Betrayal

by Christina Dodd

  “I knew it was either Bao or… or Olivia who searched my room. I’m the one who… who set the trap. When she fled…” Nonna took a long, quivering breath. Her crying calmed. She lifted her tearstained face. “In those last minutes of her life, that poor girl must have been so afraid. When I think of her, shot in the back of the head, execution-style.”

  Eli, Rafe, and Noah exchanged glances.

  They should never have told Nonna how she’d been killed. They should have known that knowledge would haunt her.

  “So much trouble has come to Bella Terra. So much pain. So much suffering. So many victims,” Sarah lamented. “And for what? A bottle of wine. A few diamonds. They’re only things.”

  Eli, Rafe, and Noah had come here today to rebuild Sarah’s stairs—but actually, they were here so she wouldn’t be left alone to grieve.

  She had lost a little of the faith and trust that made her who she was. They could not bear that.

  “Nonna, Olivia was in league with thieves and murderers. She drugged you. You could have died.” Eli hugged her more tightly against him.

  “She drugged Bao. You had no protection. My God, you could have been kidnapped. You could have been killed.” Noah’s hand convulsed on Nonna’s shoulder.

  His fault. All of this was his fault.

  Since the year he was nineteen, Noah Di Luca had known he towed death along behind him with an unbreakable chain—and he had forged that chain himself.

  His family called him the carefree one, the one who had escaped unscathed from the angst that drove his brothers through hell. That was fine; he took care to maintain that lighthearted facade.

  Because he wasn’t like his brothers, tortured by an unkind fate. He and he alone had screwed up his life.

  Once he had faced that fact, he made choices. Some had been easy, some difficult.

  He played hard: raced his motorcycle, skied the black slopes, flew a glider.

  He worked hard, maintaining tight control over the family-owned Bella Terra resort, constantly improving the service, the setting, the restaurant.

  He loved deeply. But only his grandmother, his brother even his fickle, thoughtless father.

  Noah’s crime was old, but like Jacob Marley’s chains, he’d dragged it behind him into the present.

  He wanted to say something, do something that would make it all better. But the last time he’d opened his mouth, he’d said too much. For the first time in ten years, a smidgen of the truth had come bursting out of him. If he had told them the entire truth… their deaths would be on his hands. It was too dangerous to confide in his family.

  Now he remained resolutely silent, totally ineffectual, doing nothing more than standing close, with his hand on Nonna’s shoulder.

  She sniffled. “Do any of you boys have a handkerchief?”

  “No. Here.” Rafe offered Nonna the hem of his T-shirt. “Olivia got tangled up with the wrong people, and she paid the price.”

  “Of her life!” Nonna’s eyes flashed, and she used the hem of her apron to wipe her cheeks.

  “A very wise woman once told me that life ain’t fair,” Eli said.

  “Once?” Rafe said.

  When they were growing up and they complained about getting picked last in baseball or a teacher who didn’t like them, “Life ain’t fair,” had been Nonna’s response.

  Noah had come to think that was the truest piece of wisdom she had taught them.

  From the open screen door, Bao Le spoke. “Olivia’s death is my fault.” Slowly she opened the door, and with the fluid ease of a martial artist, she moved out to join them. Petite and slender, the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, she was one of Rafe’s most trusted employees. Although Noah would have said it wasn’t possible, with Olivia’s betrayal Bao’s protection of Nonna had escalated. Bao had always been intense; now her large brown eyes glowed with fervor. Three times a day and, as far as he knew, five times a night, she left the house and stalked the grounds, checking with the other guards, looking for any sign an intruder had crept through their net of security. “It’s my fault,” she repeated. “She had a clean background check, but I should have seen the truth.” She offered Nonna a box of tissues.

  “No, Bao.” Nonna broke away from her grandsons. She took a tissue and wiped her nose. “I should have questioned Olivia more. Instead, I thought I should respect her privacy. She never told me about herself.”

  The ultimate damnation. Nonna had a way of listening, as if she was really interested, and everyone talked to her. They confessed everything in their pasts, happiness or sorrow or guilt or self-satisfaction. Sooner or later, Nonna knew all of everyone’s hopes, ambitions… and sins.

