All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

Chapter 112: What the Ledger Said"Read it," said Pallas. His voice was hoarse.The clock said 00:05:12.Isla lifted her head. Her face was white. Her bound hands, resting on the page, trembled so violently that the silk cord rustled against the paper."It's an entry," she said. "From the winter of that year. It's dated the fourteenth of December. It's in Carlo's hand.""Read it.""'The house in the Via del Pozzo was struck last night by G.'s men. They were sent to the number seventeen. They arrived at the number nineteen. A clerical error.'" She swallowed. "'I have the proof. The paper from which they took the address was copied out by V. Her handwriting is unmistakable. The seventeen was a nine. The error was not an accident.'"The cabin was utterly silent."V," said Pallas, very softly."Vesper.""Vesper Moretti.""'She wished Giovanni to suffer,'" Isla read, her voice breaking. "'She had learned that the bookkeeper's cousin was hiding at number seventeen, and she had been paid by

The chapel of St. Brennan's stood at the far end of the hospital garden, behind a screen of dripping yews.It was small and gray and very old. Its roof sagged. Its windows were the color of weak tea. A single bell hung in a stone arch above the door, and the bell rope had been cut years ago. Nobody came here. The patients were told it was unsafe. The sisters passed it with their eyes lowered. And in the cold morning mist, with the hospital's bright windows glowing beyond the trees, it looked like a small gray animal that had crept away to die."There's a car," said Serafina, from the driver's seat. "Parked by the wall. The engine's still warm.""He's inside," said Dante."We should go in first.""No." Isla was already out of the door. "He didn't come to hurt anyone.""You can't know that.""He sent me a card," she said. "He called the fire a courtesy. I think he's the only man in this whole business who's trying to do the right thing in the wrong way." She looked back. "Let me go. Ple

"Read it all," said Dante. "Out loud."His voice was very quiet. He was still sitting on the edge of the stone niche with the black notebook in his lap, and he had not looked at the child's signature again. He had simply closed his hand over it, as a man closes his hand over a wound.Isla bent to the lamp. Her father held it for her. Her finger moved down Carlo's tiny cipher, and as she translated, line by line, her voice dropped into the low steady murmur she had used for twelve years over columns that did not balance."'My dear Isla. I have written this in the song your mother sang, because it is the only language I am certain you will understand. I am not a brave man. I never was. I am writing this in the winter before my arrest, and I am ashamed.'""Carlo," murmured Van Hoek, behind her. His voice was thick."'You will already know that there were eight signatures on the Pact. Eight snakes. Eight rings. It is what everyone believes, and what I allowed them to believe, because the

The Moretti tomb stood on the highest point of the cemetery, under a ring of black cypresses.It was an old building, a small domed temple of white marble, green with lichen and cracked by three centuries of weather. Eight steps led up to a pair of bronze doors. On either side, in the moonlight, stood two weeping angels with their faces turned away. A single lamp burned on the lintel. The grass around it was silver with dew. And from the shadow of the cypresses, the whole length of the cemetery lay spread out below like a field of small white ghosts."Stay close," said Dante."I'm not going anywhere."They climbed the path hand in hand. It was a quarter to twelve. Behind them, in the dark of the lower slope, six figures waited among the headstones. Serafina and her agents. Tomas with his crucifix. Marco, with his rifle, trembling like a leaf. Van Hoek, with his matches.The bronze doors stood ajar.A warm yellow light spilled out, and a faint, sweet, familiar sound. She heard it from

The Bureau had taken over a small stone farmhouse on the hill above Valtieri.It was a plain, whitewashed building with green shutters, set in a grove of old olive trees, and it had been chosen because it had one door, no neighbors, and a cellar. They brought him there at three in the morning. They put him in a chair at a kitchen table under a bare electric bulb, with his hands cuffed in front of him, and left him alone for an hour with a cup of coffee he did not touch.He seemed perfectly at ease. He had straightened his tie, with his cuffed hands. He sat with his legs crossed, humming faintly, as if waiting for a train."He wants to talk to you," said Serafina, from the doorway. She looked exhausted. Her gray coat was stained and her hair was a mess. "Only you. He won't say a word to me.""I'll go," said Isla."Not alone," said Dante."He asked for me.""He tried to burn our child.""I know." She laid a hand on his arm. "And I think he never would have. I told you. He does not hurt