must be harder than any of the others, more cruel than your enemies. Costanza knew that. And you will soon understand it as well.”
“I’ll see you on the terrace,” she called back over her shoulder. “We’ll discuss it further there.” Not down here. Not in the dark.
But the darkness followed her up into the daylight.
A PACT
ROSA BREATHED IN THE fresh air as if she couldn’t get enough of it. A cool breeze off the sea was blowing in her face, but she couldn’t shake the smell of the hotel basement.
She closed her eyes, but the sun was still burning bright red through her eyelids. Forcing herself not to show any weakness, she looked ahead again, and was irritated to see Contessa di Santis coming toward her on the terrace with a concerned expression.
“Everything all right, Signorina Alcantara?”
“Fine.”
“You look pale.”
“I have a fair complexion. Always did.”
The assistant nodded understandingly. “We can’t choose what we’re born with, can we?”
Before Rosa could reply, di Santis turned to Trevini, who was guiding his wheelchair out of the hotel lounge and into the open air. Rosa thought this would be a good moment to throttle him from behind.
“Can I bring you anything?” asked the assistant. “Drinks? A little snack from the kitchen?”
Trevini shook his head. “Leave us alone, please.”
Di Santis looked back over her shoulder, almost reproachfully. As she did so, her left eyebrow rose higher and higher, until Rosa began to fear that it might disappear right into her hairline.
“As you wish,” said the assistant, stalking away into the lounge. Rosa signaled to the two bodyguards to go into the building as well. Di Santis could not refrain from saying, “Please come with me, gentlemen. Maybe I can do something for you.”
Trevini moved his wheelchair past Rosa and over to the balustrade. His good eye wandered over the water in the distance. “We’re all inclined to take ourselves too seriously, don’t you agree? To think of all that this sea has known in its time! Ancient Greece, Rome, Carthage, the early Mesopotamian tribes. Ur and Babylon, the biblical peoples. And here we are discussing a single life, just one unimportant human being.”
“You move me deeply, avvocato, you really do. But I didn’t come here for a history lesson or to look at the beautiful view.”
“Without the sea I couldn’t live here,” he continued, undeterred. “It’s one of the reasons why I never leave this hotel.”
“What are the others?”
“I’m too old to take risks.” He put his fingertips to his temples. “What I have in here, in my head, is the only capital I have. Did you know that I don’t even own a computer? And no cabinets full of files.” Of course she knew; it was the first thing she had heard about Trevini. “I keep everything that matters in my mind, as I have for years. No evidence, no trails. I was born with an extraordinary memory, and I imagine it’s only right that I pay for it with certain deficiencies in other respects.”
She was watching him as he spoke. But he was still staring out over the Mediterranean, into that breathtaking blue space.
“I’m sure you have wondered why I appointed the contessa my assistant,” he went on. “She has top qualifications and references, she is easy on the eye—but none of that explains why she is really here. The truth of it is that she has the same qualities as me. I have spent a long time looking for someone who can compete with me in that respect. She is young, enormously ambitious, and she is certainly a complex character. I suffer from that more than anyone.” The twinkle in his eyes ought to have seemed insinuating, but instead it looked almost friendly. “Above all, however, she has a remarkable ability to absorb facts. She hears something, sees something, and after that it’s stored in her head as if it were on a hard disk. I have to resign myself to being less unique than I have always thought. That young lady is perfect.”
Rosa sighed. “At least as far as her bra size is concerned, right?”
“I’m sorry,” he said in kindly tones. “You don’t have to like the contessa, Rosa. I’m not even sure that I do. But think of her as your personal security copy of me. Just in case something happens to me one of these days.”
“She’s been initiated into everything? Every deal? Every transaction?”
“I took the liberty of revealing them to her. We sit together and I tell her