Chapter 16
Enzo had waited a lifetime for this moment.
The Madonna Fornirà was spread out on the table before him, decadent in its palette and providence. He found it erotic to be in its company, stripped of its frame and support like a woman stripped of her clothing and artifice.
Greed and curiosity warred with his desire to prolong this moment, the anticipation a sharp sword that threatened to destroy him.
He began cutting in a horizontal line at the top of the baby Jesus’ corona and extended to the right edge of the painting, hundreds of years of history destroyed with a single slice.
He was physically excited like a teenage boy alone with a worldly woman, and he reveled in the sensation as he made a second cut perpendicular to the first.
He picked up the smaller rectangle he had cut out of the canvas and held the newly formed vertex under the light. Donning his glasses, he worked with gloved hands and a scalpel to separate the centuries-old paint from its backing.
Agotsi was a madman, a genius living before his time. A writer of riddles, a keeper of clues that would torment men through the ages.
The crown of the babe shall reveal its worth, in layers given to the earth. Greater riches shall be found beneath the ground than in her arms, the treasure bound.
Enzo tried to slip the scalpel on top of the canvas, the thick blade slicing through his glove and sinking into his fingertip. “Ah!” he screamed, blood already dripping onto the painting. Quickly he grabbed a tissue and wrapped the injury, covering it with another glove to hold it in place.
“Merda!” he yelled upon seeing the drops, the freshly cut edge of the painting bright red. Frustration emanated from him like heat from a burning coal, and he forced himself to put down the knife until he regained his composure.
He had waited too long, had risked too much, to foil this opportunity.
When he once again picked up the section of painting and bought it to the light, he could see the bloodied canvas had separated from the hardened paint. He smiled, again working to slip the scalpel between them, and this time doing so easily.
“I knew it,” he whispered. “I knew you were telling us the truth.” Rumors had circulated for centuries, claiming Agotsi had perfected a way to keep the paint from settling into the fiber of the canvas, resting instead on an intermediate layer that could be mechanically separated.
While easily done today, the process was unheard of in the artist’s time, the message that had been hidden for hundreds of years now about to be revealed.
Enzo barely breathed as he peeled back the layer of paint. A shape came into view, then an entire letter. A word, now two.
Good-bye Daddy.
“No!” he screamed, his arms reaching out to hurl everything he could reach onto the floor. The bulb in the desk lamp shattered with a pop, throwing Enzo and all he had hoped for into darkness.
Rowan threw the car keys onto the hotel room dresser. “You want first shower?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Have at it. I’m going to call Colin and see where he and Gwen ended up.”
Colin’s phone went right to voicemail and Rowan left a message. “We’re back in Boston. Call me when you get this.”
He opened the bottle of soda he bought at the vending machine and kicked back on the bed. There was only one and he liked knowing they would share it together, making love in the night and sharing their sleep when they were through.
He could hear Becky singing quietly, but not well enough to place the tune. He imagined the water cascading over her luscious body, her long hair hanging wet down her back, and he longed to sink his hands into her soapy curls.
He felt luckier in this moment than any man had a right to be. He was free of his joke of a marriage. Little Anthony was safe and sound, in the arms of his true parents. Enzo was getting his due at that very moment, and the woman he loved was in the shower, readying herself for his bed.
The scent of fruity shampoo reached his nostrils and he closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, before capping his soda and standing to strip. He walked to the bathroom door and smiled. Stairway to Heaven. He knocked.
“Yes?”
“Can I shower with you?”
“Abso-freakin’-lutely.”
The room was filled with steam and the scent of her. He pulled back the curtain and stepped inside, the reality of Becky in the shower far surpassing his fantasy.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Hey, handsome. Want me to wash your back?”
“Do I.” He turned around and braced himself on the wall, the feel of her hands on his tense muscles instantly making him moan in satisfaction. “That feels incredible.”
“That’s the idea. At my house I have a steam shower with twenty-four jets that could knock your socks off.”
He lifted his head, stretching each side of his neck in turn. In his imagination, he could feel those jets all over his body. He chuckled. “Can I move in with you?”
Her hands stopped moving.
“I was only kidding. That shower sounds fantastic.”
She turned her back to him, putting her face in the water and rubbing her eyes.
“Becky, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.”
Rowan could feel the tension settling back in his shoulders. He watched as she slowly turned her body in the spray, her eyes closed against him. “Something’s bothering you. Why don’t you tell me what it is?”
“Let’s not, and say we did.”
“You got all freaked out when I said I wanted to move in. I was kidding, but frankly I don’t see why it would have bother you, even if I were serious.”
Her eyes opened. “You don’t see why that would bother me.”
“No.”
She shook her head, holding up a hand between them. “Let’s not talk about this. Let’s have a nice night together. Just let it go, Rowan.”
“I love you.”
She met his eyes.
“I’ve said it to you several times now, but you haven’t said it back. Why is that?” He frowned. “Do you really not feel it too?”
“I told you we shouldn’t have this conversation.” She pulled back the edge of the curtain and moved to get out.
“Whoa, hold on. You don’t love me?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“What’s fucking complicated? You love me, or you don’t.”
“You lied to me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on.”
“More than once.”
“I explained that already.”
