Page 39 of Palazzo
“I’ve been thinking about your offer and was wondering if you’d reconsidered,” he said hopefully.
“No, I haven’t. What I offered you is a fair price for what the business is worth, for your third of it. You cost us a lot of money, Luca. I had to sell the palazzo to cover your gambling debt, and after the fire, I decided to sell it anyway. We couldn’t afford to repair the damage. Because of what you did, we could collect no insurance to pay for it. And I still gave you your third of the sale price when we sold it. I’ve been fair with you. You haven’t been fair with us.”
“What part of this do you call fair?” he said angrily to her. “Two years in prison for setting a small fire in my own house?”
“It’s not your house, it wasourhouse, and it wasn’t a small fire. You did up to two million euros’ worth of damage.”
“You could have withdrawn the charges, and fought for me, and I wouldn’t be here.”
“That’s not true. The police would have prosecuted you for arson no matter what we did. And you were going to try to collect the insurance money, which was fraud.”
“I did you a favor. You would have gotten part of that insurance money. You could have made a profit on it if you did the repairs cheaply or let the buyers pay for it. Then we could have kept the insurance money. It would have been a bonus for us, free money inaddition to the sale. That was the whole idea. We could have sold the placeandcollected the insurance money, and let the buyers pay for the repairs.” Listening to him depressed her, and made it clear how twisted his mind was. He always had an angle, and a scheme to make “easy” money, even illegally.
“It was all dishonest,” she said, he still didn’t get it, and didn’t want to. “And you would be serving a longer sentence if Gian Battista hadn’t intervened for you.”
“Agh, Gian Battista and all his holier-than-thou bullshit. He was a pompous ass and he didn’t do a damn thing for me. With his connections he could have gotten me off if he wanted to.”
“He said he couldn’t,” she defended Gian Battista. “Your reputation all over Venice was too bad. You even bragged at the casino about setting the fire. At least you’ll have money now from the sale of the palazzo, when you come out,” she said, wondering if he still had it a year later or was spending it from prison, making bad deals.
“Life in here isn’t cheap, if you want to live comfortably and be safe. I pay other inmates to protect me.” She knew he had to be behaving badly if he needed protection from other criminals like him.
“So, what do you want for your third of the business?” she asked him directly while the attorney listened to the exchange. He felt bad for her as he did. He thought Luca was rotten to the core and he was sorry she had to pay him anything. So was she. Luca gave her the same number he had before, which was about four times what it was worth. She stood up when he said it. “Fine. Then we’re done. It’s not worth that, and you know it.” Maybe it would be one day, but it wasn’t yet. And he could decide to wait until then, but she suspectedhe wanted money now, probably for crooked deals he was making. She wondered if he was dealing drugs from inside. She knew that was common in prison.
“All right, all right, sit down. What are you offering me?” She repeated the number she had offered him in June, based on the appraisal of the business. “You cheap bitch. You can do better than that,” he said angrily.
“Actually, no, I can’t. We have heavy operating costs, to maintain the high quality of our product and pay our staff. What I offered you is all we can afford. If it’s not good enough for you, then I’m sorry, and we’re done.” He was quiet for a moment and she didn’t move, waiting to see what he would do. He spat at her feet, narrowly missing her shoe, and she didn’t react. “Are we done?” she asked him. She didn’t like being there with him, even with her lawyer present. She realized then that Luca seemed agitated and nervous, and she wondered if he was on drugs.
“Fine,” he said fiercely, with a look of fury. “I’ll take it. But don’t expect me to thank you. You’re a bitch, Cosima, you always were, acting as though you were some kind of angel sent by our parents. What did you ever do for me?”
“You mean other than support you for the last fifteen years, pay your bills, and cover your gambling debts? I tried to bring you up to be a decent human being and an honorable man. I failed abysmally. You’re just a small-time crook, and you’ll wind up in prison again if you don’t wake up and straighten up.”
