The remaining messages were confined to the legal activities of the Alcantara companies, particularly the building of wind turbines all over Sicily and the delivering of wool blankets and food supplies to the refugee camp on Lampedusa.
One of the last emails, however, made her frown. It came from the Studio Legale Avv. Giuseppe L. Trevini. An attorney, Trevini had worked exclusively for the Alcantaras for many years, ever since Rosa’s grandmother had been head of the clan. Rosa had visited him three times in the last few months and realized that he knew every last detail of all the family’s dealings—legal and illegal. Whenever she had questions, he had told her, she could turn to him. Trevini was old-fashioned, cranky, but also crafty, and he was a technophobe. He had never sent her an email before. What he didn’t want to keep in the archives on paper, for reasons of security, he stored in his personal memory. She had never met anyone with such total recall. In spite of his close connection with the Alcantaras, she didn’t trust him. In the days just before she left, he had asked her no less than four times to visit him. But that would have meant going to Taormina. Trevini was in a wheelchair and refused to leave the grand hotel looking out on the bay where he had been living for decades.
So it was unusual for the attorney to send her an email. Even more startling, however, was the subject line: Alessandro Carnevare—important!
Avvocato Trevini had made no secret of his extreme disapproval of any relationship between an Alcantara woman and a Carnevare man. That was another reason why she felt uneasy as she opened the message.
Dear Signorina Alcantara, he wrote. As your family’s legal adviser for many years, I would like you to look at the attached video data file. In addition, I ask you again for a personal conversation. I am sure you will agree that the attachment and further material in my possession call for urgent consultation. On that occasion, I would like to introduce you to my new colleague, Contessa Avvocato Cristina di Santis. I remain, with the deepest respect for your family and in the hope of meeting you in the near future, yours sincerely, Avv. Giuseppe L. Trevini.
Rosa moved the cursor over the attachment icon and then stopped. She read that last sentence of his email again, annoyed. Deepest respect for your family. By which, of course, he meant Don’t forget where you belong, you stupid child.
With a snort of indignation, she clicked on the attachment and waited impatiently for the video to come up. The picture was no larger than the size of a pack of cigarettes, pixelated and much too dark. Metallic rushing sounds and distorted voices came from the speaker.
She was seeing a party, evidently filmed on a cell phone, with wobbly, indistinct images of laughing faces. The video panned across a large room. Scraps of conversation were barely audible; the sound was a blurred mixture of words, clinking glasses, and background music.
Now the camera was turned on a single person, and stayed there. Rosa was looking at her own face, shiny in the heat of the room. She was wearing makeup. In one hand she held a cocktail glass and a cigarette. She hadn’t smoked or drunk for almost a year and a half now. Not a drop of alcohol since that night.
A girl’s high-spirited voice asked how she was. The Rosa in the video grinned and shaped a word with her lips.
“What?” called the voice.
“B-A-T-H-R-O-O-M,” Rosa spelled out. “The bathroom. Coming with me?”
The answer couldn’t be heard, but the picture wobbled. A head was shaken. Rosa shrugged her shoulders, put her glass down on a buffet table, and walked out of the frame, listing heavily. She’d drunk a lot that evening.
The picture changed again. The camera panned over faces, lingering on them when it found a good-looking man. Now and then someone grinned into it; several greetings were called out to the girl holding the cell phone. “Hi, Valerie!”—“How’s it going?”—“Hey there, Val!”
Valerie Paige. Rosa hadn’t thought of her in months. How did Trevini come by a video made by Val of that party? He must have found out what had happened there. That was all she needed.
Valerie stopped again. She zoomed in and out a few times—more faces, most of them pixelated beyond all recognition. Then she concentrated on a group of young men