home immediately, but it had been too late. A mysterious fever had swept through the village, and he had watched his family die, one by one. First his mother, then his sisters, his brothers, and finally his father.
Only then, when all those he loved were dead, had he realized how much he had loved them. Deep inside, he had felt as if their deaths had been his fault.
At the urging of the village priest, Giuseppe's parents had taken Gabriel into their home. At first, mourning the loss of his family, he had kept to himself, but as time passed, he discovered a whole new world, a world of wealth and aristocracy, a world where people never went to bed hungry, where servants did the work, where everyone dressed in fine clothes.
It was a world he had never seen before, a world he wanted for his own.
Giuseppe's parents had been most generous. They had fed him and clothed him, but fine clothes could not disguise Giovanni's lack of social grace. Still, he had tried hard and learned quickly, and he'd had one thing in his favor: he was young and handsome and the women adored him. They were willing to make allowances for his cloddish manners, willing to teach him the dances of the day, to instruct him in etiquette and proper decorum. He had quickly learned the polite phrases, the art of dancing and fencing, the proper way to sit a horse, to greet royalty. But always, in the back of his mind, had been the knowledge that he was only pretending.
He had been nine and twenty when he accompanied Giuseppe to Venice. It had been a time of laughter, of parties that seemed never-ending. It was there he had met Antonina Insenna. She had beguiled him from the start, and he had quickly fallen prey to her dark beauty. She had been a woman of untold wealth and power. To others she had appeared coolly self-assured, aloof, but for Giovanni she had smiled, and when she smiled, he was lost.
Nina had been everything he had thought he wanted in a woman: beautiful, desirable, mysterious. The fact that she was older than he only added to her mystique, as did her refusal to see him during the day, and though they had spent every evening together, she had refused to let him stay the night. And because he had thought himself in love, because she had been a woman of the world, full of fire and mystery, he had seen only what he wanted to see.
And then, on an afternoon in later summer, he had met Rosalia Baglio, a young woman of quiet, incomparable beauty. He had been smitten with her from the first, and she with him. He knew then that what he had felt for Antonina was not love, but lust.
He began to avoid Nina's company, preferring to spend all his time with Rosalia. They had met openly and in secret, pledging their love and devotion, even though he had feared she could never be his. Rosalia came from a wealthy family, while he had no money of his own, no lands, no title.
It had been inevitable that Antonina should discover that he had left her for another woman. Her wrath had been terrible to see. She had threatened to tell Rosalia of their affair, threatened to kill him, to kill Rosalia in front of his very eyes, but in the end she had done none of those things.
"You will regret this, Gianni," she had told him on what he had thought would be their last night together. "The time will come when you will beg me for that which only I can give, and the price will be dear."
He had not believed her. And then, after a wild night of carousing and drinking with Giuseppe and a few friends, he had taken sick with a fever. Giuseppe's parents had summoned the physicians. They had bled him to exorcise the bad humors from his body. They had forced vile concoctions down his throat, but to no avail. Two days later, the doctors went away, shaking their heads, and he had known he was going to die.
He had been trying to accept the fact that his life was over before it had begun when Antonina appeared in his room as if by magic.
"I can help you, Giovanni," she had promised in her soft, silky voice. "Only say you will be mine for one night, and all will be well.