Chapter 48 Rafaella
Rafaella
They stood pressed against the wall as the crowds surged past with the procession, everyone cheering so loudly that Rafaella could have screamed at the top of her lungs and no one would even have turned.
They were just two in a sea of faces, and she knew it was the perfect moment to disappear.
Even if she was being watched, she had a good chance of losing herself in the mob …
She turned to Gina, who was holding Lorenzo on her hip.
‘No, not yet … a little longer,’ Gina whispered, eyes wide as she held back her tears. She had promised not to cry. Tears would be an instant giveaway to anyone watching them, a sign that something was wrong.
‘It has to be now, while the crowds are biggest …’ Rafaella squeezed her hand in apology. They both knew another five minutes – five months – wouldn’t be enough. There was never going to be a right time for them to say goodbye.
‘I’ll be in touch once I’m settled, I promise.’ She hardly dared to move her lips or show her sorrow as she talked. Paranoia had her in its grip and her eyes scanned the crowd again, looking for anyone paying attention to them.
‘Dante will intercept letters,’ Gina murmured.
‘… I’ll get a message to Maddalena at school; she’ll pass it on to you,’ Rafaella said, squeezing her hand reassuringly again.
They had agreed not to hug, nothing at all to indicate a parting.
They had already said their goodbyes in private.
They would see one another again, they had promised, but Rafaella wasn’t so sure.
She might not know the depths of their husbands’ reach but she did know the breadth of Dante’s rage and ambition.
When exactly would it be safe for them to meet again?
She took a deep breath and saw, from the way Gina stiffened, that she knew this was the moment. Their hands gripped tightly in a final hidden embrace.
‘Ciao, Gina, I’ll catch you in a bit,’ she said loudly, for the benefit of eavesdroppers.
‘Certe! I’ll be right here.’
She took a step to the side, allowing Gina’s fingers to slip from her grasp as she took another one.
Immediately she felt the power of the crowd pull her along, a riptide dragging her from the safety of shore.
She glanced back, forcing a bright smile at her friend and godson as she allowed herself a last look, but within moments their faces grew indistinct, just two among the many. Tiles in the mosaic.
She was adrift.
By a stroke of good luck, she and Gina had been separated from Fon and Dante almost immediately on stepping out of the cathedral; they would be glad-handing all the local dignitaries, but they would be back any moment too.
They might already be looking for their wives in the crowd.
Every minute mattered and she couldn’t hesitate …
She let herself be pulled along with the crowd before peeling away and slipping into her empty house.
The door was unlocked as always, and her ears strained for sounds of movement before she ran up the stairs.
Her packed suitcase was under the bed where she’d left it, untouched.
She didn’t know what Fon had thought of her staying over at Gina’s last night – no doubt Dante had informed him of her presence in their guest room – but he hadn’t even looked at her as they’d met on the cathedral steps this morning. Shame? Or guilt?
It didn’t matter. The damage was irreversible.
No matter the vacuum at the heart of their marriage, they had always been friends; they had protected one another in their various ways over the years, but something fundamental had shifted between them now and it couldn’t be moved back again.
Undeniable truths could no longer be ignored.
She loved Cosimo and always would. And he …
? There was something at the heart of him that was stunted, oblique.
Forty seconds later, she was slipping through the garden gate – it led onto a quiet back street where her chances of going unnoticed were improved.
The procession was travelling through the main streets of the old town and down towards the water’s edge.
Gina, if she ran into either of the brothers, was going to tell them Rafaella had gone there ahead.
Instead she would be travelling in the opposite direction, heading west towards the new neighbourhood, where Cosimo awaited her.
They would take a taxi to Maglie and from there a train, when they could disappear completely.
Neither Fon nor Dante Giannelli would ever see them again.
She could hear the band playing from the main street and took comfort in hearing it grow ever fainter as she hurried through the narrow alleys. The modern neighbourhood was only a few minutes’ walk away. She could already see the apartment blocks through some of the straighter streets …
She ran as fast as she could with her bag, stepping out a few minutes later into the glare of the sunlight on the wide, straight street. Here was safety. Here was freedom.
And there he was.
Cosimo was waiting for her, just as she’d always dreamed.
He was sitting on a scooter, staring down one of the side streets that divided the modern white apartment blocks.
He had no bags but was wearing a shirt and trousers she recognized from the old days.
There was nothing to mark him out as a seminarian, a fugitive from the Church. He was hers again.
‘Cosi!’ she gasped.
He turned as she ran over and flung her arms around him.
‘We did it!’ she whispered, hardly able to believe it had all passed without a hitch.
