by Debra Dunbar
“I’m assuming the Cardinal was from a very well-known family?” I asked.
“Weren’t they all?” Irix steered the boat into the marina, and eased it to the dock. “This was originally a monastery, but after the Cardinal passed away, it was sold into private ownership. The house was built around the monastery, but it fell into disrepair. When Guido Montenegro bought it, the place was pretty much a ruin.”
I was excited to see what the man had done to restore the villa. Hopefully whoever owned it now would continue to give it the same loving care as the late owner.
I held the wheel while Irix hopped out and tied our boat in, reaching out a hand to help me onto the stone ledge, then up the stairs to a narrow strip of lawn and hedges that separated an ancient building from the lake. In some ways it reminded me of a larger version of the villa Irix and I had rented, with gray stone and ivy, but that was where the similarities ended. We were in a small one-building villa tucked in between the lake waters and a sweet little town, where Villa Montenegro was a series of buildings on a steep rocky slope, its terraced gardens filled with rough and hearty plants that were perfectly matched to the exposed environment and brutal, rocky soil.
It made me think of survival, of carving out a bit of paradise in a hostile surrounding. I loved it and I hadn’t even stepped foot in the villa yet.
We went through a gate and quickly saw that we were not the only ones taking advantage of this opportunity to see the villa. There was a second dock, and several boat taxis were ferrying people from other areas of the lake.
“The only way to access the villa is by the water?” I asked Irix.
A voice spoke from behind us. “Actually there is road access, but the town is through a mile of forest and steep elevations. Getting here by road from Menaggio or Cadenabbia would take an hour, where by boat the journey can be made in minutes.” I turned around and saw a small woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a beak of a nose. “Of course, by air is the quickest method of travel.”
“There’s a helipad here?” It wouldn’t have surprised me. A wealthy guy eccentric enough to buy an old monastery-turned-villa could also want his own personal helicopter. And it would have to be a helicopter, because this rocky, steep property wasn’t suitable for any plane besides a jump-jet.
“Oh no.” The woman laughed. “Mr. Montenegro didn’t put in a helipad. He did, however, make significant improvements to the house. Are you here for a tour?”
This woman seemed to personally know the late Mr. Montenegro. I would so much rather have a guided tour from someone who could give us the background on the property and renovations than just wander around on our own.
“We would love to take a tour, but haven’t arranged for one,” Irix told her. “Is it possible for us to sign up for one at this late notice?”
She looked at Irix, her eyes warming in appreciation as they did a slow tour of his body. Then she glanced at her watch. “I have half an hour until the next group. I can give you a quick private tour, if you like.”
Irix smiled, and suddenly the sexual tension was thick enough to cut with a knife. Well. I knew who was probably getting laid this afternoon.
“We would love that. If it’s no trouble, that is.”
She beamed. “No trouble at all. I’m Ilaria Montenegro.”
I blinked in surprise. “You’re related to the late Guido Montenegro?”
“I am a distant cousin. I worked as his assistant, helping him with the renovations.” She reached out and ran her fingers across the spikey leaves of a yucca plant on a raised garden bed. “He was a younger son, never married, never had children. His passion was traveling the world, visiting every continent, climbing the tallest mountains. This villa served as a showcase for all the mementos of his travels. It’s his personal museum, the ideal place to house all his treasures.”
These Italians and their treasures. I exchanged a private smile with Irix as we followed Ilaria up endless sets of stairs to tiny narrow terraces of gardens, far more wild and rocky than the ones we’d seen earlier this day. The building closest to the lake, where we’d come in up the steps of the private marina, was the old monastery, complete with a bell tower. The house itself was built as a series of steps, each section almost one story above the one before it. We climbed the stairs along the outside of the villa until I was gasping for breath. How these people went up and down these stairs all day long was beyond me. After a few weeks of living here, I would either drop dead of cardiac arrest, or have some really killer legs.
“This is the section of the villa where we will start the inside part of the tour,” Ilaria said with a mischievous smile that made her look twenty years younger.
We paused before a giant set of arches that connected two buildings. The arches created an open-air courtyard where there was a view of the lake from either side, down far below the rocky sides of the promontory.
And that view was stunning. I wandered through the arches to the front terrace, peering down over the carved stone banister to a broad lawn below, then to the lake beyond. To my left was a pathway that branched off, one fork climbing upward to a stand-alone building with walls of paned glass, then past that to garages and what I assumed must be the road. The other fork led downward to a charming, round stone building with a slate roof.
“What’s that?” I asked Ilaria, pointing to the round building.
“It used to be an ice house, but it’s now Guido’s final home.”
“It’s a tomb?” I was astonished. What an amazing place to be buried.
“Yes. It was his wish to always be here, surrounded by all his beloved possessions and the home he loved.”
“How is the new owner going to feel about having Guido Montenegro’s grave in the old ice house?” Irix asked. “I’m assuming the villa is being sold?”
Ilaria’s eyes widened in shock. “We would never sell our family treasures. As Guido had no children of his own, he was free to will his estate to any member of our family. His niece, Bianca, is the new owner.”
