She laughed as she seated herself on the hard step. “It really
is
a long story.”
“I wouldn’t kid you.” But he wasn’t amused. He watched her closely as he said, “Less than three months ago, Nonna was attacked in her home.”
Penelope’s amusement died an abrupt death. “Is she okay?”
“She walked in on a robbery in progress. He hit her with a tire iron, broke her arm, and knocked her out.” Noah paced in front of her, the diffused light from the high windows in the entry brushing his dark hair and broad shoulders with a loving hand. “She had a concussion and was in the hospital for more than a week. We sent her home with a bodyguard and a nurse to ensure her safety and health.”
Penelope’s dismay subsided, and her anger rose. “Did you catch the mugger?”
“Eventually we did, but it turned out he was the harbinger of something much larger. It goes back to an old family feud. Over eighty years ago—”
She didn’t laugh this time, but intently leaned forward.
“—my grandfather Anthony Di Luca was born, and on the same day across the valley, the Bianchin family also had a son.”
She knew who. “Joseph.”
“Yes!” He looked startled. Stared questioningly at her.
“I’m in town because I’ve got business with him.”
“Design business?” He shot the question at her. “But he’s not here.”
“I know that.”
“Is he coming back soon?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“I hope not. He’s the one who initiated the attack on Nonna.”
Noah’s sharp tone, the harsh words, made her lean back away from him. “What? Why? How do you know that?”
“Over eighty years ago,” he began again, “there was a
man, unmarried and with no family, named Massimo Bruno. He lived in Bella Valley and he made fine wines. World-class wines.”
“I’m listening.” Although she wished Noah would get to the point.
“On the occasion of a son’s birth, he would give a bottle of wine to the family, to be opened at the child’s twenty-first birthday. It was tradition, but this was Prohibition, and that year the revenuers found Massimo’s wine cellar. They broke all the casks and spilled the wine into the street. The gutters ran red, and Massimo managed to save enough wine for one bottle only. One bottle. Two sons. Two rival families.”
“Uh-oh.” She was starting to comprehend.
“Massimo gave the bottle of wine to the child who had been born first, my grandfather, Anthony Di Luca. To Joseph and the Bianchins, he gave an antique silver rattle.” Noah looked down, heavy lidded with satisfaction. “As it should have been.”
She wouldn’t dream of disagreeing. “Yes, of course.”
“The Bianchins swore vengeance.” Noah managed to convey cruelty in the wave of a hand. “For twenty-one years, they brooded on the perceived wrong—we Italians know how to wait, letting the anger fester year by year.”
Penelope’s heart clutched in anticipation and anguish.
Had she imagined that she knew this man?
She did not. Her heritage was Mexican: Mayan, Spanish, and French, and in those American and European heritages she shared the same heated Mediterranean blood as the Di Lucas. But she knew without a doubt that her grandfather’s petty grudges were nothing like this.
“On my grandfather’s twenty-first birthday, which was also his wedding day, Joseph led the Bianchin family
on the attack. They came with guns and knives. They destroyed the gifts, the food, the wine—and they shot my grandfather.” The grim lines around Noah’s mobile mouth deepened. “He almost died.”
No. No.
It wasn’t true. But she didn’t say a word. She didn’t want Noah to realize how much this meant to her… or why.
“Unfortunately for them, they attacked too soon. Massimo’s wine had not been opened. The bottle was still hidden. My grandfather survived, but he never forgave them—”
Please tell me this is not true. Not true. Because if it is…
“As long as Nonno lived, he would bring out that bottle of wine and show it off to his friends and his family… and put it away again. Because he knew that, across town, Joseph Bianchin would hear about it. He knew Joseph was stewing in his own bile, envying that bottle, coveting it.”
When Penelope came to Bella Terra to meet with Joseph Bianchin, she had never anticipated anything like this. How could she? To sit here and watch Noah gesture animatedly, to watch his face change from that of an amiable, civilized man into that of a brutal barbarian moved to violence by old vendettas… it was a revelation that both frightened and fascinated her. “Then what happened?”
“About a dozen years ago, my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He slid slowly into dementia and died.” Noah stopped for a moment, his head bowed. Taking a breath, he finally continued. “When Nonna went looking for the bottle of wine—it was gone.”
