, whether she was mentally ill or not.
‘Look for me, Valentina. I’m coming down to meet you.’
Being basically dragged along, I lifted my head to watch as the small group of men who were now halfway down the cliff increased their speed, so they could meet us at the very end of the quay.
Then I looked once again at the cars. When no one appeared to get out of them, I felt bitter disappointment, resigning myself to the fact that I was alone, and would feasibly only have one chance at firing the pistol concealed inside my waistband. And if that was so, I accepted myself to my fate, and came to terms with the fact I would be pointing the flare gun at my own head instead of one of theirs.