family were lined up on coat hangers in your cellar.”
Rosa stared at the blank wall. She would have liked to get to her feet and prowl around the room, but the damn Stone Age phone had too short a cord for that.
“Stay out of this,” she said, and was horrified to hear the tremor in her voice. “Alessandro is my business. Nothing to do with anyone else.”
“I’m afraid you delude yourself. There’s more at stake here than the question of who you’re necking with.”
She wasn’t letting him destroy her relationship with Alessandro. No one could do that.
“It’s about the family,” he said. “The inheritance that you accepted. Your father’s legacy. That ought to matter to you.”
“My father’s not in his grave.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I opened his casket. There’s nothing but bricks inside.”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line.
“No good advice?” she asked after a while.
“I’m considering it. And that you ought to be putting your mind to more important matters than—”
“Than the fact that my father’s fucking casket is empty?” she shouted. Whether she liked it or not, she couldn’t help going on in the same furious tone. “You can drop the tone of superiority, Trevini! And your warnings and predictions and all that garbage, too. We have a deal. If I need your paternal advice, I’ll call and ask for it. Meanwhile, you can stop snooping around about Alessandro.”
He stayed calm, which infuriated her even more. Pure calculation, of course. She could sense it even over the phone. “Just as you like, Rosa.”
“And I want you to let Valerie go free.”
“Have you thought about that carefully?”
“We don’t need her anymore.”
“Don’t forget what she did to you.”
“That’s my business, okay?”
He seemed to bring his mouth closer to the receiver, because now he was whispering, although his voice was no quieter. “You don’t remember that night, I believe?”
“You’ve seen the police files, haven’t you?”
“I know a great deal more than just those files.”
“What do you mean?”
He cleared his throat. “Remember the video I sent you?” He paused, as if he actually expected an answer to that. “There’s also a second one. When we picked up your friend, she had another cell phone with her. She’d obviously stolen it from Michele Carnevare before setting off for Europe. And there was a video on that phone, too.”
For a moment Rosa could hardly breathe.
“I wanted to spare you this,” he said. “Believe me, I really did.”
“Are you saying that…that he filmed it?”
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t know which was worse: that a video of her rape existed, or that Trevini had watched it. Cold flowed through her body at breakneck speed.
She managed to speak only by concentrating very hard. It sounded as if someone else were talking for her, like a ventriloquist with a dummy. “Send it here,” she said. Getting the words out took half an eternity. “I want to see it.”
“Why would you wish to subject yourself to that?”
“To find out what you saw.”
“This is not about our differences of opinion, Rosa. I don’t think it would be good for you to—”
“Send me that cell phone. Actually, send them both.”
“If you insist.” He seemed to want to give her a chance to change her mind. When she didn’t, he said, “And what am I to do with the girl?”
“She can go.” Rosa’s vocal cords threatened to freeze up, but in a way that she didn’t understand, she managed to keep the transformation under control. “I don’t want to see Val ever again. Put her in a taxi to the airport. And you’d better book her on a flight to Rome, or New York, or wherever she wants.”
“I’ll see to it that she disappears.”
“No one’s to touch a hair on her head. I am not giving orders to have her killed.”
“I understand perfectly.” His own voice sounded mechanical now.
“Give her some money, enough to last her a week or two, and charge it to me.”
“I really hope she’ll appreciate that.”
“Just as long as she’s gone.”
“And you think that will soothe your conscience?”
“You don’t understand. I’m not talking about my conscience.”
“No?”
“If I watch that video,” she said quietly, “it could change my mind.”
“You want to protect her? From yourself, Rosa?” He laughed quietly. “It’s your sense of responsibility, then. You don’t want to have to make a decision that you’d regret later.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t regret it at all. Maybe I’d suddenly realize that I like making those decisions.” The power over life and death. The power wielded by her ancestors.