She had been so sure Fon or Dante would be able to tell there was something afoot at Mass this morning, as if the plan was a scent they could detect. A blood trail they could follow.
She had scarcely dared look at him in the cathedral but she kissed him now, sinking into their new beginning. Only … his body was tense and stiff.
He pulled away, glancing back down the street anxiously, and she realized they weren’t yet safe. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she murmured.
Cosimo hesitated as she fastened her bag to the straps on the back of the scooter. ‘We … we can’t, Raf.’
‘… What?’ Tears immediately sprang to her eyes. Their happy ending was right here – they were standing in it!
‘Fon and Dante are down there,’ he said, his eyes still trained on the side street, his fingers tapping anxiously on the handlebars.
She followed his sightline and saw her husband and his brother – the very people she’d been hiding from – talking to someone else beside some parked cars.
Even at a distance, she recognized the lop-shouldered silhouette: Francesco.
‘I have to follow them.’
‘But why? Just forget them! It’s behind us.’ She remembered the bruise on her cheek and his look of horror as his eyes had landed upon it in the cathedral. ‘None of it’s important now.’
He didn’t take his eyes off the street. ‘You don’t understand … They’ve got Fede. He and Dante.’
She stared at him as if he had just hit her. ‘What? … No! They wouldn’t …’
Wouldn’t they? Wasn’t she, this very moment, stealing away from her own home and her entire life because she had been threatened by one brother, assaulted by the other? Hadn’t Gina told her their spies would be watching her every move? Threats, assaults, spies … was kidnapping really such a reach?
She watched Cosimo watching the men, and knew he believed it of them.
‘Oh God …’ she whispered, watching them too. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know. I need to see where they’ve got him first.’ He glanced at her distractedly, scarcely able to lift his attention off them for a moment. ‘Just wait here for me.’
‘No!’ she cried, immediately climbing onto the back of the bike and gripping him with her arms. ‘You’re not going without me.’
‘Rafa, no! It could be dangerous. You don’t know what they’re capable of.’
‘They wouldn’t hurt me. Or him,’ she replied staunchly. ‘Fede and Dante were friends when they were kids.’
‘That’s precisely the problem. Fede knows everything about them. He can identify them. They’re not going to let him go.’
She closed her eyes against the words. Murder too?
She knew she was an innocent compared to Gina’s savvy and cynical world view, but was this the full truth her friend had been trying to show her?
Her marriage had been a lunar landscape, never showing the dark side of the moon. ‘… How do you even know all this?’
‘Because they got what they wanted last night. I saw the ransom handover happen. I didn’t see it for what it was at the time, but now I do.
Fede has served his purpose for them, so either they …
’ He stumbled on the words. ‘Either they dealt with him last night, or they’re going to do it now. ’ His voice was rigid with tension.
‘Now?’ It didn’t feel real. Fon was going straight from church to kill a man?
His head turned back slightly towards her. ‘Was Fon at home last night?’ he asked over his shoulder.
‘I don’t know. I was at Gina’s.’
‘Right.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Well, they would have needed Fede alive for leverage, and they only got the diary late last night, and they’ve been at Mass all morning, so …
I’m praying that means they’ve not had a chance to do it yet.
’ He glanced back towards the historic centre, in the direction of the parade.
‘… And who would notice if they disappeared for a few hours in the middle of a carnival?’
It was the same logic by which they’d hoped to vanish themselves. The hunted had become the hunters, seeking out the very people they’d been running from.
Cosimo’s fingers tapped solidly on the handlebars as he kept watch over their movements. He looked as if he hadn’t slept, pale and baggy-eyed, like he’d endured the worst night of his life. But that couldn’t be true. Nothing could ever be worse than the night Romola had died.
‘… You said they got a diary?’ she asked.
‘My father’s. He kept records of the misdeeds of most of the cabinet. It was bad enough when it was in his care; at least all he wanted was position. But in Dante’s hands … the guy’s a mobster, Rafa. It would give him unchecked power.’ He flinched suddenly. ‘… They’re moving.’
She looked down the street to see the brothers getting into a car, Francesco crossing the road further down and getting into one too. He pulled out first, the Giannellis following in Dante’s glossy Lancia Flaminia.
‘Where did you get this scooter?’ she asked as Cosimo stirred into action.
‘I’m borrowing it,’ he said, fiddling with the wires.
‘But how do you even know …?’
The scooter started into life. ‘My misspent youth in Rome wasn’t entirely useless,’ he said, kicking off the stand. He turned his head to speak to her over his shoulder. ‘Hold me tightly,’ he said softly. ‘To be safe.’