All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Chapter 91: The Woman With Rosa's MouthThe Rosa Delmare Foundation occupied the ground floor of a faded yellow building in the old quarter, between a pharmacy and a shop that sold dried fish.It was not a grand place. Isla had chosen it for that reason. There was a counter, and six mismatched desks, and a waiting room with a dozen plastic chairs and a shelf of children's books. The windows looked out on a cobbled lane, where old men played cards in the shade of a plane tree. On the wall behind the counter hung a small framed photograph of a gray-haired woman in an apron, laughing at something outside the frame. Beneath it, in neat black letters, someone had painted four words: She kept us alive."Mrs. Moretti?"Isla looked up from the stack of claim forms. It was a quarter to five on a Thursday afternoon, hot and still, and the Foundation had been open eleven weeks. In that time it had received three thousand and forty applications: widows, orphans, ruined shopkeepers, men released f

Chapter 93: The Man in the White MaskNobody moved.The masked man stood in the doorway of the ruined office with the late sun at his back and his gloved hands folded neatly before him, like a bank manager awaiting an appointment. Behind him, the lane was a ribbon of gold. A child's ball rolled across the cobbles, and stopped against his shoe. He bent, with exquisite courtesy, picked it up, and handed it to a small boy who had darted out of a doorway to retrieve it."Thank you, signore," said the boy."Not at all. Run along."The boy ran. The Notary straightened and stepped over the threshold, crunching broken glass underfoot. He glanced round the wreck of the office with an air of mild disapproval, the way a man might regard an untidy drawing room."Such a mess," he said. "I did tell them to be careful."Dante had not moved a muscle. He stood by the window, with his arms folded, and his face had gone to stone. But Isla, at his side, saw the small muscle jumping in his cheek, and saw

Chapter 95: The ApprenticeCarlo Moretti listened to the whole of it without once interrupting.He sat at the steel table in the visiting room, in his gray prison shirt, with his hands flat on the surface and his eyes fixed on Isla's face. Clara lay across her mother's lap, awake, solemn, studying the old man with the unblinking suspicion of a customs officer. Dante stood against the wall with his arms folded. Quinn sat in the corner with her notepad. The guard by the door had been told, very firmly, to look at the ceiling.When Isla finished, the old man was silent for a long time."A white mask," he said, at last. "Long nose. Plague doctor.""You know it.""It hangs in my vault. I wore it once, in Venice, forty years ago. A foolish thing. It was a joke." His voice was dry and rather faint. "I have not worn it since. And I have not given it to anyone.""Someone took it.""Someone who knew where to look." Carlo's eyes closed. "Someone who has been in my house.""You didn't sell your d

Chapter 97: The Brass KeyThey buried Lucien Verdier on a Sunday, in a corner of the old cemetery above the harbor, with six mourners and a single white rose.Étienne chose the rose. He stood at the edge of the grave in his one dark suit, with his mother's arm through his and his face the color of ash, and dropped it into the earth without a word. Then he stepped back. His mother closed her hand over his. Neither of them spoke.Isla stood a little apart, with Clara asleep against her shoulder and Dante's arm around her waist. The sea wind lifted her black veil. Below the wall, the harbor glittered, and the little boats rocked at their moorings, and a bell was ringing somewhere far off, thin and sweet."He saved my life," said Étienne, to nobody."I know," said Dante quietly."I was seven. He couldn't swim." The boy's voice cracked. "And yesterday he did it again."No one answered. There was nothing to say. After a while, Mirelle slipped her hand into Étienne's free one, and the three

Chapter 99: Entry the FirstBy nine o'clock in the morning, the whole of Valtieri had read it.It flew through the city like wildfire. It was on every phone, in every café, on the screen of every television in every bar along the harbor. The papers ran it above the fold, under a headline in letters four inches tall: GIOVANNI MORETTI'S SECRET DAUGHTER. A photograph of the old page, enlarged and enhanced, was pinned to the front window of the newsstand in the Piazza Salvi, and a crowd gathered round it, murmuring.In the little house by the sea, the shutters were closed.Isla sat at the kitchen table, with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea she had not drunk. Dante stood at the window with his back to the room. Anna sat very upright in her chair by the stove, with Clara in her arms, and her face was perfectly still. Nobody had spoken for nearly ten minutes.On the table, face up, lay a printout of the page.It was a single entry, in Giovanni Moretti's strong, square hand, dated the t