Roberto could smell the sickness. The room stank of it. Of sickness and pain. And blood. He had once walked into a barn full of goats that had been savaged by a rabid dog and it had smelled like this. He stepped away from the ginger-haired escort whose eyes never left the spot where Roberto’s gun was now concealed under his jacket, and took a position with his back to the wall, alert and watchful. Isabella’s father put down the syringe he was holding and stalked around the bed to stand in front of his daughter.
“Don’t, Isabella, don’t look so shocked.” He peered over his spectacles at her with stern disapproval. “What are you doing here? Get out now. This”—he waved a hand at the ashen figure on the bed—“is no place for you.”
Isabella seemed to shake herself, her hair rippling back to life before she did, as though for a split second something had stopped working inside her.
“You knew, Papa. All this time you knew, didn’t you, that it was Carlo Olivera? You knew where he was hiding? You knew and you never told me. Why? Why keep it from me?”
Dr. Cantini frowned at her. “You’d been through enough. I wanted you to forget.”
Her eyes flashed angrily at both men. “Did you really think I could forget?” She moved closer to the bed. “I understand your hatred of my husband,” she said to Olivera, “but did you think that you could kill him and maim me and I would forget?” She placed her hand on the mattress beside him and stared down into his fierce blue eyes.
He knew that Isabella had come for vengeance. Roberto could see it in his eyes. Just as clearly as Roberto knew it himself. Yet Olivera didn’t cry out. They both saw her slide her left hand into the sling that supported her right arm and let her fingers steal around the knife that they were certain lay there, though they couldn’t see it. She had hidden it well.
“Signora Berotti,” Carlo Olivera whispered, as his ice-blue eyes scrutinized her face, “you are hating the wrong person. All that rage is tearing you apart. When the person you should be hating is Benito Mussolini.” He spat out a thick jet of blood-streaked spittle, as though the name burned his tongue. “He is the one you should be saving an assassin’s blade for. Not me.”
“Mussolini is not the killer who pulled the trigger that destroyed my life, Signor Olivera. You are.”
Peppe stepped toward her, but Roberto blocked his path.
With a great effort Olivera pushed himself to sit upright, forcing Isabella back. His shirt hung open to reveal a thick pad of bandages across his chest, fresh scarlet stains flowering across them with the movement.
“Don’t, Carlo,” Dr. Cantini groaned. “For God’s sake, what is the point of my patching you up if you . . . ?”
But Olivera brushed aside the objections with a sharp twist of one shoulder. He was propping himself up on one hand and Roberto could see the force of will keeping him there. His lips had turned gray and sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat. This was not a man who listened to others telling him what to do. The Communist leaned his face close to Isabella’s, their eyes fixed on each other.
“I let you come here today,” Olivera told her, “because you were kind to my daughter when she needed me and I couldn’t be there. You have helped her, so now I help you.”
He glanced away to Rosa, who was on her knees on the floor on the far side of the bed in an attitude of fervent prayer. Her eyes were tight shut, her small hands clasped around her mother’s crucifix, her lips moving in silent prayer.
“Come here, Rosa.”
Instantly she was beside him, her head tucked against his bandaged ribs. He stroked her cropped curls for a moment, but without warning he suddenly wrapped his fingers hard around the hand in Isabella’s sling. It must have hurt but she gave no sign of it, and Roberto could sense her father’s concern as intense as his own, but both knew better than to intervene. This was between them, Olivera and Isabella.
“Signora Berotti,” Olivera said with an odd smile that sat crookedly on his lean face, “you do not have it in you to kill. Look at my eyes, look hard. Yes, you see, don’t you, what is destroyed in a person each time a trigger is pulled. I am willing to pay that price for my country. But it is not in you; you don’t have what it takes to kill.” His eyes flicked over to Roberto. “Unlike your big friend over there, who does.”
“You mistake me, signore,” Isabella said quietly.
Roberto saw it then. What he had not until now believed. In the darkening of her eyes. He saw that the Communist was wrong. No warning. No hesitation. No doubting herself. The knife was in her hand and the blade was pinned against Olivera’s throat.
No one breathed, no one moved. The child whimpered. Olivera’s blue eyes turned the color of death as the reality of his mistake drained all certainty from them.
“Isabella,” Roberto said softly.
That was all. Just her name. To call her back. But she didn’t hear. She was somewhere he couldn’t reach her and he knew it was almost too late. He moved toward her.
“No, Roberto.”
A trickle of blood slid down the Communist’s throat. His eyes didn’t leave hers.
“For God’s sake, Carlo,” her father shouted, “tell her. Tell her the truth. I won’t see her hang for you.” He turned to his daughter and his face was suddenly ten years older, the flesh hanging from his cheekbones. “Tell Isabella the truth or I will.”
Isabella blinked. The blade froze. “What truth?”
Olivera let himself breathe. “I did not kill your husband. I was not the one who pulled the trigger to fire the bullets that took his life and wounded you.”
A shake of her head. A tightening of her mouth. “You’re lying.”
“No, he’s not,” her father insisted.
“Who then? If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
The silence in the room was only broken by the moan of the child. She lifted her head from her father’s side and tears rolled down her cheeks.
“It was Mamma.”
Isabella dropped the knife.
Olivera nodded. “It was my wife, Allegra Bianchi.”