‘It did. A tremendous, unprecedented profit, in fact. But no one remembers the ball, Lucia. It got no press coverage at all. All we saw was your face.Again.’
Lucia steeled herself and chose to side-step his callous comment. As if she had a choice in the matter. But as much as she wanted to disappear, she needed answers. ‘If the ball turned such a handsome profit, why have you decided to renege on our verbal agreement?’
‘Just as I told you at our last meeting. A further condition to my donation would be dependent on a more tempting offer presenting itself.’ He sat back in his wingback chair and crossed his hands sagely over his belly. ‘Well, I had a better one from this year’s investor in the ball. We arrived at an agreement that if the ball reached a target of increased profitability I would hold out on donating to third parties for a period of twelve months. The ball almost doubled that target.’
‘Youactuallymeant that?’ Lucia’s blood ran cold. ‘Who is this investor?’
‘Vittorio Gatti.’
Lucia leaned over the edge of thefondamentaas far as was possible without tipping in. There, in that quiet place just off the Grand Canal, she allowed the contents of her stomach to spill out. It came in waves marked by convulsions and shivers. She held her gathered long hair in one hand, and braced herself with the other.
Eventually, once there was nothing left, she lay down on the embankment and gently sobbed. There was no audience. No prying eyes. No one ever travelled that far down the canal. There was nothing to see except for the abandoned waterlogged palazzi and the green waterlines of theacqua alta, proudly marking their territory. Humans were no longer welcome there.
With her chin resting on the cold pavers, Lucia looked down into the emerald-tinted waters. The reflection of her eyes was immediately lost against the water.
To Lucia, it felt like the universe had imploded. Everything that had ever made sense in her life was hanging by a thread. There she was, with that same thread wound around her neck, punishing her for having cared enough to fight for her independence and her parents’ legacy. And now, she felt as though she’d been left there to dangle.
Eventually, once the nausea subsided, she rolled onto her back and looked upward. The clouds and sky shared the same pallid grey tones, indistinguishable from one another. Just an ominous vacuous expanse, mirroring the numbing nothingness that weighed down her limbs.
Prying herself carefully from thefondamenta, Lucia sat upright. She reached into her bag in search of a tissue to wipe her mouth, but instead her fingers found something sharp. Withdrawing it, Lucia was insulted to find it was Vittorio’s business card.
Imprenditore vecchio stile.
In Lucia’s book he was nothing more than a manipulative crook. The idea of him being anything else, let alone anold-school entrepreneur, as he professed, made her stomach churn once more.
She scowled and folded the card in half, and was just about to throw it in the water, when suddenly she noticed an address on the back.
Hisaddress.
venticinque
‘Dimmi come ti permetti?’ Lucia snarled, finding Vittorio Gatti at the front of his building, lit cigar in his right hand, phone pressed to his ear in his left. ‘How can you stoop so low?’
Gatti raised his eyebrows upon seeing Lucia there, enraged, fists balled by her sides, her long black hair catching and flicking in the wind. ‘Ah. And right on cue,’ he said, acknowledging her with a nod. ‘And just as you said she might, Tiziano. I’ll call you back.’ Ending the call he allowed the phone to drop into his tailored blazer pocket. Balancing his cigar between his middle fingers he clasped his hands together condescendingly. ‘Can I help you with something, Lucia?’
‘Why are you doing this? You have no interest whatsoever in my school, other than some sick ego-driven plot to own and write off half of the lagoon. You know nothing about us and what we’ve been through. Leave us alone, Vittorio!’
He tutted. ‘Now, now, Lucia. That simply isn’t true.’ His eyes beamed with the most disingenuous concern Lucia had ever seen. ‘I care very much about La Scuola Rosa and its success. And in turn,oursuccess.’
‘Never ever use a possessive adjective when referring to La Scuola Rosa. Or me. The school isn’t yours, and won’t ever be. I’ll be seeing to it.’
‘It’s difficult not to think of it aspartlymine, considering I have a contract of sale upstairs onmydesk withmyname on it. I will countersign the deal the moment your ninety days are up and you have failed to raise the money. Edoardo delivered it personally. We’re going to have such a wonderful time working together.Collega.’ His thin little lips pursed tightly around the word, then morphed into a sly grin.
Lucia launched a belly-aching guffaw. ‘Colleghi? Us? You would have to know what a genuine day’s work is in order to call yourself anyone’scollega, Vittorio. And I’d wager that you’ve never spent a day of your life working truly, innocently, back-breakingly hard, like we do.’
‘I see your wager,’ he said, stepping forward menacingly, lowering his voice to a whisper. ‘And double it.’ His steel-blue eyes bored through hers, and it was plainly clear to Lucia that Vittorio Gatti’s vast wealth could be outdone by one thing, and one thing only.
His desire for control.
There would be no headway to be made with this infuriating man. Lucia knew that. But it was her stubborn resolve that kept her fighting. ‘Over the bodies of my dead parents!’ she cried.
Vittorio rolled his eyes. ‘Pfft! You are the least of my worries.’
‘How do you sleep at night? Hmm?’
‘Quite well, actually,’ he chuckled. ‘But the sleep following a new acquisition to my portfolio is the richest, deepest of sleeps.’
Lucia wrung her hands to keep from clobbering him with them. ‘You’re not an ally of Venice. You’re its greatest enemy. You’re not worthy of an inch of La Scuola Rosa.’