“Gone?” She straightened up. “Gone where?”
“Wouldn’t we like to know?” Noah flashed a smile. “Nonno hid it, and hid it well. We’ve looked and looked, but it’s gone. And yet the trouble remains.”
Chapter 15
“Y
our grandfather could have put that bottle of wine anywhere,” Penelope whispered.
“No.” Noah shook his head with assurance. “The hiding places are limited. It’s wine. Wine has to be properly cared for or it disintegrates, and a bottle of that age… Well, there’s a chance—a good chance—that no matter how well tended it was, the wine has soured. But the bottle was precious to Nonno, his heritage, the reason he was wounded and almost killed. He would have put it somewhere it would be preserved. He would have put it somewhere dark and cool.”
She had to object. “But he had Alzheimer’s. Maybe—”
“For Nonno, the proper care of wine wasn’t a function of his mind. It was like his hair color or the sound of his voice. The proper care of wine was bred into him by a thousand generations of Di Lucas, and he would never have abused that bottle.”
She didn’t know whether she believed Noah or not, but it didn’t matter. He believed it. His family believed it. But she saw a flaw in the logic. “So the person who broke into your grandmother’s house was someone hired by Joseph Bianchin to grab the bottle of wine?”
“That’s right.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“I do.”
“How?” She leaned forward, making her point. “Because frankly, if Joseph Bianchin had wanted that bottle of wine so badly he’s willing to resort to violence, he should have come for it sooner.”
Noah nodded at her. “Exactly our thoughts. But we knew it was Joseph who started the trouble, because we found the Internet ad looking for someone to do the job.”
“He put up an ad for criminals to beat up an elderly lady and put his name on it?” She made her disbelief plain in her voice.
“No, he put up an Internet ad saying someone would pay to recover a precious possession, and the sly old bastard covered his tracks very well. He’s smart enough to make sure nothing he does is prosecutable.” Noah’s face grew cold again. “But while Nonna was in the hospital, he visited her. He threatened her.”
Penelope dropped her gaze, watching as Noah’s athletic shoes moved across the faded, worn-to-nubs carpet. She didn’t want to hear this. She couldn’t bear the impact this had on her stay in Bella Terra. It made her purpose here… impossible. Horrible.
But Noah’s relentless voice continued. “He told my grandmother he wanted the bottle
now
.”
Slowly, Penelope lifted her gaze to him once more,
and watched Noah with unwilling compulsion. His family had lived in the United States for over a century, yet he was Italian in looks and demeanor, using his hands to punctuate his sentences, to convey excitement or sorrow. His face, too, was mobile, his expressions so vivid she could almost see the generations of men, the malice, the danger.
“Later, once we realized what was going on, I told Bianchin to get the hell out of town, so he tried to convince
me
to hand it over. Like I would do anything for that mean old bastard.”
Noah didn’t know—couldn’t know—that each word made them enemies. “So Bianchin left town?”
“Nonna’s well liked here. We three brothers love her dearly.” Noah’s deep voice grew silky soft and dangerous. “If he hadn’t, I would have worried about his health.”
“You wouldn’t hurt an old man!”
Would he?
“He hurt my grandmother—she might have died, and he wouldn’t have cared—so in fact, I would have done whatever was necessary to send him into exile.” Noah had grown out of the last softness of youth. He was all man now, and he smiled the kind of menacing, toothy smile she had never imagined on his face.
All right. She supposed he had the right to defend his grandmother with every resource available to him. She knew Nonna had raised him. But… “It doesn’t make sense. Why did Joseph Bianchin decide to resort to violence at this stage?”
“We figured that one out almost too late—and by we, I mean Eli and his new wife, Chloë. She’s an author; she writes suspense. Eli, too, did his part.” Noah shook his head in wonder. “Who knew he had it in him to defend himself against a crooked FBI agent?”
“Eli?” Penelope remembered him as a large, quiet man, intent on wines and wary of people in general.
“Former FBI, but it took Eli and Chloë both to defeat him, and they look like they’ve been used as battering rams.” Noah sat on his haunches in front of Penelope and looked right into her eyes. “The whole thing is about diamonds.”
“Diamonds?”
