“Hey, you with us?” Gabriel asked Kim as they strolled through Pompeii with Lily.
The ruins of the great city always stirred her. It was a reminder of how easily and quickly life as you knew it could end.
The remnants of old houses, empty amphitheaters, and perfectly preserved figures spoke of a city whose tragic fall had been told and retold many times before the eyes of its visitors.
“Sorry,” she apologized as she took several quick steps to catch up with them. Lily was in her dad’s arms and playfully pulling on his nose while also attending to her favorite doll. Gabriel reached out an arm and wound it around Kim’s shoulders as she came closer.
“Baby’s sleepy, Daddy.”
“Is Lily sleepy, too?” Gabriel asked, winking hopefully at Kim, but the little girl shook her head and continued to play.
Kim was still distracted and a few minutes later Gabriel repeated the question he’d asked on their arrival a few days before. “What’s going on? You’re miles away.”
“Nothing,” she continued to lie. She wanted to stop, but telling the truth was proving more difficult than she’d imagined.
He sighed. “You’re not being truthful, though, are you?” he said, and Kim’s heart jumped into her chest. “I know you said you’d have some time to spend with us before everything kicked off, but maybe that was too optimistic.”
“No, honestly, it’s fine.” She refreshed her email again, waiting on more news from Hank, but nothing.
Her mind automatically traveled back to that day she found the journal behind the dresser, and she racked her brains to think who the real owner could possibly be and why they’d chosen now to come out of the woodwork.
Well, she could hazard a guess as to why: it was the perfect opportunity to sabotage the launch and publicly humiliate her in the process—which suggested it had to be personal. The timing was too coincidental for it not to be.
So who was this person? A past guest of the villa would surely have long forgotten about it, or if not, would have recognized or identified Kim’s usage of various quotes and ideas before now.
It couldn’t have been the villa’s previous owner either, because when Antonio had made them an offer to buy it, the family seemed more than happy to have somebody actually pay them to take the ramshackle estate off their hands.
Unless it was a disgruntled relative? Who knew how these family things could go?
But there was little point in Kim trying to figure this out herself, she knew. She had to wait until she heard more from Hank and hope against hope that he could make this go away.
“I want to get down,” Lily complained, and Gabriel temporarily released his arm from Kim to lower their daughter to the ground.
As always, the moment Lily’s feet touched earth she was on the move. Like most three-year-olds she was fearless.
Now, she raced toward the three statues that stood sentinel in the town square. Two of them had no arms and Kim thought Lily might be frightened by that, but nope. She walked right up to the base of the stand on which they stood and stared up, first at one and then the other. She turned to the third. It had the body of a man with small wings and no head.
“Daddy, why are some parts missing?” she asked as she began to move around the stands. “Can we find them?”
Kim had to smile. She’d been such a curious child, too. She’d walk around Central Park with her nanny looking for things to play with.
Though, unlike Lily, Kim’s father was never there for her to ask why things were the way they were. Gloria would never set foot in the park either. She was far too sophisticated and important for something so mundane as walking among trees along with the great unwashed.
What Kim was doing now with her husband and child, her family had never done together. So instead of worrying about work, she should really try to live in the moment and cherish this.
Lily grabbed Gabriel’s hand and began to run around the ancient piazza, peeking behind the statues one by one. “Come find them, come find them.”
“Why don’t we?” Kim teased Gabriel.
He looked at her, faintly shocked that she’d agreed to play hide-and-seek.
The afternoon flew by and it was fun; more fun than Kim had had in months.
She understood why Gabriel enjoyed being with Lily so much. Playing with her made Kim’s heart feel lighter. She stood back now and watched him chase Lily around the amphitheater, up and down the steps and along row after row, puffing as he went. Her blond pigtails bounced on top of her head as she squealed with glee and waved her doll around frantically as she tried to escape him.
It was wonderful to see and Kim realized with a pang that she was missing out—had missed out on so much of Lily’s childhood so far.
That needed to change.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She’d switched off the ringer and hidden it in the bottom of her bag in the hope of trying to forget her worries and concentrating on her family for once.
She knew there’d be emails from the office and possibly calls, too, but they could wait.
But this call wasn’t from the office. It was from Antonio.
“I’ve been trying to call you all day. Where are you?”
Her brow wrinkled at the urgency in his voice. “I’m in Pompeii with Gabriel and Lily. Why?”
“I know that’s important, but there’s something going on you need to know about. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we’ve hit a major snag. More than a snag, actually. This could actually put the launch in jeopardy.”
Oh God, what now?
