16. Chiara
— ? —
Chiara
The following afternoon, I turn onto the road to Baglio Marchetti as the sun lowers toward the hills. I think about Lorenzo bringing strawberries to the lake because he’d remembered a story about Lyon.
For those few hours in the boat, I hadn’t wondered whether he wanted to be somewhere else.
Maybe that’s what he’s planning. The thought surfaces as I take the turn toward the estate. Another evening like that one. A reminder of what we could have.
The note said he had something to show me. After he stood beside me at the feast, I want to find out what it is.
The gates are open when I arrive. I drive through without stopping at the main house, following the track that leads around the back of the estate toward the lake.
The path is familiar now, worn into my memory from those early morning walks when I was still trying to learn this land, still trying to find my place in a life I hadn’t chosen.
The lake appears through the trees, its surface catching the last of the afternoon light.
The small dock stretches out over the water, and beside it the rowboat is tied up at its usual post, oars resting across the seats the way they always are when no one’s using it.
The cove where Lorenzo anchored that evening is visible around the curve of the shore, quiet and sheltered.
I park the car on the track, leave my bag with the note on the passenger seat, and put the keys in my coat pocket.
Then I pull out my phone. No messages from Lorenzo, which seems odd.
If he was planning something, wouldn’t he want to know when I was arriving?
I send a quick text to Rosalia: At the lake. No sign of him yet.
The air is cold as I step out, the kind of winter chill that seeps through wool and settles into bones. I pull my coat tighter and start down the path toward the dock, my eyes scanning the water and the shoreline for any sign of Lorenzo. The rowboat bumps softly against its mooring.
I walk out onto the dock, my footsteps echoing in the quiet. The sun is touching the hills now, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink that would be beautiful if I weren’t suddenly very aware of how alone I am.
Where is he?
I pull out my phone to call Lorenzo directly, but before I can find his contact, I hear footsteps on the path behind me. I turn, expecting to see him coming through the trees with an explanation for why he’s late.
It’s not Lorenzo.
Livia walks toward the dock with the unhurried pace of someone who has planned this moment carefully.
She’s wearing a dark coat buttoned against the cold, her hair pulled back from her face, and there’s something in her expression that makes my stomach drop.
The polite mask she wore at the feast is gone.
What’s underneath it is harder, colder, focused entirely on me.
“He’s not coming.” She stops at the landward end of the dock, positioning herself between me and the path back to my car. “Lorenzo doesn’t know you’re here.”
I stare at her, my mind racing. The dock is narrow, barely wide enough for two people to pass, and she’s blocking the only way back to solid ground. Behind me, the water laps against the posts.
“The note was from him.” My thumb stops over Lorenzo’s name on the screen. “I recognized the handwriting.”
“You recognized handwriting that looked like his.” Livia steps onto the planks, closing the gap I could have used to pass her. “I’ve worked for the Marchetti family for years. I’ve seen his handwriting on a hundred notes. Copying one short note wasn’t difficult.”
“How did you know where to send it?”
“I asked the office for your forwarding address. I said I had paperwork to send you.” She glances at the phone in my hand. “You made sure you wouldn’t miss your post.”
She forged it. I glance past her toward my car, calculating the distance. Maybe forty meters. If I can get past her, I can reach it.
“What do you want, Livia?” I take a step toward her, testing whether she’ll move. She doesn’t. The dock boards creak under my feet. “If you wanted to talk, you could have approached me at the feast.”
“At the feast, you had Lorenzo beside you. His mother. All those people who suddenly remembered their manners once the Don made it clear what he expected.” She shifts her weight slightly, and I notice she’s put herself directly in the center of the narrow dock.
Getting past her would mean pushing through. “Here, it’s just us.”
My phone buzzes in my hand. I glance down and see Rosalia’s name on the screen, an incoming call. I try to answer, but Livia moves faster than I expected. She steps forward and knocks the phone from my grip. It skitters across the dock and stops near the edge, still ringing.
“Leave it.” She plants her foot between me and the ringing phone. “We’re going to have a conversation, Chiara. A real one.”