“Oh, you mean like that little wimp who squealed on me? Your boyfriend’s son,” he said viciously.
“You turned him in first. You two deserve each other.”
“How fast will I get my money?” he asked her, which made her think he really was up to no good and it was why he wanted the money now. He should have still been more than okay with his share of the money from the sale, if he hadn’t spent it.
“You’ll get your money as soon as I write the check.” She would have preferred to give it to him in installments, but she guessed that he would prefer it in one lump sum, so she stuck with that.
“All right. Transfer it to my account today,” he said nastily, as the attorney handed him the papers to sign and a pen, which Luca grabbed roughly from him. His manners, what was left of them, had vanished in jail. He had the same upbringing she and Allegra did, but one would never have known it, or even that they were related.
“There’s no more money for you after this, Luca,” she told him bluntly. “You’re out of the business, and the palazzo. After this you’re on your own.”
“I am anyway,” he said bitterly. “You and that pathetic cripple of a sister of ours have it all.” What he said then was too much for her, and in one leap she got to her feet, crossed the small room, stared him in the eye, and slapped him as hard as she could. He didn’t react, and didn’t return the blow, and she wouldn’t have cared if he had. The lawyer looked panicked.
“Don’t youever, everspeak about Allegra that way again. I don’t care what you say about me, but she’s a saint and an incredible, wonderful human being.Youare dirt under her feet.” She was shaking with rage and he looked mortified, which surprised the attorney. “Now sign the damn paper and we’re done.” He hastily scrawled hissignature and handed all three copies back to her. Her slap had woken him up, she really had been like a mother to him for fifteen years, and he knew it.
He touched her arm as she turned her back to him and waited to be let out of the small room they visited him in. The lawyer had rung the buzzer, twice, for a guard, anxious to leave. “I’m sorry, Cosi,” Luca muttered. He hadn’t called her that since he was a child, and it touched her heart for an instant.
“So am I,” she said sadly, “that it has to be like this. I hope you find your way back from all this one day.” He shook his head as though even he knew it was hopeless, as the guards opened the door and he disappeared back into the bowels of the hell he lived in, without looking back at her. She walked out with her back straight and her eyes looking ahead. She thanked the attorney and took a water taxi to the station where she could get a cab to the airport and fly back to Rome.
As the plane took off over the city, she saw Venice below her, a city of dreams and mysteries, magic, hope and despair, and mourned the brother she had lost and feared she would never see again. She prayed that somewhere deep within him, there was a shred of a human being left that would surface again one day. Long ago, he had been a child loved by his parents and his sisters, before he turned into a monster. She remembered the moment he had told her he was sorry. It was a final flicker of hope that had gone out just as quickly. And now it felt like he was dead.
Chapter 16
Allegra and Basile were married at the Chiesa di San Moisè near the Piazza San Marco on a brilliantly sunny day in June. It was the second anniversary of the day Cosima and Olivier had met. Cosima walked beside her sister as she rolled down the aisle in her grandmother’s exquisite antique lace dress with the train behind her, draped over the back of her wheelchair. And she wore a nineteenth-century pearl tiara on her dark hair. As the head of the family, Cosima gave her away, and then took her place next to Olivier in the front pew. The church was filled with lily of the valley. Allegra and Basile had chosen San Moisè because there were no stairs for Allegra to negotiate in her chair. The ceremony was solemn as they sat beside each other in two huge chairs at the altar, and the music they had chosen was beautiful. After he kissed the bride, Basile stood up, swept her into his arms, light as a feather, and walked down the aisle triumphantly carrying her, with the train of her gown trailing behind them and Allegra laughing. One of the ushers folded her chair andtook it away, as everyone marveled at how perfect they were together.
All two hundred guests, mostly from Rome, many from Paris, and a few from Venice, rode to the Palazzo Saverio in gondolas decorated with white flowers. The bridal boat was covered by a canopy of white orchids and lily of the valley.
