Chapter 31 Cosimo
Cosimo
Cosimo watched her pray. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her lips moving in silence as she called for the power of the Spirit to come upon her. For all the good it would do. How many prayers had he sent forth in the twelve months since his sister’s senseless death? Not a single one had been answered.
He watched Fon, nervous beside her, glancing at her every few moments as if expecting her to gather her skirts and sprint away from him. But Cosimo knew she wouldn’t. This was the plan they had agreed on, and it was for his sake that she would keep to it.
Fon had made it all go away after all, pulling strings that were out of reach even to Cosimo’s father.
He had convinced the police of his account of the events that night – that he had persuaded his girlfriend to meet him at the empty villa when everyone else was at the wedding.
Yes, he had hoped to seduce her. But in his incapacitated state, he had tripped on the terrace and fallen against the urn, which was already known to be loose.
He was wholly unaware of Romola following at a distance behind him …
That version of the accident had been recounted so many times – by the villagers, by the press – that Cosimo could almost believe it was true.
It gave him momentary comfort from the guilt of what he’d done, but his mind never lay in the lie for long.
He had killed his own sister and his spirit would never be at rest again.
Of course, Fon’s alibi had come at a cost. He had made himself the fall guy, assuming all the risk of a manslaughter charge, on two conditions: Cosimo left the port, and Rafaella – if he went free – became his bride.
She had agreed to both, for them both, without hesitation; she had been trying to save him when he was incapable of helping himself in those first bleak, traumatic moments.
But in the days that had followed, losing her too had come to feel like another death.
The cards had all fallen in Fon’s favour. To the victor, the spoils.
Cosimo knew enough of the world of politics to recognize the stink of bribery but he hadn’t known, back then, that the Giannellis had far more money and reach than anyone realized. And it had only kept on growing. A year on from that night, Fon was a rich man.
Had Fon played him a cold deck? Cosimo couldn’t shake the suspicion of it, and yet he knew there was no way Fon could have predicted the events of that night. He couldn’t possibly have laid out in advance the plan that would give him everything he had ever wanted.
‘Amen.’
Eyes opened and he heard the whistle of gasps as the villagers’ gazes settled upon him standing behind the priest.
In robes.
They changed him at a fundamental level, cloaking him with an anonymity that had never been possible in his old life.
They stripped him of colour, personality.
Free will. His noble legacy. Cosimo Franchetti, second son of the eleventh Duke of Paliano, no longer existed.
The golden playboy of Rome, scion to a great fortune, had disappeared from the public face of the earth and now only existed in a single dimension, hidden behind a high wall.
Rafaella looked straight at him, visibly shaken to find him here suddenly, the Mass server at her own wedding.
The gates of Villa Agosto had remained closed this summer and she hadn’t seen him since the funeral last year.
He had stolen away before first light the following morning, having accepted the game was lost. His family was destroyed; Rafaella was Fon’s.
He had told no one of his plans, leaving only letters to be found.
Hers had consisted of two words: Forgive me.
Had she? Did she understand what he had realized too late – that freedom meant nothing without her beside him? That the guilt of his own hand in his sister’s death couldn’t, after all, be erased with a ‘Case Closed’ stamp on a file?
Father Tommaso raised his hands up. ‘Dearly beloved …’
Slowly, Cosimo walked forward to perform his duties. He saw a jolt of shock ricochet through Fon as he approached; he and his brother had become formidable figures in the port in the past year, but Cosimo Franchetti could still un-nerve him.
It had been nothing for Cosimo to choose this life, to walk away from his family’s material riches when they were so broken and emotionally impoverished anyway. But to stand here now and watch the girl he loved marry someone else …
He watched in silence as the couple recited their vows before God; Father Tommaso; the village. Him.
Rafaella’s eyes openly, defiantly locked on his as she promised to love and obey, through sickness and health, as if she was wedding herself to him and not her groom. He saw Fon see it too – her longing, her yearning for him – and he knew she loved him still … But it was too late for them.
Life was made up of the actions not taken as much as those that were.
If he had only remembered to tell the gardener to fix the urn; if he had only been able to see past his grief as he lay in the dirt cradling his sister …
But he hadn’t, and here they were, wearing the wrong clothes and speaking their lines to the wrong people.
They were lost to one another now, and he felt his last remaining hope wither and die as Fon slipped the ring over her finger, sealing all their fates.