I just needed to persuade him to go somehow, to make him see that I wouldn’t fade from the world if he weren’t around to fend off death.
How?
“Is there a problem, Scarlett?” Donato said, coming to stand beside me.
“If—if there was a way to persuade you to be with Chiara, despite the danger from—” I summed this up with a wave of the hand. I didn’t need to fill in the blank. He understood. “What would it be?”
Donato, apart from Brando and his brothers, was the only other man who was so hardheaded that he could crack nuts if they were to ever fall on his head. He still refused to be with Chiara, despite how he felt about her. “I cannot tell you that,” he said softly.
“Why not?”
He grinned, but it wasn’t pleasant. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket—he was dressed to the nines in spite of the heat—and mopped at his head. His sleeves were rolled up, though, and that said something. “You will tell her.”
I gazed at him for a moment, hoping my eyes conveyed the seriousness I felt. “What if I promise not to?”
“Hypothetical only?”
“Of course.”
Donato gave Livio a look that made him stand straighter. “Check on Signor Fausti.”
Livio nodded. “Si, Signor De Luca.” The Whip—which was what some of the men called Livio—did as his superior told him, making his way through the crowd, in the direction of the fishmonger. Though he never disappeared. Usually two heads above everyone around him, he stood out.
“If she told me she was unhappy.”
I still watched Livio, and at Donato’s words, my full attention turned to him. I wasn’t expecting that. “But—sheisunhappy!”
“Sì. However, she is safe.” He shrugged. “Also, she has not told me so. She has been angry. That is, the hypothetical woman we are discussing.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gave me a look that told me it was just one of those things perhaps a woman couldn’t understand. Or perhaps it was an Italian thing. “If she came to me and told me that she could not live without me, I would have to yield to her. I think. I have visions of her falling at the hands of enemies, and I am not able to save her. I could not—I could not live with myself if she were to suffer because of who I am and what I do.”
“But if she told you that she couldn’t live without you?”
“Then perhaps I would be moved to take the chance.”
He glanced at me, our eyes met, and then he looked away.
“Huh,” was all I could say.
He smiled at this, the first true smile I had seen from him since our return from Fiji.
“You have a nice smile, Donato. You should use it more often. Chiara—”
“Scarlett, hypothetical time is over.”
I put a hand on his arm, hot from the sun, and took a deep breath. Some of his misery made my heart twist painfully in my chest.
A commotion coming from one of the vendor’s booths caused Donato and me to look in the same direction. People slowed, rubbernecking, causing a clog in the flow of the market. I listened more intently to the voices steadily rising above the normal chatter, and then threw my hands over my face, groaning.
Donato grinned, shaking his head.
The man who owned that particular booth also owned a shop in town. I had shopped at both, and only realized later that the prices he charged me at his booth were higher than what he had charged me at his shop. I liked his pears, and his Chianti was good.
Seemingly able to read my thoughts, Brando had hit me with “tell me.” I didn’t want to mention it to him, but I did, waving a hand like it was no big deal.
My husband made it a big deal. He was personally affronted, as if the man had stuck his hand in my purse and stole money. He accused the man of being a cheat and gouging his loyal customers, not to mention unsuspecting tourists. The man, who had beady eyes like a rat and ears like an elephant, took complete offense to this. It ended up being a battle of words—one Italian insult slung in response to another. The battle ended when the man threw up his hands and left us standing in his shop alone, still calling angry shouts from behind his door.