Kim’s heart began to race. Or was it that Antonio had caught wind of the plagiarism claim and the bad publicity it could generate? Still, it wasn’t like him to back down from anything without a fight.
“What kind of trouble?” she asked, holding her breath. “What kind of problem?”
“The licenses for Villa Dolce Vita. They’ve been revoked.”
Kim’s eyes widened, not expecting this at all.
“What do you mean they’ve been revoked? It took us over a year to get those permissions. Which licenses?”
“All of them, actually. Change of business amendments. Accommodation and health and safety permits. Everything.”
Her knees buckled, but she did her best to stay on her feet. “Say that again?”
“All of them, Kim. Everything. The authorities are giving some bullshit excuse but I don’t understand any of it. Those permissions were granted. Everything was signed off. How could they be revoked now? It doesn’t make sense, yes? So I made some calls but still I got the runaround.”
It had taken months upon months, maybe even a year, of bureaucratic red tape—never easy in Italy at the best of times—to get everything in order so that the villa could reopen and trade as a licensed hotel and wellness retreat.
Kim had been losing sleep, even hair, over getting those across the line before they could even think about green-lighting the renovations. She and Antonio had attended meeting after meeting and sweet-talked official after official to try and get things signed off. And now he was saying they’d just been revoked, wiped clean?
It was a disaster.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Antonio. We did everything we were asked. Every form signed, fees paid, calls taken, and meetings had. We did it all. You were there, too, and I know we left no stone unturned.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It sounds like someone’s out to sabotage us.”
“Yes. Something definitely isn’t right.”
“What do we do, Antonio? We need those permissions to launch, let alone trade. If they’re gone, everything we’ve been working toward has been wasted. Our entire investment... Hundreds of thousands, blown.”
“I’ll go meet with some of my contacts in Sorrento and see if I can find out what’s going on,” he reassured her.
“And I’ll give Hank a call and let him know what’s happening. Maybe he can help somehow.” Although her lawyer was already fighting another fire. What the hell was going on?
“Very well. I’ll call as soon as I’ve confirmed a meeting with the authorities. Try not to worry, Kim, we’ll figure this out.”
“But the launch is this week.” She couldn’t see how something like this could possibly be sorted in time. “Let me know when you’ve arranged the meeting. I want to be there, too. I want to look in the eyes of the people who already approved everything and have them tell me why our permits are suddenly no good.”
“Let’s hope it does not come to that. I will call you back—soon, I hope. Ciao.”
Kim hung up as outright anger began to course through her veins. Why was all this happening? Who was doing it? And why? She clenched her phone in her hands as she tried to keep calm.
“What’s wrong?” Gabriel demanded when he saw the expression on her face. “And please don’t say ‘nothing’ this time. I can see it in your face.”
Kim shook her head, fighting back tears. “Can we just go?” she snapped. The response was unintentional but her emotions were raw, and at that moment the last place she wanted to be was somewhere a population who’d had everything had come to a tragic end.
The parallels were way too close.
“OK, sure. Lily’s hungry and she’s probably tired, too.”
“I’m sorry,” she conceded then. “Trouble with the center. Big trouble. I really have to go deal with it.”
“What’s happened?”
“All the licenses have been revoked. I don’t get it,” she said angrily. “I just don’t understand how this could happen.”
“But I thought they were all signed and sealed? They took you forever to get.”
“I know!”
Lily’s head snapped in her direction and she looked fearfully at Kim. “Why is Mommy shouting?”
“All right. Calm down, we’ll talk later,” Gabriel urged, giving Kim a cautionary glance, and once again she felt bad.
She shouldn’t be taking it out on either of them, but really this wasn’t the time or the place to discuss it.
Gabriel drove and Kim was silent the entire ride back to Sorrento. Her mind was full of questions. Ones for which she had no answers and no clue at all how to get them.
Back at the hotel, Gabriel went to get Lily something to eat and Kim returned to their room.
The moment she entered she was on the phone, making calls to the office, Hank, and every government agency and contact she had in Italy.
“I don’t like this, Hank,” she said to her lawyer as she paced the room. “I don’t believe in coincidences, and all of this happening at the same time seems a little too convenient.”
“You think someone’s trying to sabotage Villa Dolce Vita?”
“Maybe.”
“You may be right. I’ve had my guys looking into those plagiarism claims and while they seem absolutely convoluted, there’s certainly enough to bring negative attention and publicity if they decide to go public. Which you truly don’t want—not now.”
Someone really was out to ruin this—ruin Kim, even.
But who, and perhaps more importantly, why?