  Nonna hugged Bao.

  Bao stood stiff and unresponsive. Finally she gave in, bowed her head, and put it on Nonna’s shoulder. For just a second. Then she sprang back to attention, as if afraid that even a moment’s daydreaming would once more result in disaster. “Someone offered her money,” Bao said, “either before she came to Bella Terra or after she came to work in your house, and she took the bribe. I don’t understand why you cry for her, Mrs. Di Luca. She was the worst kind of person, one who betrays all that is good and honorable in this world.”

  “You’re right, dear. And yet I cry.” Sarah smiled at Bao, but that smile wavered.

  Bao scowled. “I will check your casserole.” She went in and slammed the door behind her.

  “She’s angry that she failed you,” Rafe said.

  “I know. Yet I failed, too. I should have seen that Olivia could betray us.” Nonna dabbed at her red nose.

  As much as it pained Noah to see his grandmother cry, he felt an even deeper sorrow. Sooner or later, she would know Noah’s secrets and sins, and when she did, she would ache for him as she ached for Olivia.

  For like Olivia, he would be dead.

  Chapter 4

  “We were all fools.” Eli collapsed back into the porch swing. With his good hand, he lifted his broken foot onto the seat and grimaced as if it ached from the heat and the work. “How could we not have investigated why someone so desperately wanted that bottle of wine?”

  So true. They had simply assumed someone—Joseph Bianchin, a longtime enemy of the Di Lucas—had wanted the bottle for the prestige of owning the last bottle created by famed winemaker Massimo Bruno.

  Rafe leaned against the porch railing and in a pontifical, mocking tone, he said, “I have a brother… who’s an authority on wine… and he told me that any bottle of wine made by Massimo Bruno during Prohibition had the potential to be worth many thousands of dollars.”

  Eli, the aforementioned brother, turned sideways, rested his casted arm on the back of the swing, and said, “Well, it has. It is! And once Nonna told us Joseph Bianchin wanted the bottle, I figured that was the whole”—he gestured—“mystery. He was behind the attack on Nonna. Nasty old bastard.”

  Everyone on the porch nodded.

  Nonna said, “He tried to kill your grandfather on our wedding day. That makes him more than a nasty old bastard. That makes him a—”

  Noah’s arm shot out, and he hugged her to him hard. “Nonna, speaking as one of your grandsons, I gotta tell you—you can’t say stuff like that. It makes us duck and run while we wait for the lightning to strike.”

  She chuckled drily against his shirt and hugged him around the waist. “All right, dear, but I’ve heard all the words. I’ve even used them in Scrabble with Annie and June.”

  Annie and June were Nonna’s sisters-in-law and best friends, Noah’s great-aunts, women who lived at the Di Luca family’s resorts on California’s romantic Far Island and on the wild Washington coast. “But you haven’t seen them in a year,” Noah objected.

  Nonna dismissed his objection with a wave. “Oh, please. We play online.”

  “Foolish me. Of course you do.” Because Nonna would use every means at hand to keep in touch with those she loved.

  “I still believe Bianchin was behind it all,” Nonna said.

  “It
was definitely him who started the trouble. Noah’s done one thing right.” Rafe looked at Noah. “He chased Joseph Bianchin out of town.”

  Noah inclined his head. “I wish he was back in town. I want to know what he knows, now that we figured out what was in that bottle—”

  “We figured it out?” Eli smirked.

  “Okay, you.” Security guy that Rafe was, he liked to be the one who figured stuff out.

  “Me and Chloë,” Eli said.

  “She was the real brains behind the whole pink-diamond discovery, wasn’t she?” Rafe asked.

  Eli stretched and grinned. “What do you think? She’s a writer. She plots mysteries for a living.”

  Noah watched his brothers, amused by Rafe’s chagrin, by Eli’s newlywed complacency.

  Rafe must have seen, for he turned on him and snapped, “Noah! Did you know something about Olivia?”

  “What? No! Why?” He’d spent so many years practicing a casual expression—had he looked guilty? Or were Rafe and Eli suspicious of his every expression now?

