Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
The sun was low in the sky, shadows lengthening, temperature dropping as Nikki entered Naples.
It had been another long day of negotiations, but she’d managed to get her bike back from the police impound yard in Caserta.
The police had seized it, along with everything else associated with the massacre at the Errichiello compound, and it had taken nearly a week to get the paperwork and approval to retrieve it.
Raoul had taken her to Caserta, a drive that was notable for its silence.
Her father’s recent bout of enthusiasm had subsided when he visited her in the hospital where she was treated for smoke inhalation.
This shift towards melancholy made Nikki uncomfortable because it reminded her of the way he’d been after the death of Beatrice.
Outside the city, stopping for fuel, he cleaned the windscreen, then took a half-filled carton of cigarettes from the glove box and threw it in the trash.
“Nasty habit,” he said.
“Massimo says you’re heading back home tomorrow,” Nikki said. “Does that mean the investigation is finished?”
“Sì.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged.
“There was no grand conspiracy,” he said. “No hidden messages. Just the fantasies of a foolish old man who thought he could be important again.”
He paused before starting the engine, and looked at her.
“I don’t see the right things, bella,” he said. “I never have. Even when they’re clear…and precious. And right in front of me.”
Gently, tenderly, he took her hand, and kissed it.
Little was said after that.
Nikki felt relieved when they reached the impound lot and could say goodbye.
—
The week after Valerio’s rescue and the sinking of The Prophet was among the most difficult of Nikki’s life.
She spent most of her days at the hospital with Valerio, or at the police station, where her description of the battle at Errichiello’s compound was the only eyewitness testimony.
She believed in cooperating with the police, but it hadn’t felt safe to tell what she knew—so she kept most of the details to herself, building high brick walls around them.
Sealed inside, the memories were like an explosive. Menacing. Volatile.
The routine of everyday life was disconcerting—as if she’d drifted into a dream while the nightmare events were still happening.
She heard the shouts and screams of men struck down, smelled the gunpowder and smoke, and the horrendous stink of the small concrete prison where they’d kept Valerio.
Her heart still juddered and raced, terror lodged in her muscles and mind.
That horror was not her world. She’d brushed against it in the past, but before now she’d only ever been on the periphery of the war.
—
The day after she was released from the hospital, Vincente Di Pavola sent his lawyer to her house with the nondisclosure agreement, instructing her to never discuss her relationship with Enzo. As if it had never happened. She signed her name, feeling numb—a sense of walls erected, gates locking.
—
She hadn’t returned to Phoenix Seven, but yesterday, Pasquale had called, asking after her.
“Angelo took down the posting for your job,” he told her. “I think he’s getting pressure from the Americans to bring you back. It’s becoming an embarrassment that he fired you.”
Nikki had seen the news footage of Kami and Monica released from jail, and the press conference with Ambassador Lissom, Angelo hovering in the corner of the screen.
She didn’t want to return and work for Angelo.
The relationship had run its course. Angelo needed her to be different than she was, and she couldn’t maintain that dissonance any longer.
She wasn’t sure what to do next, and she needed money.
But she simply didn’t have the energy to maintain the facade.
—
At the gate to her building, Nikki stopped to grab the mail.
She tromped up the stairs and through the door to her apartment.
It smelled of disinfectant still—an aftermath of the stay by Valerio’s mother and sister: the floors, kitchen, and bathroom scrubbed, the jumble of shoes by the door straightened, scattered papers and boxes arranged into neat stacks.
—
Her phone rang.
“Darling, you lied to me!” Ethan scolded when she answered. “You promised I would be the first to hear about Jayston Lake—and now I find out about this on the news?”
“I’m sorry,” Nikki said.
“How are you doing, my dear?” he asked, voice softening. “What happened to that little girl?”
“She’s back in England, with her mother,” Nikki said.
—
Saying goodbye to Audrey had been unexpectedly difficult: the girl clinging to her and crying. Nikki had felt frozen and awkward, but something inside wanted to howl along with her.
—
Nikki took off her shoes and crossed to the living room, setting to work arranging and sorting everything back into boxes. She stacked these in the corner, and was pushing her sofa back where it belonged, when the leg caught on something.
—
She tugged it away from the wall, and saw that a large floor tile had come loose. It was tilted up. Wobbling. She crouched and moved it back and forth, shifting it back into place—when the edge caught, tipping suddenly into a hollow space beneath.
Surprised, Nikki gripped the tile with both hands and lifted it back.
There was a cavity in the floor. Nikki shone a light inside and saw that it was about thirty centimeters wide and sixty centimeters deep. It seemed empty at first—but there was something at the bottom.
She reached inside, and her fingers closed on the rough skin of a hardbound book.
—
It was a practical, rather than ornamental, edition—covered in faded green fabric, the only nod to artistry an embossed signature on the front cover. Black horizontal stripes on the spine provided perfunctory decoration, and a title in Cyrillic: Братья Карамазовы.
Nikki stopped breathing. The translation app confirmed what she’d already somehow guessed: The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Publication year 1957.
The pages were yellowed and stiff, although clearly once well loved—penciled notes in the margins. It smelled of dust and old ink.
The book fell open to a postcard serving as a bookmark: sent to Beatrice at this address. There was no return address, but the stamp indicated it had been posted from Russia on 22 November 2006.
Nikki stared for a long time at those numbers, mind suddenly thrumming. She knew that date. It was seared into her, a brand that still burned when she brushed across it: the day Adriano had been shot and bled out in her arms.
The words written on the postcard in a neat, elegant script were the same as those underlined in the book: Я думаю, что если дьявол не существует и, стало быть, создал его человек, то создал он его по своему образу и подобию.
Nikki knew what she would see before the translation finished, hearing the words in her mother’s voice: “ ‘If the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness!’ ”
Trembling, heart racing, she returned to the inside cover of the book. Two sets of notes—each with different handwriting.
The first, in faded ink: For my beloved Beatrice. Love always, Mot’ka.
Below this, the careful, clear handwriting of Beatrice Serafino. Three words:
Diogenes
Damascus
Zosima