Page 48 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"And you're telling me all this for what reason?"
Then she looked at me. And for the first time since I'd met Bianca Varga, I saw something that looked like truth in her eyes.
"Because your father offered me two hundred thousand euros in January," she answered plainly. "But Luca gave me seven years of his life, bella. And even when he ended it, even when he sent me away, even when he traded me for a girl of twenty-three fresh out of a convent who sets her jaw when someone doubts her—even so, I can't betray him completely." She looked at the floor, thoughtful. "I altered the envelope, I did what I promised your father, but I can't let you go back to Palermo without knowing."
"Why not?"
"Because you're the only thing that's happened to Luca in seven years that's going to save him. And I, even now, even hurt, would rather have him saved than avenged."
I swallowed hard and stood up slowly. My legs were shaking.
"Bianca. You're telling me this because you know I'm going to tell Luca."
"I know."
"And you're asking him to let you live."
"I'm asking you to ask him to let me live. That's different."
I looked at her so long that she looked away.
"I'll ask."
"Grazie."
"But you leave Posillipo tomorrow. And you never come back."
"Capisco."
"And if I find out, at any moment in the next twenty years, that you're meeting with my father again—I'll go back to Palermo myself and finish what Luca didn't. Chiaro?"
"Chiaro, Signora Moretti."
The word hit me in the chest like a blow.
Signora Moretti.
For the first time, someone had called me that.
I didn't go to my room.
I crossed the west wing hallway, turned right down the corridor of the family bedrooms—where I'd never set foot, where the doors were all dark oak and the candelabra were bronze, not crystal—and stopped in front of the last door at the end of the hall.
Luca's room.
I'd never come here.
I knocked three times, and his voice came from the other side, low:
"Avanti."
CHAPTER 15
"Before you kiss a woman, listen to what she has to tell you. Then you decide if you still want to."
VALENTINA ROSSI
His room was dark.