  “You were interested in her,” Rafe said. “Then you weren’t. Did you suspect her?”

  Noah relaxed infinitesimally. “I was interested in her. She was interested in me. We shared a few kisses, but she wanted more than I was willing to give.”

  “You mean like marriage?” Eli asked.

  “Yup.”

  “And you won’t marry,” Nonna said.

  He looked away, discomfited by her steady gaze. “No. I won’t marry.”

  Nonna lowered herself into the red-painted rocking chair, moving slowly, painfully, like an old lady.

  She wasn’t an old lady. She was eighty, but until this ordeal had started Noah and his brothers had bragged about her, how active she was, how astute, how cool she was, a fan of Australian football, a proud, sharp-voiced liberal, a volunteer at the food kitchen, and when she dispensed advice about business or finances or personal matters, the Di Luca boys listened.

  For God’s sake, she drove a 1967 titty pink Ford Mustang convertible with original upholstery. And she drove it fast.

  Now she looked tired and red eyed, and as if she ached with sorrow.

  Noah spoke hastily, waving the mystery of Olivia like a shiny toy to distract her. “Anyway, Olivia tried to put pressure on me, then suddenly… boom! She shrugged me off. I suppose she wanted money—my money. I suppose when they contacted her, she decided she didn’t need me.”

  “They?” Rafe’s blue eyes lit with triumph, and he pounced. “Why they? Why not him? For a job like this, I always suspect a man.”

  “Okay. Him.” Noah let his very real annoyance sound in his voice. “You know the ropes in a job like this. In my business, as head of the family’s resort, the real pains in the ass are women, especially in large groups. I swear to God, I am never letting another romance writers’ conference in my hotel.”

  Rafe and Eli exchanged glances.

  “When you had your little reveal, you said, ‘I’m in the middle of it. These people are ruthless, and they are going to find massimo’s pink diamonds any way they can.’ ” Eli pointed his cast at Noah. “So what the hell am I supposed to believe? What you say now? Or what you said then?”

  “I’m a congenital liar.” Noah shrugged.

  “You little shit,” Rafe said in a low voice. “Tell us.”

  “Look, I got suspicious about all that fuss about a bottle of wine, so I looked up information about Massimo. I figured stuff out, got too involved in the process, and when I said I was in the middle of it, I meant I was in the middle of looking into the case. I didn’t realize everyone was going to take me so literally.” Noah checked his brothers for their reaction.

  They weren’t buying it.

  Tempers sizzled. The emotional temperature on the front porch rose. If Nonna hadn’t been there, Eli and Rafe would have reverted to childhood, sat on Noah, and punched him until he gave up the information—or lost consciousness.

  He would have lost consciousness before he told them the truth.

  Thank God, the low-throated roar of a powerful motor sounded in the distance.

  Heads turned.

  “The girls are back!” Nonna said, and smiled.

  She loved her new granddaughters-in-law.

  She loved seeing Eli and Rafe married at last.

  Noah had hoped those two marriages would satisfy her, but obviously she still had hopes for him. And in the normal run of things, he would be married, with a string of kids.

  Hey. No regrets. He’d made himself a good life.

  Eli stood and limped over to join Rafe at the rail. Both men watched the long, winding drive to the Di Luca farmhouse with an intensity that all too plainly expressed their anxiety. They knew they had to let the women go to town. They couldn’t confine Brooke and Chloë for their safety. But with the violence that had happened in Bella Terra, they feared every moment Brooke and Chloë were out of their sight.

  Nonna joined them at the rail and watched the cognac metallic Porsche Panamera 4S with palpable lust. “I have to talk to Chloë about letting me drive that bad boy,” she said.

  Noah grinned.

  Eli wore the pained expression of a man whose wife had bought herself a treat, a grossly expensive sports car, for finishing her second book.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t already driven it, Nonna,” Noah said. “Aren’t you the one who urged her to buy it?”

  “I didn’t urge her to,” Nonna said primly. “When she saw my Mustang, she said I inspired her.”