“Did you? Did you really, or did you just tell me a little tiny piece of the truth so I would back off?”
“I told you the truth.”
The heat in the bathroom was suddenly too much, the steam overwhelming. She needed to get out of there. “But I don’t believe you.” She pulled back her half of the curtain. “I can’t believe you.” She stepped out of the shower. “I told you, you should have just left it well enough alone.”
Light snow fell on the grand stone steps, and Enzo climbed them carefully.
He pressed the glowing button, his finger clad in fine black leather, and he was struck by the differences time had made in his life.
Though he’d snuck into this house just two nights earlier, it had been more than forty years since he stood in this spot and openly rang this bell.
In his mind’s eye he was there again, a young man just home from his studies, anxious to see his friend and enjoy a meal at his family’s table. His cloth gloves worn and in need of darning, his pulse jumping as he waited to see if Claudia would be here, too.
Enzo had a tremendous crush on Leonardo’s girlfriend for the last year and a half, since the Christmas party when she wore the long green dress that flattered her young, womanly body.
Before that, Enzo had thought her a child, a nuisance, but afterward he spent his days comparing every woman he met to the ethereal Claudia, every one of them coming up short in the balance.
It was that evening, after dinner and too many drinks, that Leonardo broke down and confided in his friend. Claudia had broken their engagement.
Enzo wasted no time. He plotted his courtship while he listened to his friend’s grief.
The tall door opened and the men stood face-to-face for the first time in more than a quarter century. “Have they found Tamra and the baby?” Leonardo asked.
“No. May I come in?”
Leonardo stepped back for him to enter, closing the door and saying quietly, “No one deserves to have the one they love stolen from him. I, of all people, know that.”
Enzo rounded on the other man in an instant fury. “I stole nothing from you. You chased Claudia away with your greed and your arrogance.”
“Perhaps.” Leonardo led the way into the large sitting room where Claudia’s painting above the mantel. “But if that is true, then I have spent the years between then and now working to change that which reviled her, while you have become the very essence of what she hated.”
Enzo’s eyes scrupulously avoided the mantel, falling instead on a velvet patterned sofa. A small stuffed bear peeked out from behind a pillow. “I received an update from Interpol on the status of the kidnapping investigation,” he said. “Gianni Amato didn’t show up for work this morning.”
“Perhaps he’s unwell.”
“Perhaps not.” Enzo picked up the bear. “I bought this for Anthony when he was born.”
“How nice of you to buy something for my grandson.”
“Wishing Gianni was your boy does not make it so. He will always be a servant, never a lord.”
“You were once lower than a servant. A bastard. But I welcomed you in my family home, shared all I had with you.”
“You were a fool.”
“And look at you now! An abomination. Gianni is strong and righteous. I very much wish he were my child.”
“But alas, you have no children.”
“Ah, old friend. You are mistaken. I have a daughter, dark-haired and as beautiful as her mother.” A sly smile slipped across his features, transforming him. Anthony is my grandson because Tamra is my daughter.”
“Liar!”
“Claudia told me herself before she died. She asked that I not reveal it to you, but I no longer feel bound by my promise. You have tortured my daughter long enough, and now she will escape your wrath.”
“Where are they?”
“Gone.”
Gone.
Yes, everything was gone. Claudia, the traitorous wife. Tamra, her daughter from an unholy union. Anthony, the grandson of his enemy. The Madonna Fornirà, the prize he’d been pursuing for more than half his life. Suddenly, he felt old and tired, nearly defeated. Then he realized.
Leonardo was to blame for it all.
In one easy movement, Enzo withdrew his pistol from his jacket pocket and held it just inches from the other man’s head. He took off the safety and clenched his teeth as he moved to pull the trigger.
Then he was a boy, the happy memories of his years in this house with Leonardo mocking his current intent.
Time ceased to move forward as Enzo stood suspended between what could have been and the horrors he had brought upon himself.
He could see himself as a young man sitting at the Depaoli table, enjoying the warmth that radiated from Leonardo’s family like light from the sun.
He could see Claudia, unbearably young and beautiful, laughing with Leonardo and him, the three of them unaware of the divergent path their futures would take.
Enzo watched as young Leonardo exchanged a glance with Claudia, the color rising in her cheeks, and Enzo felt jealousy flare to life in his breast like a wild beast.
The warm metal trigger was again solid against his finger, and he began to squeeze.
A baby’s scream pierced the silence, and Enzo turned toward the sound. He would know Anthony’s cries anywhere.
They were here!
It had never occurred to him they might still be in town, might be under this very roof.
“Run! He has a gun!” Leonardo screamed, and Enzo brought its barrel down hard on the other man’s temple, an audible crack before Leonardo fell to the ground.
Pivoting on his heel, Enzo ran deeper into the house, gun at the ready. He rounded a corner into the arboretum, following the baby’s wails. Gianni emerged from the foliage and began to raise his own weapon.
Anthony’s cries seemed to escalate as Enzo fired quickly, shooting Gianni in the belly. Enzo advanced toward him, ready to shoot him again.
“Daddy! No!” Tamra was there, standing between them, hands raised to her face while baby Anthony wailed in the distance. “Please! I’ll give you the painting!”