All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

Chapter 51: Under the PianoIsla pressed herself flat against the cold floorboards and stopped breathing.Through the gap in the folds of the shawl she could see a slice of the room: the Persian rug, the foot of the sagging sofa, and Ferrante's polished shoes, advancing at the slow, careful pace of a man in pain. The tip of his silver cane tapped against the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap."A visitor?" Anna's voice was perfectly calm. She had returned to the piano bench and sat with her back straight and her hands in her lap. "Only the draft, Ferrante. And my own foolish talking. I've taken to conversing with the keys.""I heard two voices.""You hear what you wish to hear. You always did." A thin, dry note crept into her tone. "It's been seventeen years, my dear. A woman talks to herself, in a room like this."The cane stopped. The shoes shifted. Isla's heart beat so loudly that she was certain he must hear it through the floor."You've been crying," said Ferrante, softly."I've been playing t

Chapter 53: Two HeartbeatsThe clinic's waiting room was full of sunlight, and Dante could not sit still.He stood at the window with his hands in his pockets, then at the wall, then by the door. He sat down in a molded plastic chair, stood up again, and crossed the room to pour a cup of water he did not drink. A young nurse at the desk watched him with open fascination. A middle-aged man in the corner, evidently there for a different reason, was trying not to stare."You're making me nervous," said Isla."I'm making myself nervous.""It's only a scan.""It's a window." He turned, and his eyes were enormous. "Into the inside of you. Where our child is. Isla, do you understand what that is?"She laughed, and held out her hand. He took it, and sat, and pressed it to his lips. Beside him, in a gray cardigan and a borrowed pair of reading glasses, Anna Moretti sat knitting something small and yellow.She had been out of the villa for six days. She was still very thin, still too pale, stil

Chapter 55: The LocketThey buried Don Ferrante Salvi on a gray Thursday, in the family plot above the harbor, with six mourners and no music.Valentina had insisted on it. She had stood in the Moretti library two days earlier with her arms folded and her chin up, and said, in a flat little voice that did not sound like hers, "He was my grandfather. Whatever else he was. I won't let him be put in the ground by strangers."Dante had said nothing. He had only gone to the telephone and arranged it.Now she stood at the graveside in a plain black dress, with Marco at her elbow, bruised but upright, in a borrowed suit that was two sizes too large. Luca and Anselm stood behind them. Anna had come, leaning on Dante's arm, wrapped in a black shawl. Isla stood on the other side of him, her hand in his, trying not to be sick in a graveyard.It was the third time that morning. She had told Dante it was the sea air."Ashes to ashes," Anselm murmured. His voice shook slightly. "Lord, have mercy on

Chapter 57: What a Daughter SaysFor a long moment, nobody breathed.Valentina stood in the doorway with her hand pressed flat against her breastbone, where the gold locket lay warm beneath her palm. The firelight painted her face in shifting amber and shadow. She looked very young. She looked, Isla thought, like a child who has been told that the house she grew up in was built on top of another house.Then she crossed the room in four quick strides, and slapped Serafina Salvi across the face.The sound was shocking. It cracked off the walls of the library like a gunshot. Serafina's head turned with the blow, and she did not lift a hand to defend herself. She only stood there, a small, soaked, gray-faced woman in a trench coat, and let the mark bloom red on her cheek."Twenty-eight years," Valentina said. Her voice was shaking so badly that the words came out in pieces. "Twenty-eight years. I used to talk to a photograph. I used to leave it on my pillow. I used to ask her to..." She b

Chapter 59: Madame Vesper She arrived at nine o'clock the next morning, in a silver car, with three lawyers. Isla watched from the window of the Moretti library as the little procession came up the drive: the gleaming Rolls-Royce, a dark sedan behind it, and a black van that she suspected was full of men with guns. They stopped before the front steps. A chauffeur in gray livery hurried round to open the door. The woman who stepped out was sixty, perhaps, but she carried it like a gift she had decided to keep. She was tall and spare, in a pearl-gray coat that must have cost more than Isla's old apartment, with silver hair swept into a flawless knot and lips painted a deep, dark red. A black veil hung from a small hat. She paused at the foot of the steps and tilted her head back, studying the front of the house with the expression of a woman examining a house she intended to buy. "Vesper Moretti," said Dante, behind her. His voice was very quiet. "My father's brother's widow."