  With a sigh, Eli put his arm around Nonna. “Thanks, Nonna. I owe you for a lot of gray hairs.”

  “It’s payback,” Nonna said tartly.

  With a wave at the porch, Brooke unfolded her tall frame from the passenger seat. She had her Nordic father’s fair skin and her Irish/Native American mother’s glossy dark hair, and she blew a kiss to Rafe as she walked around the car. “Everything’s fine, honey,” she called.

  Leaning into the driver’s seat, she helped Chloë out.

  Chloë was the exact opposite of Brooke. She was shortish, too thin, sported white-blond hair with pomegranate red streaks over one temple… and she hadn’t finished her part of the recent fight for the Di Luca bottle of wine in good health. The break in her breastbone had needed further repair, and her surgeon had recommended a light, abbreviated body cast until healing was confirmed. Her dislocated shoulder and the necklace of bruises that had not quite faded from around her throat made her seem even more fragile.

  At the sight of her slow, painful motions, Eli clutched the horizontal rail so tightly his knuckles turned white. But he sounded calm and confident as he called, “Hi, Chloë. How was the drive?”

  Chloë looked up at him and grinned. “Great drive. Great car. Want to come down and help with the groceries?”

  Eli hit the ground so fast the casts on his foot and arm might have been imaginary.

  Rafe followed, looking grim and trying to smile at the same time.

  His brothers wanted their wives to feel safe, and at the same time, they feared for them so much.

  Noah shook his head. He couldn’t stand to watch; his big brothers, Eli and Rafe, stripped of confidence by the love of a woman.

  But Noah had never loved a woman as much as his brothers loved their wives.

  He enjoyed women, of course. He enjoyed everything about them: their scents, their smiles, the curves of their bodies, the way they moaned as they moved beneath him in bed. Or on top of him. The first time, the last time… it was all good.

  But once he realized death would follow him at every turn, he also realized he could never settle down, marry, have children. He could never grow old with that one special woman he had imagined he would someday find. Because a man who loved a woman, knowing that in his untimely dying he would cruelly desert her, knowing that his disgrace would haunt her and their children forever… he deserved to burn in hell.

  So his relationships were fun, joyous, short-term, and trivial. He fell a
little in love with each woman. He thought they all fell a little in love with him. But his lovers knew the score, and they were never surprised when he smiled and kissed them good-bye.

  He had broken his own rule only once.

  Now, as he watched his brothers, he envied them fiercely. They had what he would never have.

  Eli, always solemn, always mature, laughed and tried to wrap Chloë in his sweaty, dirty arms while she edged away, screaming, “No! No! You’re yucky!”

  But she didn’t scamper very fast, and when he caught her, she didn’t seem worried about his yuck.

  Rafe willingly made a fool of himself by flexing his muscles while Brooke made cooing noises and ran her fingertips over his pecs.

  Nonna laughed aloud.

  And an image rose unbidden in Noah’s brain. Penelope Alonso, her heavy, long black hair hanging in a braid down her back, her exotic brown eyes peeking from beneath the sweep of long, thick, dark lashes, her full lips smiling as she watched him make a fool of himself… for her…

  He told himself it wasn’t surprising he had broken his rule for Penelope. He had been almost twenty, and still grieving over his broken future and the inevitable loss of his own life.

  More important, she had been everything he’d ever wanted: tough, proud, joyous, ambitious, hardworking, smart, and brash. He supposed she hadn’t been technically beautiful: a little short, very curvy, a quarter white, a quarter Hispanic, and half something else—she didn’t know who her father was. Not that she’d cared. Nor had Noah. Because he’d seen her, and he’d loved her, and she’d loved him back.

  At the end of that summer, he’d realized what a bastard he’d been to start a relationship with her, and he’d sent her away.

  Noah promptly put the image out of his mind.

  He saw no point in remembering her. In a moment of weakness three years ago, he’d looked her up on the Internet and come across photos of her wedding.

  He was glad she’d moved on. Because no woman deserved a man who kept secrets, a man doomed to die for his misdeeds.

  Thank God Penelope Alonso was the only woman who had ever tempted him, and thank God she had moved forever beyond his reach.…