The woman turned her gaze down toward the ice house/tomb, and I saw a girl emerge, her waist-length black hair glinting with burgundy highlights in the sun. She wiped a hand across her eyes, then looked up to the sky a moment before making her way up the stairs toward the rear part of the property. She had the sort of face that graced a million Renaissance paintings—a pale oval with softly rounded cheeks, a smooth jaw, and a classical nose. Bianca. She looked like she should still be in high school, yet here she was, the heiress to a huge villa.
“Will she live here?” I couldn’t imagine this would be an ideal home for a young girl.
“Eventually. She spent a lot of time here visiting her uncle. I saw her every weekend for the last six months.” Ilaria sighed. “Her grandmother will act as trustee until she’s of an age to assume control of her finances. Bianca will inherit from her as well, as her only grandchild. She’s the Montenegro heiress.”
There was a hint of wistful envy in Ilaria’s voice, but the woman seemed fond of her young cousin, and proud of the fact that the girl would be the one who carried on their family fortune into the future.
“Well I’m grateful she is allowing the public access, even if it’s just for today.” Irix took in the villa on the stepped, rocky promontory, the naturalistic landscape, the breathtaking view from every direction. “This is amazing. So different than the other villas.”
It was as if Guido Montenegro had taken a monastery and melded it into the land, made it part of its surroundings. Instead of conquering this rocky promontory, the villa was a symbiotic piece of it. It was like he’d taken the stone structures and turned them into a glorious, open-air cave, merging the sky and the sea and the stone. Compared to the artwork and perfectly manicured gardens of Villa Sommariva, this was a wild thing of nature and man. Two incredibly different styles of home, two different ideas of beauty. And although the elf in me adored Villa Sommariva, the succubus in me was in rapture over Villa Montenegro.
&nb
sp; We continued our tour, mindful that Ilaria had another group she’d need to attend to shortly. The building on the far side of the arches was a sort of library with maps. Yes, an entire room full of maps—some modern, some ancient. They were displayed in cases, stored carefully in custom-made shelves, and one was spread across the table, the travels of the former owner clearly marked in a spider’s web of interconnected red lines.
The room on the other side of the arches was a traditional library with floor-to-ceiling shelves in a dark-stained oak, the books the same eclectic mix of old and new as the maps in the opposite room. These appeared to be stand-alone buildings, not even sharing a common wall with the house on the lower terraces, but Ilaria’s eyes danced as she put a finger to her mouth and pulled on a shelf. It swung outward, revealing a hidden spiral staircase.
“It goes under the garden and into the larger portion of the villa,” she told us.
“That has got to be the most bad-ass thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” I told Irix, wondering if we could possibly do something like this at his New Orleans house. Probably not. The garden wouldn’t be big enough to accommodate a separate building, and being so close to sea level would mean the underground passage would be under water.
“They had to tunnel through solid rock to put this in.” Irix nodded appreciatively as we descended down the well-lit staircase and through a narrow passage. “Of course they had to do that for the foundations in original building, too.”
Ilaria nodded. “Yes, although putting in the tunnel was tricky. Guido couldn’t use explosives or anything that might vibrate and damage the foundation of the villa or the original monastery. It took a very gentle hand to dig this passageway.”
“Why?” I asked. “I mean, this is super cool, and I personally think everyone should have a secret passageway, but why go to all that trouble to put it in?”
Ilaria turned, and I saw the grim set of her mouth. “Our family is not from here. Some believe that we don’t belong here at all, that we are encroaching on territory that is not ours, stealing what belongs to others by our mere presence. It would be foolish not to have a secret means of moving through the villa, of escape.”
Um, I could completely understand that sort of caution back when Italy was a series of tiny fiefdoms, or city-states, but now? Unless she was making an oblique reference to violent political factions or the mafia? Had Guido Montenegro been involved in organized crime? If so, then I began to wonder about the “natural causes” of his death.
“This passageway isn’t so secret if you’re giving tours of it,” Irix commented dryly.
She swung open a door that led into a small study. When she closed the door, it was absolutely undetectable, seamlessly merging into the wall.
“Guido Montenegro is out of reach of any enemy now,” she told us. “And who would harm a young girl?”
There was something uneasy in her voice. Was she was worried that there were indeed people who would harm a young girl? I assumed that there were more escape routes than this one which would now be known by everyone for a hundred miles of Lake Como. If the worst happened, enemies would be searching this tunnel, while Bianca escaped through another. A vision of that young woman, with her long dark hair came to mind. I hoped that Guido Montenegro had just been a paranoid man, and not that her family was involved in activities that might put her at risk.
The villa was a winding maze of rooms. As Ilaria showed us through them, we’d come to the center floor of the far building. Our guide took us upstairs to see the top floor, then down to the lower. Then we went down another short set of stairs to the middle section of the second building in the villa. It was a cascading, interconnected series of structures, and I would have been completely lost if not for our guide.
“There’s central air and heat, and even an elevator in one section,” Ilaria told us. My mind was whirring with the ornate silk and velvet wallpaper and rock crystal chandeliers in each room, the marble mosaic tiles on the floor, even a smoking room that carried the lingering aroma of pipe tobacco, the beautiful items that covered every inch of every surface in this house.