“Massimo was stealing diamonds, hiding them in the wine bottles he gave as gifts; then, when the coast was clear, he’d steal the bottle and replace it with one that looked identical but didn’t have the contraband.”
Penelope realized her mouth was hanging open. She snapped it shut and asked, “He was doing this during Prohibition?”
“Apparently Nonna’s mother always said he was a gangster. Apparently Nonna’s mother was right.”
“Whoa. How did Joseph Bianchin find out?”
“Bottles of Massimo’s wine are still around; Bianchin’s been a collector for years, pathetically trying to be my grandfather, I guess.” Noah’s eyes flashed with irritation. “We
think
he opened a bottle, poured it, and found jewels in the bottom.”
“Jewels Massimo hadn’t collected?”
“Jewels he hadn’t collected because he disappeared not long after giving his last bottle to my grandfather.”
“What happened to him?”
“No one knows. Or rather… no one knew until Eli and Chloë found his body in an old water tower. He’d been tortured. Up there beside the body, Eli found a small diamond—and not just any diamond. It was a pink diamond, so Chloë looked up jewel robberies for that year before my grandfather was born.” Noah’s mouth
twisted in distaste. “In Amsterdam, a priceless set of pink diamonds was stolen and never retrieved.”
The whole story was fascinating, horrifying, unlikely… and all too obviously, everyone in the Di Luca family believed it was true. Penelope breathed in and out, in and out, slow, heavy breaths as she tried to contain her anguish. “Joseph Bianchin figured that out, too, and he wants those diamonds.”
“I think we can assume that.” Putting one knee on the step beside her, the other on the floor, Noah took her hand
again
. The light danced on each strand of his short black hair with fevered grace. “Here in Bella Terra, in the last two and a half months, we’ve had three murders, a related death, and as much violence as we’ve had in the last fifty years put together. The resort’s on high alert, and the press is starting to take an interest. We Di Lucas have managed to distract them, but the reporters will catch on eventually. If that happens, every thug and opportunist in the world will arrive on our doorstep looking for that bottle of wine.”
“You truly don’t know where it is?” Her life would be so much easier if he knew and for some nefarious reason was hiding the truth.
But it almost seemed that he read her mind and repeated her thoughts back at her. “How much easier it would be for all of us if we knew, and poured it, and found out whether the bottle contained diamonds—or merely sediment.”
“Yes. I can see that.” She
could
see it.
“That’s why Rafe was acting like a jerk, questioning you as if you were a person of suspicion. And that’s why I’d consider it a favor if you’d come and see Nonna.”
He made Penelope feel as if she were standing at the
edge of a swamp filled with old affection and lost love, and sinking in the quicksand. And in her experience, if she were caught by him, really trapped, she would suffer for it.
He looked into her eyes. Looked into her soul. Appealed to her better nature. “Nonna was hurt badly; Rafe and Brooke were traumatized; Eli and Chloë were horribly injured. Then this week, Nonna found out that someone she loved was a liar and a cheat. Seeing you would take her mind off her troubles. Would you go visit her?” When she hesitated, he said, “I promise… I promise not to be there.”
He seemed to think that mattered.
Chapter 16
P
enelope put her hand on Noah’s chest, and in a move that surprised him—although why it should, he didn’t know—she pushed him so hard he sprawled backward on the hardwood floor.
She stood. “As appealing as that sounds, Noah, it’s impossible. I’ve realized… I can’t stay in Bella Terra. This criminal activity is too much for me! I’m a coward. I’m going back to Portland tomorrow.”
He got slowly to his feet, rubbing his aching butt. A coward? After all she’d been through? “You’re not a coward.”
“Don’t tell me what I am or am not. In the past few years of my life, I have seen enough death. I cannot bear to see any more.” She looked fierce and proud, demanding that he respect who she was and what she could endure.
“Okay…” he said slowly, thinking hard, thinking fast. “But you’ve got a job here that you were looking forward
to. Or at least, you seemed to be. You could do the design, work with Brooke, without being involved in the, um—”
“Murders?” Her voice rose. “I have to
survive
to work at a job, and survival seems to be a little iffy here in Bella Terra.”
From the top of the stairs, Noah heard a small, high shriek. He turned in time to see Brooke bound down the stairs.