Chapter 26 Fon #2
Fon felt the breath stolen from him, despair prickling his eyes as he watched them.
She had no interest in comforting him. She had no real interest in him at all.
Despite his best efforts to be the man she needed, he still wasn’t the man she wanted – and now, somewhere in the course of this terrible day, he had lost her.
He knew exactly what was coming next. She and Cosimo were two stars moving through the night sky, their paths set for inevitable collision.
There would be a brilliant, dazzling flash at the moment of impact and afterwards, when the meteors had finished falling, the world would have changed around them. Nothing would ever be the same.
And he couldn’t stop it. He—
Someone fell back against him, the heel of a leather shoe sharp on his foot.
‘I’m so sorry!’ Fede Franchetti reached back towards him with an apologetic look. He had the dopey, happy expression of someone who hadn’t yet tipped over his wine limit. No doubt he was well practised in when to stop, thanks to all those cocktail parties he attended in Rome.
‘It’s fine,’ Fon muttered.
‘Are you sure?’ Fede frowned, hesitating as he – he alone – seemed to notice the state Fon was in.
‘Yes.’
Fede crouched in front of him, looking closely now. ‘I don’t think you are, Fon.’ There was concern in his voice and he put a hand on Fon’s shoulder, prompting Fon to look at him. ‘Come on, let’s get you outside. Some fresh air will help.’
Slowly, blearily, Fon lifted his gaze and stared into Fede’s brown eyes, seeing kindness there.
Compassion. And something else, too … He felt a deep stirring in his spirit, like a beast turning over in the darkness – only, its shadow was golden, the lumbering body concealing a hidden brightness …
Suddenly the world felt back to front, or upside down, or inside out.
He wasn’t sure which, exactly, just that it was wrong.
He recoiled from the shock of it. ‘I don’t need your pity!’ he spat, swatting Fede’s arm angrily away so that Fede toppled backwards onto the floor. Sprawled there, he regarded Fon with a new expression, one that Fon could read clearly: disappointment.
‘Hey! What’s going on here?’ someone said crossly.
Fon looked up to see Fede’s plus-one – a law school friend, according to Luigi – staring down at them both.
His suit was well cut, like his accent, and he had an arrogant, haughty look to him.
Fon knew that he looked vastly inferior by comparison.
For a moment he wanted to square up to this stranger and tell him exactly what he was capable of – show him the blood on his hands. See how superior he looked then!
Instead he turned away, confused by the rage that had risen up in him.
‘It’s nothing,’ Fede said, springing to his feet and patting his friend on the chest in a placatory gesture. ‘Let’s get another drink, yes?’
They headed for the bar, Fede lurching a little, slightly drunker than Fon had first appreciated. He watched as the friend said something to Fede, but the music was loud; Fon’s eyes followed Fede’s hand as he rested it on the friend’s hip, leaning in to hear better.
It was a tiny detail, but telling – as quietly intimate as Donatella’s circling thumb. Fon’s eyes narrowed as he realized that without even trying to, he had stumbled upon another secret. He watched them get their drinks and then head for the door, going outside.
For several moments he sat there, trying to process what he’d just seen. It was almost too incredible to believe, and yet … His heart began to thud. He knew he had to see it with his own eyes.
He got to his feet and headed for the door too, lumbering outside.
The night air was steamy and he had almost pickled himself in wine, but he wasn’t the only one.
As he looked around at the terrace that overlooked the beach, he could see small groups of people drinking and laughing, dancing too … but not Fede and his friend.
He staggered round to the side of the building where the kitchen was located, and there, by the bins, he saw a shadow moving …
There they were, figures in the moonlight, doing exactly what he’d suspected: hands on faces, bodies pressed together. He stood motionless as he watched, listening to their muted sounds, muffled groans barely audible over the music that drifted through the open windows.
He felt the ground tip beneath his feet as the moments passed and their urgency grew.
The blood was rushing in torrents through his head.
Everywhere. He felt horrified but also excited, his animal instincts quivering on high alert today, and without thinking, his hand moved to his flies.
Even in this state, he was growing hard, and he held his hand there, frozen in place as he felt the dreadful proof of his own perversity.
Tears pricked at his eyes. He felt sick. Sickened by himself. Had the entire world gone mad? Had he?
He thought of the boy, bleeding to death in the trees.
He thought of Rafaella, still dancing inside. He loved her goodness, her pureness. She was the one who was supposed to save him but she was, this very moment, spinning towards a fairy tale with another hero while he stood out here as an ogre, as much a monster as his brother.
If he had lost her, then he was lost, he knew that for sure.
He turned away and threw up, trying to expel the poison in his body, his very being. He heaved and retched, wishing he could pull himself through like a jumper and be worn fresh again. Something new.
Finally, when there was nothing left to come up, he leaned against the wall, closing his eyes and feeling empty. He swayed, his body limp, one hand on the railing. He knew he should sleep. Go to bed and escape the waking nightmare that had been this day.
Just as he resolved to go, a voice carried from below on the beach.
‘… editor wanted to break it weeks ago, but he decided it would be better used as leverage against the permits story …’
Fon frowned. Editor? Leverage? Story? … They weren’t words that were usual in conversation in the port.
He looked over the railing and down onto the sand, where a couple of men were sitting on the low beach wall, smoking.
They wore light suits, unlike the wedding guests.
At the top of the slope which led down to the sand, Fon could see two Vespas.
‘Think it’ll work?’ one of the men asked.
‘Not sure. This isn’t his first time on the hook, and he’s a slippery fish …
He always knows exactly who to call to make it go away.
He’s protected, isn’t he.’ It seemed to be a rhetorical question.
The man took a deep drag of his cigarette and Fon saw the lighted tip glow more brightly in the night air.
For a brief moment he caught sight of something dark against the man’s chest. A camera?
‘But this is different. It brings in his son.’
‘And you’ve got actual proof of the affair?’
The first guy shrugged again. ‘Yeah, although he could still just say he was there on official business.’
‘But in Gallipoli? On the beach?’ The other one scoffed. ‘Even he can’t build there!’
Fon frowned, feeling the hairs on his neck rise. He was drunk and physically battered, his brain was lagging several seconds behind his ears, but somehow, even befuddled and beleaguered, he knew this was … important.
Devastating.
Helpful?
‘… I need to piss.’
Fon watched the first man walk off across the sand.
He fell back against the wall, forgetting all about the unnatural entanglement that had played out a few minutes earlier, as he tried to put the jigsaw pieces together to make a picture – paparazzi, photographic proof, leverage, affair …
His mind strained, trying to fill in the gaps of what and who.
His eyes opened as suddenly it slotted together: a truth he never could have guessed at before today. But now – in this state, in a world he had learnt was so fundamentally corrupted – he could imagine just about anything.
His breathing came heavily as he ran it through his head over and over, looking for evidence to the contrary.
But the more he played it, the more the paparazzo’s words solidified in form.
They were like pieces on a chess board moving into formation, and he realized that he had been holding a piece of the story, too: a knight in his hand, a duke’s daughter’s drunken ramblings about ‘betrayal’ and ‘family’ as she pulled at his belt buckle, hell-bent on reprisal.
He’d had the lowdown all this time. He just hadn’t known it.
But now that he did, suddenly Cosimo and Rafaella’s destiny didn’t seem so unstoppable.
Fon was still so drunk he couldn’t walk in a straight line, but he didn’t need to. He could zigzag over this board if he wanted to. All paths led to his target.
Checkmate.