Guido Montenegro had completely gutted the dilapidated stone villa and cleverly constructed a luxurious home. It might have melded into its surroundings on the outside, but inside the villa was a rich man’s paradise.
But the architecture and interior design were nothing compared to the vast array of collectables that filled the numerous shelves and display cases. The villa was one part home, one part museum, and as we moved from room to room, I got the idea the museum portion had quickly been overshadowing the home portion. There were hundreds of walrus tusk figurines, hundreds of glass paintings, hundreds of vases and bowls, of books and maps and documents and tapestries.
By the third room I was gobsmacked. Every square inch of this place was covered. There were walls of shelves and display cases, all filled with collectables. Furniture, vases, paintings, wall coverings, every single item had obviously been carefully chosen, loved by a man who took great pride and comfort in his vast array of collections. What Eduardo Sommariva had done with paintings and sculptures and trees and shrubs, Guido Montenegro had done with figurines and other items he’d brought back from his travels.
Treasures. Way too many for my taste, but now I understood why Daniela, and Ilaria, had referred to them as such.
Chapter 7
Ilaria left us to our own meanderings with an apology and a quick look at her watch, I noticed her eyes lingered warmly on Irix as she headed off to her next tour, leaving us in a breakfast room that was part of the old church in the original monastery section of the villa.
“Guido Montenegro was a hoarder,” I whispered to Irix with a grin. “A really, really rich hoarder.”
“I’ve never seen so much stuff in my life,” Irix commented. “Look, there are more glass paintings. What is that, two, three hundred?”
I giggled. “At least. It’s not a house, it’s a museum full of treasures.”
But it was magnificent. The outside of the house and monastery had been perfectly restored, and so had the gardens, but inside amid all the carefully displayed valuables were modern conveniences. It was an odd mix of rugged, museum, and home, and somehow it worked. I loved it. In some ways, I loved it more than Villa Sommariva. Well, except for the gardens. Guido Montenegro had his maps and glass paintings, and the Sommarivas had their azaleas and rhododendrons.
It was in the dressing room off the main bedroom that I saw it, a tiny notch in the patterned ceiling that caught my eye. I looked around to make sure no one else would see me, then pulled over a chair and climbed on it to stick my fingers in the notch.
“What are you doing?” Irix hissed. “Don’t get us kicked out. And don’t screw up my chances of getting it on with Ilaria later. That woman has some serious energy going on. I doubt she’s had sex in the last five to ten years. I want her.”
“Oh hush. She’ll just kick me out and drag you off to the bell tower to ravish. I see the way she’s been eying you.” My fingers depressed a tiny button and the ceiling panel sprung open, a leather rope ladder dropping down. I bit back a squeal. “Found another secret passageway. Irix, this is the coolest thing ever. I want secret passageways in my house.”
“So you can escape your enemies?” He joked, hopping up on the chair behind me to look up through the trap door. “You’d have to crawl through this and it’s pretty narrow. It’s clean, though. I’ll bet it leads up to the bell tower.”
“The bell tower where you’re gonna get some Ilaria action later,” I teased.
We heard the scuff of a footstep in the bedroom behind us and scrambled to shove the ladder back into the passageway, clicking shut the trap door and scooting the chair back just as a group of tourists entered.
My heart was racing, and I was sure I looked absolutely guilty of something as Irix grabbed my hand and yanked me out of the room. I started giggling halfway down the stairs and by the time we’d made it out to the patio, both o
f us were laughing.
“Bad elf,” Irix scolded. “We almost got caught.”
“Nah, we could have snuck up through the passageway and hid,” I told him, wondering at the sudden role reversal. Irix was normally the one pushing the boundaries and breaking the rules where I was the one having a panic attack over getting caught. How funny.
“Ilaria would have heard us. I get the feeling that very little gets by that woman. And there are security people milling around, too. I’m pretty sure if someone tried to lift so much as a paperclip, they’d find themselves strip-searched and tossed in the lake.”
I suddenly wondered if the villa had a dungeon. Ugh. “But we didn’t steal anything,” I countered. “Or break anything.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure Ilaria knows we found that passageway. You’re lucky you’re not swimming for Cadenabbia right now,” he teased.
Thankfully no one confronted us or firmly suggested we leave. We wandered the lower gardens some more before climbing upward to where a huge glass-enclosed pavilion sat, overlooking the entire villa and grounds. Irix was acting weird again, like he had been back at Villa Sommariva, fidgeting and looking around as if he were searching for something.
“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I’d always figured demons were pretty good at holding it, but maybe he’d had a lot of water before we’d come out.
“No. Yes. I mean, I need to go check something out for a moment. Meet you down by the arches? Give me ten minutes, then be there, the front part that overlooks the north side of the lake and the ice-house tomb.”
Weirdo. Just admit he had to pee, for crying out loud. “Okay.”
I watched him walk away, then continued climbing. The pavilion was pretty. The view breathtaking, and as I circled the building to return to the steps downward, I saw a narrow path. It was partially hidden by boxwoods, but clearly it was a pathway that had been in some use.