I look at the phone, then back at her. The ringing stops. Rosalia will wonder why I didn’t answer. She’s at the house, close enough to find Lorenzo. She knows I’m here alone and now I’m not responding.
I need to keep her talking.
“You sabotaged the wine.” I say it flatly, watching her face. If she’s finally willing to drop the act, I want to hear her say it.
“Yes.” She spreads her hands, a gesture that might have looked innocent once. “I bought the substance three weeks before the gala. I put it in the bottles you were going to pour. And I made sure the ceremonial pour would happen in front of everyone who mattered.”
I remember the wine pouring wrong, the expressions on three hundred faces shifting from anticipation to horror.
Then Livia looking up from her handkerchief and giving me that quick, private smile while everyone else watched Lorenzo.
I knew what that smile meant. Hearing her admit it still makes me want to hit her.
“The receipt exists.” I slide my left foot toward the phone, keeping her attention on my face. “The investigators have copies. My lawyer has copies. Rosalia heard you on the phone the night before. Killing me won’t make any of that disappear.”
“Who said anything about killing you?” Her gaze drops to my foot, and I stop moving. She hasn’t forgotten the phone either.
“You forged a note to get me here alone.” I gesture at the dock, the water, the fading light. “You knocked my phone away when I tried to answer a call. What exactly did you think this conversation was going to accomplish?”
I glance toward the phone, still lying on the dock near the edge. If I can reach it while she talks, I can call for help. Livia sees where I’m looking and takes a deliberate step toward it.
“Don’t.” She kicks the phone, and I watch it arc over the edge and hit the water with a small splash. My last connection to Rosalia, to Lorenzo, to anyone who might be wondering where I am.
Rosalia knows where I am. I hold onto that thought as the ripples spread where my phone disappeared.
“Now.” Livia turns back to me, her expression almost satisfied. “Where were we?”
“You were explaining how you destroyed my life because you couldn’t accept that Lorenzo chose to marry someone else.” I need to keep her talking. Every minute she spends justifying herself is another minute for someone to realize I’m not answering my phone.
“He didn’t choose you.” She picks the same wound she pressed in the cellar, and I hate that she still knows where it is. “His father chose you. Some arrangement made before Lorenzo was old enough to have an opinion. You think that’s a real marriage? You think that’s love?”
“I think it’s more real than whatever fantasy you’ve been nursing since childhood.” I try the gap on her other side, keeping my hands clear of her. “He’s known you since you were children, Livia. If he wanted you, he’s had every opportunity to realize it.”
“He would have.” She steps toward me, forcing me back. “But Cesare arranged that marriage, and suddenly all anyone cared about was the Don’s foreign bride.”
“So you waited.” I catch the mooring post at my hip. The rowboat is on my right; Livia still blocks the way to shore. “And then you decided to destroy everything.”
“I waited for the right moment.” She follows my glance toward the path and steps across my way again.
“When you started planning that launch, when I saw how much attention you were getting for your precious botanical display, I knew it was perfect. A very public failure. A scandal that would taint you forever. And then Lorenzo would have to choose between the family reputation and his foreign wife who couldn’t be trusted. ”
“He chose me.” I remember him staying at my side while those women struggled to answer for themselves. “At the feast yesterday, in front of everyone. He said I was innocent. He said his silence was the failure, not anything I did.”
“I saw.” Her fingers close around the front of her coat, bunching the fabric. “I was there, watching him defend you in front of everyone who’d spent weeks believing what they’d been told. Watching him sit with you afterward as if you hadn’t left him.”
“Is that why you chose the lake?” I glance at the moored boat, remembering her on the bank when we came back. “Because you saw us at the feast and wanted to ruin something else. The evening on the boat. The strawberries he remembered. You want to turn every good memory into something terrible.”
“I saw you that night too.” She follows my glance toward the boat. “Coming back in that little rowboat, holding his hand. I saw the strawberries in the basket, and I thought about how many years I’d spent waiting for him to look at me like that.”
I remember her warning that she would hate for anything to spoil our evening. Jealousy hadn’t seemed enough to explain her smile. She was already willing to make us suffer for it.