All Chapters of Married to the devil of valtieri: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

Chapter 71: The Hospital TrustIt took Isla and Serafina nine days to untangle the Hospital Trust of St. Brennan's.They worked in the Moretti library from dawn until midnight, with the curtains drawn and a pot of coffee that Dante refused to let Isla touch. She drank peppermint tea instead, with an expression of fine, martyred patience. The table vanished under paper: share registers, board minutes, bank statements, and the thick gray folders that the Bureau's forensic team had carried in from a Marseille warehouse in crates. Anselm kept the fire lit. Anna kept them fed. Valentina, in the evenings, came in from the hospital where Marco was still recovering, and sat cross-legged on the floor with a stack of invoices, muttering under her breath in Italian."Here," said Serafina, on the ninth night. She did not look up. "I have it."Isla crossed the room. Serafina's finger lay on a single line of a ledger, a payment of eleven thousand euros, made quarterly, to an account in the name of

Chapter 73: Two Wives Who Were DeadThe two women met in the Moretti drawing room at noon, in a stripe of cold winter sunlight, with half the family looking on.Nobody had planned it. Lucia Salvi had been discharged from the clinic that morning, with a stack of prescriptions and a nurse's strict instructions to rest. She had stood in the front hall of the estate on Serafina's arm, small and bent in a borrowed gray coat, blinking at the chandelier as though it were the sun. And the piano in the east room had stopped.Anna stood in the doorway.She had been playing. A shawl hung off one shoulder. Her thin hands, still raised in the shape of a chord, trembled in the air. For a moment the two of them only looked at each other across thirty feet of black-and-white marble, two gray-haired women in plain dresses, each a ghost to the other."Lucia," said Anna. It was barely a breath."Anna." The older woman's voice broke. "You are alive.""So are you.""I did not dare hope.""I thought you di

Chapter 75: A House full of WomenIt was the loudest baby shower in the history of Valtieri.Isla had not wanted one. She had said so, firmly, four times. But Anna had pointed out that it was a very old custom, and Lucia had pointed out that it was very bad luck to refuse, and Valentina had simply gone ahead and sent the invitations. By two o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the garden of the Moretti estate was crowded with chairs and tables and fluttering paper lanterns, and the lawn rang with women's voices.There were a great many of them. Anna, in a blue silk dress that Isla had never seen, with her braid pinned up in a crown. Lucia, thin and glowing, in a lavender shawl, holding a plate of cake and a teacup and a baby bootee she had knitted in secret. Serafina, who had been released from custody on bail the week before and looked ten years younger. Valentina, in a yellow sundress, directing the caterers. Étienne's mother, a round, laughing woman in a flowered hat, who had arrived fro

Chapter 77: The StormIt broke at eight in the evening, three days after the wedding, with a clap of thunder that rattled every window in the house.Isla was in the nursery, folding tiny white vests into a drawer. She had been doing it for an hour. She had folded them and unfolded them and folded them again, because the work soothed her, and because it was something to do with her hands while the sky outside went from gray to purple to a deep bruised black. The wind howled round the corners of the east wing. Rain came down in sheets, hammering the roof like a thousand fists."Isla."She looked round. Dante stood in the doorway, in his shirtsleeves, his hair rumpled and his face drawn. He had hardly slept since the phone call. He had spent three days with Luca and a hundred men, sealing the grounds, laying out sandbags, and checking the generators. The estate was now, by his own account, the best-defended house in the province. He did not seem to find it comforting."The bridge is gone

Chapter 79: The First CryShe came into the world at ten minutes past two in the morning, in the light of one candle, and for four terrible seconds she did not make a sound.Isla felt it, even through the fog of pain and exhaustion: the great slithering rush, the sudden emptiness, the room going still. She lay back against Anna's arm, gasping, and waited for the cry.It did not come."Why is she quiet?" Her voice was a croak. "Why isn't she crying?"The midwife did not answer. She had the baby in both hands, a tiny, slick, dark-haired scrap, no longer than a loaf of bread, and she was working on her with brisk, practiced fingers, rubbing the little back with a towel, tilting the head, clearing the mouth. Her face was calm. Her hands were fast."Come, little one," she murmured, in French. "Come, ma belle. Come and tell us who you are.""Isla." Dante's voice was a whisper. He was gripping her hand so tightly that her bones ached. "Isla, why...""Hush."The silence lasted for ever. It wa