Filomena led me through a stone hallway to a gigantic patio outside.


    In the daylight, the Rosolini estate was astoundingly beautiful. Just beyond the patio was a giganticwn that led to a swimming pool lined with lemon trees. Beyond that was a topiary garden which gradually became vineyards.


    But none of that was what caught my attention.


    Instead, my eyes settled on the two men having a cup of coffee at an outside table: Nolo and Roberto Rosolini.


    Roberto wore another three-piece suit, although this time he didn’t have a tie on.


    Nolo wore a white linen shirt and a pair of cks. He looked casual and rxed  but all I could think about was his sinister demeanor when he’d questioned mest night.


    I wanted to run back inside


    But it was toote. Nolo heard our footsteps and twisted around in his chair to see.


    “Ah  ciao, be! Have a seat, have a seat!” he said, gesturing to the empty chair to his left. Then he smiled at Filomena. “Thank you so much, Signora, for delivering our little lostmb to us. Grazie mille.”


    The old woman smiled and bowed slightly at the neck. She gave me onest nce, but it was hard to read her expression  was it a warning? A look of sympathy?


    Then she turned and went back into the house.


    I sat down in my chair. Roberto watched me closely, as though trying to read my thoughts.


    Nolo, however, was back to his old charming self.


    Only now I knew it was the mask he wore over his true nature.


    This time I would be on my guard.


    “Coffee? Tea? Juice?” Nolo asked. “We have everything, and what we don’t have, we can get. What would you like?”


    I epted some tea and buttered another piece of freshly baked bread.


    “How did you sleep? Was the bed to your liking?” Nolo asked with a smile.


    “It was wonderful, thank you.”


    “Good. Alessandra… there’s something I’d like to say to you.”


    My stomach dropped. I expected the sinister side of him toe out again  all veiled threats and dark innuendoes.


    “…oh?” I asked, trying to control my fear.


    “Look at your face!” he clucked. “Did I really scare you that badlyst night?”


    “Obviously,” Roberto interjected.


    “Quiet, you,” Nolo scolded his brother, then turned back to me. “I’d like to apologize for my conduct. I was under a great deal of stress… but that was no excuse for how I treated you. I was threatening when there was no need for it. Can you forgive me for scaring you so?”


    I stared at him.


    This was not what I had expected from a mafia consigliere…


    …although maybe it was all part of the game.


    The spider singing lubies as it lured the fly into its web.


    “…of course,” I said hesitantly.


    “I can tell you’re less than convinced, so let me exin a bit more what actually happened. Our father died three months ago  ”


    “I’m sorry.”


    “Thank you, thank you. He was the patriarch of our family, and as you can imagine, losing him threw our entire world into chaos. We did not just lose our father  we lost our leader. Dario wasn’t even here when Papa died. I might as well tell you since you’re going to find out sooner orter  Dario was in prison at the time. Papa died unexpectedly and my brother didn’t even get to say goodbye.”


    I already knew a good bit of that information from talking to Cat and Filomena, but two other questions formed in my mind almost immediately.


    Nolo anticipated them both.


    “Dario went to prison on a racketeering charge involved with a bribery case,” Nolo said. “They nabbed a judge who was presiding over some of our family’s business interests. As the oldest son, Dario took the fall for all of us. I know you were wondering  might as welle out with it and tell you straight.


    “And no, our father did not die from a  how would you put it  a ‘mob hit.’ He had a heart attack. He was rtively young  59  and there was no warning, so it was quite a shock. He lingered for a couple of hours in the hospital,pletely unconscious… and then he was gone.”


    “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.


    Part of me wondered whether anything Nolo was telling me was the truth  but he genuinely seemed sad. There was real pain in his eyes as he talked about his father.


    “Thank you, that’s very kind. At least we got to say goodbye, even if he couldn’t hear us or answer back. But the prison wouldn’t even let Dario speak to him over the phone. Animals,” Nolo said angrily.


    It was pretty ironic to hear a mafia consigliere call someone else an animal over a denied phone call… even if it was a very sad situation.


    I kept that thought to myself, though.


    “As a result of my father’s death, the family business was thrown into disarray. That’s when the wolves came out. There are numerous families like ours that run things all over Italy. When my father died, they saw an opportunity. We began to have troubles that hadn’t urred for decades: disputes with former partners, politicians on our payroll turning against us, sabotage in our operations… the truth is, the other families were probing us for weakness to see if they could wipe us out.


