Veretti's Dark Vengeance

‘Let’s just say she’s not what I expected.’

‘What does that mean?’

Salvatore ground his teeth. ‘It means that she wrong-footed me.’

‘Heaven help her!’

‘It might be heaven help me,’ Salvatore admitted reluctantly. ‘This is one very clever lady. I made the mistake of underestimating her.’ In a reflective voice he added, ‘Which I won’t do again.’

Left alone, Helena began to explore the room, which, at one end, became a picture gallery, and she walked slowly along the portraits. Many were of the Cellini family, as the notes beneath them proclaimed. But the last ones were Valettis, stern-faced makers of money in the nineteenth century.

More recently the pictures weren’t paintings but large photographs, one of which made her pause and regard it fondly.

There was Antonio, years before she’d met him, probably in his late thirties, before his hair had turned from black to grey and started to fall out. She’d known him as a ruin, but once he’d been this fine young cavalier. Some of his wickedly handsome looks had remained to the end, and she could still see the Antonio she’d known.

Salvatore, coming to find her, found her standing before Antonio’s picture, so lost in it that she didn’t hear him. From this angle he could just make out the fond look on her face, the tenderness of her smile. As he watched she raised her fingers to her lips and blew a kiss. She might, or might not, have given a little sigh. He couldn’t be sure.

Helena seemed to become aware of him.

‘Look at his eyes,’ she said, indicating the picture. ‘He was a real devil, wasn’t he?’

‘He was in his youth. What about when you knew him?’

‘We—ell,’ she mused, remembering Antonio’s frailty, and thinking that a man didn’t have to be physically capable to be a devil. There were other ways, charming ways that ended in laughter. Remembering those times, she smiled, her eyes fixed on the distance.

Salvatore, watching intently, saw what he’d expected. She had seduced Antonio into action, driving him beyond his strength until he reached the inevitable end. Suddenly he was angry with himself for forgetting so easily that she was an experienced temptress. Her smile, with its hint of a secret history, told him everything he needed to know.

It was a useful reminder not to forget again.

She passed on and he stood for a moment, considering the soft seductiveness of her walk, the way one part of her body moved against another, which could drive a man to distraction.

Or to death, he thought.

He caught up with her as she paused before a wedding picture.

‘My parents,’ he said.

It was the bride who held Helena’s attention; young, beautiful, glowing with joy and love, she couldn’t tear her gaze from her groom. The man was clearly Salvatore’s father, yet there was something missing. His features were similar, but he lacked the driven intensity of his son, an intensity that would always make Salvatore stand out in the world.

Near-by was a picture that showed more of the family. There was Salvatore, seemingly in his early teens, surrounded by older people, presumably aunts and uncles.

‘And there’s Antonio,’ she said, peering. ‘Who’s the woman sitting beside him?’

‘That’s my mother.’

‘What? But she—?’

Astounded, Helena stared, trying to believe that this middle-aged woman was the same person as the glorious bride of the earlier picture. She was too thin, her whole aspect was tense and strained, and Helena had the feeling that she was putting on a brave, defiant face for the world. She stood just behind the young Salvatore, her glance turned slightly towards him, her hand possessively on his shoulder, as though he was all she had.

She looked back and forth between the two pictures, horrified.

‘How did it happen?’ she asked. ‘She’s so changed.’

‘People do change with the passing of time,’ he observed.

‘But it can’t have been many years after the wedding, and she looks as though some dreadful tragedy had happened to her.’

‘My mother took her duties very seriously, not only in the home but also in the many charities she supported.’

He spoke in a distant voice that made Helena feel he was warning her off the subject. She was dissatisfied. There was more here than simply passing years. Yet she supposed she had no right to ask further. She took one last look at the picture.

‘Poor woman,’ she sighed. ‘How sad she seems!’

Salvatore didn’t answer, and she guessed he was offended by her continued interest. But when she glanced at his face she saw it strangely softened.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘She was. Shall we go back?’

It was almost a surprise to discover that there was still food on the table from their abandoned meal. So much had happened since, not outwardly but inwardly. They had confronted each other from behind carefully erected barriers of mistrust and dislike, but neither had allowed for the random chance of physical attraction.

It defied belief. It was unexpected, unwanted, but undeniable. As malign and frisky as a jester, it danced between them, laughing at them both, caught in its trap.

Helena had no doubt that he was as trapped as herself. She knew it, not through vanity, but through her senses, fiercely alive as they hadn’t been for years, not since—She shut the thought off there.

Her mind swung obediently into action. Stay cool. Stay in charge.

She sat down, aiming a smile at him like a missile.

‘Now I must finish this cake. It’s delicious.’

‘Some coffee?’

‘How delightful!’

They were back behind their defences, looking out, keeping watch, big guns primed, ready for anything.

‘So,’ he said at last, ‘you’re going to make me wait for the factory?’