Page 54 of Promised to the Don of Naples
I smiled openly, for the first time in three days.
He looked at me, smiling, and his eyes softened a little more.
"Bella. When I see Matteo, I don't know what I'll do."
"I know."
"I might hit him."
"You won't," I said slowly. "Because he's my brother. And you've loved him since you were seven. And because he was held prisoner by my father for seven years, Luca. Seven years. He's been beaten enough."
"You're younger than me, by sixteen years, bella. Why do you talk as if you were older than me?"
"Because of the convent."
"It was the best investment your father ever made without realizing it."
I didn't answer, just looked out the window.
Capri had begun to appear on the horizon. Gray at first, then purple, and very slowly gaining the green contours of the island against the blue.
I rested my head on his shoulder. Without ceremony.
He didn't move, but I felt him breathe in deep.
We stayed like that for fifteen minutes, until the yacht docked.
Capri hit me in the face like a strong perfume.
The marina smelled of orange blossom, salt, diesel, and fresh brioche—someone was opening a bakery near the dock at seven-thirty in the morning. The seagulls made noise out of proportion to their size. The first English tourists were already disembarking from another yacht, in straw hats and expensive clothes, oblivious.
Luca got off first, holding out his hand to help me down.
We crossed the marina without hurry. An electric cart was waiting for us—Capri had no normal car streets in the upper neighborhoods; it was all stone staircases or narrow lanes for electric carts. The driver greeted Luca by name. "Don Moretti."
I hadn't realized it, but the whole island belonged to him in some old way.
We climbed the road from the marina up to the center of Capri. Then we passed through the Piazzetta—empty at that hour, the cafés still closing up from the night before.
We went on and the lane narrowed, the walls of the villas beginning to appear on both sides—bougainvillea hanging, ivy, jasmine.
Via Tragara.
The driver stopped the cart and we got out.
Via Tragara was narrow, old, cobblestoned. On one side was the sea—you couldn't see it, but you could hear it. On the other, the villas, all with high fences.
We walked about three hundred yards, and there, at the end of the lane, in the corner on the right, with a thick ivy hedge climbing sixteen feet and a small wrought-iron gate painted white—a pink house.
Pale pink. A red-tile roof, windows with green shutters closed, bougainvillea climbing up the side to the upper terrace. There was a small fountain inside the garden—I could hear the water through the gate.
We stopped at the gate.
Luca put his hand on my waist, not to hold me back.
"Bella. If he's really here, in ten minutes your life changes again."
"I know."