    “Our uncle Fausto  my father’s younger brother, and his consigliere for thest 25 years  took over half of the family’s territory and business. My brothers and I kept the rest. We agreed unanimously that Dario would be the new head of the family, and he chose me as consigliere to handle things in his stead until he returned.


    “But we’ve had our eyes on the wolves, tracking their plots to take us down. The man who was killed in your cafest night was one such wolf. We know he worked for a rival family in Genoa, and we established his involvement in the firebombing of one of our warehouses.


    “Needless to say, we found it very suspicious that he was in our territory just a week after Dario’s return. Lars tracked him to your cafe and took care of him for us  but your father’s cafe is in the middle of nowhere. We can’t figure out why he would have gone there, other than to meet someone.”


    I stared at him in shock.


    Nolo had been extraordinarily open with me.


    It might not have been theplete truth, but he had been under no obligation to tell me anything. I was their prisoner; prisoners don’t get the luxury of asking their captors questions.


    Nolo seemed to read my thoughts.


    “Quite a bit of information to digest,” he said with a smile.


    “…yes,” I admitted.


    “Well, Dario was quite cross with me after you leftst night. He thought you deserved at least a partial exnation for my  as he called it  assholish behavior.”


    Dario?!


    Dario was the one who had ordered Nolo to apologize?!


    That shocked me more than anything else I had heard so far.


    Roberto spoke up. “So you see, we’re trying to ascertain if Umberto Fumagalli  the man fromst night  knew your father, and why Fumagalli would be interested in him… or whether it really was just a coincidence that he walked into your cafe. Tell me  how long has your father had the business?”


    “For as long as I can remember  at least since I was a baby.”


    “And how did he buy it? Do you know?”


    “I don’t…”


    “How many customers did you have per day, would you say?”


    I frowned. “What?”


    Nolo sighed. “Roberto is the head of business interests for the family. This is his great joy in life, asking nitpicky financial things. Humor him, if you will.”


    What came next was a strange barrage of questions: how much money we made in an average month. What our expenses were. If there was a mortgage on the property. Who our suppliers were for coffee and food. (A tiny market in Mensano.) If there were other members of the staff besides me and my father. (There weren’t.) How much of our business was locals and how much was tourists.


    Finally Nolo waved off his brother. “Enough, Warren Buffett  your questions are boring poor Alessandra to death!”


    “Whatever, Machiavelli.”


    Nolo stood up abruptly. “Let me take you on a tour of the property, be, before Roberto begins his stultifying line of questioning again. Hurry  I can see him breaking out the spreadsheets!”


    Nolo whisked me away from the table.


    “I can’t abide when he does that,” he grumbled, then added facetiously, “Roberto doesn’t seem to realize that not everyone shares his passion for ounting.”


    “Why did he call you Machiavelli?”


    “Ah  it’s a joke about my first name. You’re familiar with the Renaissance philosopher Nolo Machiavelli, author of the political treatise The Prince?” he asked as we entered the house and began to wind through the hallways.Content ? N?velDrama.Org 2024.


    “Yes, of course.”


    Machiavelli was known for his amoral advice to rulers: manipte and lie in order to keep control over their subjects.


    “Yes, well, all my brothers love to call me ‘Machiavelli.’ It used to annoy me  but if you’re going to be a consigliere, there are worse nicknames to have.”


    “You and Robert look very much alike. Are you twins?”


    “Yes, we are  but fraternal, not identical. Thank God I don’t have an exact copy of his genes. The man has boring financial statements written into his DNA.”


    “There’s something I don’t understand…”


    “Oh? And what is that?”


    “You keep talking about your family and brothers… but Lars doesn’t look like any of you.”


    Noloughed. “Well, that would be because he’s not rted to us by blood.”


    “Does he work for you?”


    “It’s more than that. When Dario went off to prison, those wolves I spoke of? They tried to make sure my brother died in there, on more than one asion. Lars was his best friend ‘on the inside,’ as they say, and saved Dario’s life on two separate asions. Lars finished his sentence six months ago, and Dario sent him to us to give him a job. He’s actually be a seventh member of our family. He got to be around our father before he died, and Papa loved him as a son for saving Dario’s life. Ever since everything went to shit, Lars has be our most trusted ally.”