45. Vivi
VIVI
Begrudging respect crosses Francesca’s features. “Yes.”
Such a simple answer. Such enormous implications.
In my head, details quickly fall into place. The why isn’t hard to understand. But the how…
“How did you even know he was here?”
“Luigi talks a lot when he’s drunk,” she says with a shrug.
“I knew the cells were there. I’ve known about those for ages.
Gio, Vampa, and the priest do a good job keeping the entry point secret, but they haven’t seemed to realize that the ventilation shafts let the screams travel across the island.
To this side of the villa, actually.” She points out the window.
“They’re cut into the cliffs below. I used to hear prisoners when I slept in this room. ”
“Wait—this was your room?”
“For a little while. After Giulia died.” Francesca looks around, seeing the room as it used to be. “This was her childhood bedroom, and the room she used when she and Aurora needed time away from my brother. So when I came to the island, it made sense for me to use it because?—”
“Because Aurora was in the room next door,” I say, starting to understand.
“Sì. Exactly.” Francesca’s expression turns wistful. Painfully sad. “After Giulia died and Gio brought Aurora to the island, I followed. I couldn’t stay with my parents. Matteo’s death drove my father completely insane. But Gio saved me. Welcomed me here. Gave me a home, a safe place to live.”
A soft smile plays on her lips, only to fade as her thoughts shift to Aurora.
“But Gio didn’t know what to do with a three-year-old who had just lost both parents.
He thought she needed something familiar, comfortable.
So he returned her to the room next door, the one she had slept in so often as a baby, and I slept in here.
It worked, for a while. But then Aurora started having horrible nightmares, crying out for her mom in her sleep, and we decided she needed a new space.
A room with fewer painful memories. We both moved downstairs. ”
“And the connecting door?” I point at the place on the wall that’s been re-plastered.
Francesca rolls her eyes. “Not everything is suspicious. That was a safety call. Aurora kept pinching her fingers in the gap. She almost broke a few. It made sense to seal up the pressure-fitted door and just use the one in the hall.”
“You know so much about her.”
“I’m her aunt. And, for a while, I was really hoping to become her…”
Mom.
Francesca stops herself from saying it. From flaying an already open wound. Unspoken or not, it doesn’t matter.
All of the softness drains from her, leaving nothing but a brokenhearted woman behind.
Eyes never leaving mine, she collects the Petoskey stones from where I dropped them on the floor.
“It happened last night, you know. When I saw this, heard the story you told Ro.” She holds up one, presumably mine. “That’s when I realized who you were.”
Of course. That sweet moment Aurora and I shared at the table. “You had no idea before?”
Francesca shakes her head. “I’m a smart woman, Vivi, but I’m not omniscient.
Your hair color is fairly unique, I’ll give you that, but there are lots of red-headed women who come from Chicago.
And I wasn’t at the wedding; I never saw your family.
Didn’t hear the name Salviati. Fuck, I didn’t even know we’d flown to the States so Gio could get married.
He never said a word. I was so fucking furious when I got on the plane, and he told me his wife was in the bedroom.
So mad it never even crossed my mind that you—Viviana—could possibly be the little girl I knew as Ana.
No.” She shakes her head. “I figured it out last night. Talk about a fucking gift.”
She’s pacing now, her movements getting less refined by the second. The poised woman I met over a month ago is vanishing, a woman with nothing left to lose taking her place.
I’ve got to do something. Now. Before she gets tired of talking and decides to finish what she started. Before she kills me.
The key is in her pocket. The locked door is the only way out, unless I want to take a swan dive out of the window and die in the waves below.
There’s no clear way to escape.
But I might be able to defend myself long enough to get help.
Francesca is still talking, so deep in her own thoughts she doesn’t realize I’ve stopped paying close attention.
She’s explaining how Father Luigi let details about Tino slip when he snuck up to the villa one night, already drunk and looking for another bottle of wine.
Francesca coaxed him into giving her the code to the cell doors for a few extra bottles.
And she’s explaining how she heard a voice screaming my name—the voice that wafted up through the prison ventilation system. The same cries that’ve been haunting me. It’s how she figured out there was a connection between the prisoner in the cell and Gio’s new wife.
“It was too good an opportunity to pass up,” she says.
“Gio’s prisoner knew his bride by name? I mean, what were the chances?
I didn’t know who you actually were at that point, but I knew I hated you.
Knew it would be smart to have a plan to eventually get rid of you.
So I snuck down to the prison one night, had a chat with Tino, and realized how useful he could be. ”
With every revelation, she completes another small lap around the center of the room. There’s enough space that she never gets close to the bed, or the knife I’ve still got hidden under the mattress.
It’s dull, but it’s better than nothing.
“I hadn’t decided how I was going to get you off the island or when, but after you were poisoned at the club I had to let things cool off, bide my time.” She looks up, expression fevered. “That wasn’t me, by the way. Arsenic? Talk about lacking finesse. Not my style at all.”
Francesca completes another lap, trailing her fingers across the dressing table. “It was only when Gio announced we were throwing you a surprise birthday party that I knew I’d run out of time. When I knew he’d never let you go, that you needed to be taken.”
Francesca’s steps are getting more erratic, details tumbling out of her so fast, like water being whipped down a drain.
How she went down to see Tino the day of the party. How she finalized a plan to get him out of his cell, and a way to get both him and me off the island. (Her mother has a helicopter, didn’t I know?)
How her supply of prescription medications is so sizable it was easy to sedate the tiny population on the island.
How there are so many smoke bombs in the weapons store that no one would ever notice a few had gone missing. How, a few years ago, Vampa had started rigging them with timers, which made it so easy for her to schedule when they’d go off.
And how she put every detail in place before getting dressed for the party.
As she’s been talking, I’ve moved across the room. I’m closer to the bed, now. But still too close to the windows.
Francesca’s eyes are unfocused, hands swirling, voice turning gleeful as she lays out her twisted brilliance for me to appreciate.
‘It was a good plan,” she says proudly. “Even Gio would appreciate it, given the chance. It was detailed, refined. And that was before I even knew who you were.”
Her head jerks up. She sees where I’m standing. “What do you think you’re doing, Vivi? Trying to sneak away?”
“To where?” I gesture around us. “We’re locked in. You’ve got the only key. And the only other way out?—”
“Is through the windows.” Francesca’s smile is dangerously bright.
“And no one can survive that fall.”
That smile sharpens. A sick warning that I’ve run out of time. “Oh, I know. Why do you think I locked us in here?” she says, taunting. “All my preparation, all that planning…”
Her twisted smile drops, her face hardening. She’s pissed I’m still alive. That I’m still in her way. “I created my plan when you were just Viviana, Gio’s naive, undeserving wife. Imagine how I felt last night when I discovered that you aren’t just Gio’s wife—you’re Ana.”
Francesca draws a gun from the small of her back, where it’s been hidden beneath her shirt.
“That’s why I had to come up here. Why I couldn’t leave things alone after Tino fucked it all up.
I couldn’t just sit calmly and wait for another chance to get rid of you.
I couldn’t do that. Not when I know who you are. ”
Her finger drops to the trigger. “I’m sorry, Ana, but you can’t stay. You can’t have Gio. You can’t have Aurora. There’s no way I can let you stay.”