Page 47 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"What were they?"
"First: keep circulating in Luca's life as a friend of the family, so I'd keep having access to the house. Second: when you arrived, introduce myself to you. Plant doubt about Luca in your head. You'd find things out slowly—one at a time—and through me, not through Luca. Third: alter the envelope, change the date on that letter, so that if anything was suspected, confusion would set in and you'd have to choose who to distrust—Luca or your father. And since you grew up hating Luca, he bet you'd choose to distrust him."
I felt the blood rising up the back of my neck.
"My father..."
"Your father..."
"My father hired you to manipulate me inside Luca's house."
"Sì."
"Why?"
"Because he's afraid of you finding out, bella."
"Finding out what?"
She looked at me, more tired than I'd ever seen her.
"That Matteo is alive."
The room went dark and came back. I saw the light flicker for a second—was it the light, or was it me?—and steady again.
"What?!"
"Matteo is alive, Valentina," Bianca said slowly, plainly, without pleasure. "I had lunch with him in Capri nine days ago. Your father faked his death in 2019. He put him on a family estate somewhere in Switzerland for three years, and two months ago he took him out and brought him to Capri. He's hidden in the house of an old mistress of your grandfather's, on a street called Via Tragara. A pink house with an ivy hedge."
I couldn't breathe.
"Why?"
"Because Matteo had found out, in 2015, that your father was stealing from the Morettis. He was siphoning money from joint operations into overseas accounts in his name and the names of the Sicilian partners. Matteo confronted him, and your father ordered his son killed." Bianca closed her eyes for half a second. "But at the last minute he couldn't, he just changed the order and had him hidden."
"Killing... would have been easier."
"Killing would have been easier for any father, not for Salvatore Rossi. Salvatore is proud, but he isn't a complete monster. As long as Matteo had vanished, he could control thestory, and he could use the fake death to blame the Morettis and start the war he wanted to start anyway."
"Why did he want the war?"
"For control of the south, for the routes, for the Morettis' private bank, which he wanted to absorb. Bella, the same things the men of this famiglia have been killing over for three hundred years."
I stood still.
The room was still normal, the clocks were still ticking. Vesuvius was still there. Bianca was still on the piano bench, her confession hanging in the air between the two of us like a curtain.
But inside me, something was breaking slowly. I could feel the pieces rearranging.
Matteo, alive. In Capri. Nine days ago. Having lunch with her.
"Why did he tell you, Bianca? Why did Matteo meet you in Capri?"
"Because he found out your father promised you to Luca, bella. And he doesn't want the wedding to happen. Because as long as you're promised to Luca, Luca can't find out he's alive. And as long as Luca can't find out, Matteo stays in a luxury cage on the island. He wants out, wants to go back to Palermo, and for that he needs the wedding not to happen."
"So what exactly did he come to you for?"
"To convince you to run, to convince you to go back to Palermo, and also to convince you to refuse Luca before September 8th."
