by Leslie North
“Me and my family committed to spending millions more on the renovation of the Romano del Mare on top of the millions already owed, and we did it because you manipulated my pride.” Nicolo’s voice was monotone. Empty. It was a reflection of the hollowness of his chest.
“My” pride, a voice within him reminded himself. His pride had taken him down his current path, that was true. It was not Adeline, not really. She had not made him do anything that he had not wanted to do, but that did not keep his blood from boiling. It did not stop his feelings of being misused and manipulated. She had used his feelings for her against him, and rage filled him as he stared at her, wondering where the girl he’d thought he’d known had gone.
“Who are you?” he asked, bewildered.
A strangled sob escaped Adeline in response to his question, and she covered her mouth with shaking fingers. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said again. She reached her other hand across the table, but he did not lift his hands to meet her. Instead, he remained as he was with his arms hanging down.
“I have never loved anyone as I have loved you, and it’s clouded my judgement. You have made a fool of me. A fool, bedda. I am a man, a man who loves you, and you have made me a fool.” He slammed his closed fist into his chest above his heart. “You make me wonder if it’s better to not love at all if women can be trusted to have no honor. You used me to get what you want, and me and my family will pay the cost of your childish wants and fairy tale dreams. It costs you nothing. Not honor, because you had none to begin with. Not money, because money has no value if it’s in somebody else’s hands. And it did not even cost you me because a fake person”—he motioned a hand to indicate her—“cannot truly lose anything because they didn’t exist in the first place.”
Nicolo stood up so abruptly from the table that his chair flipped over onto the hard floor with a clatter. Then, turning on his heel, he stalked off to the kitchens and left Adeline crying at the table. In less than two minutes, he was back with a young man dressed in black pants, a sleeveless t-shirt, and a full length apron.
“This is Pietro. He’s going to take you back to the plane, and the plane will take you back to Sicily. I will make sure that there is a car waiting for you to drive you home from there.” He couldn’t stand to be near her for another minute. He had been nothing more than her marionette, and he was cutting the strings.
Adeline’s large, round eyes went wide as her tender lips parted. It took her a moment to find her voice. “You’re not coming?”
“The plane will come back for me. I’m needed in India.” He had planned on renting a car and driving down to the tip to take a ferry across to Sicily, but there was no point.
There was no one in Sicily that he wanted to see.
12
Nicolo
“You did what?” Leonardo demanded.
Nicolo flinched and then remembered that his brother could see him over the video screen. “It will work out,” Nicolo reassured. “We can sell the Romano del Mare for much more if she is fully restored. If we show her to be a proven earner, it will benefit us all the more.”
“Oh, we will get back to that and your decision to move forward with fixing her without including either of us in the decision, but I’m talking about Adeline. Are you telling me that you have already messed things up with her?”
“What do you care about Adeline?” Nicolo exclaimed. His personal affairs were none of his brother’s business. It was true that he had not spoken with or seen Adeline in weeks. What he wasn’t telling his brother was that her lingering absence from his life had not been his idea. Since that night in southern Tuscany, she had refused to take his phone calls. He had been tied up in India during all of that time and had not had the chance to track her down in person, but that had changed. His feet were finally back on Sicilian ground.
It had taken him nearly a week of thought and self-reflection to soften his anger and to see Adeline more clearly. Fueling his inner reflection was the misery that had descended on him in Adeline’s absence. She had done him wrong—she had done his entire family wrong—but that did not change all the ways that she was good for him. And, she was good for him. She’d made him want something more than living a transient life with no connections. She had made him want to belong to someone, and his life was empty and without purpose without her in it. All of the goals he’d set for himself and that he’d thought were important became meaningless; his achievements meant nothing without her to share them with.
“I care about you, little brother. You finally found someone to come back to. You found your anchor. Now you’re telling me that you’ve thrown her overboard.”
“She lied!” Nicolo exclaimed. He still cared more about her lie than he wanted to. It had been difficult to let go of her deceit with full forgiveness.
“I don’t care if she did! You have to get her back.” Leonardo yelled back with equal passion. “So she had you wrapped around her little finger? So she manipulated you into doing what she wanted? You know what that is? That’s a woman you want on your side. That’s a woman who will move mountains to take care of and provide for the ones she loves. Who named the Romano del Mare?”
It felt like a trick question, but Nicolo answered anyway. “Nanno.”
“And who told Nanno that he wanted to name it the Romano del Mare?”
Nicolo pursed his lips.
“Nanna was always the drive for our family, and Nanno was her engine. And, you know what?”
“What?” Nicolo asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
“That man never had an unhappy day in his life that he spent with her,” Leonardo declared, and it was true. “He trusted her. He gave her the reins of the family because she was focused on the present, the past and the future. She saw it all. She saw how it was all connected. And when he didn’t agree with her, he still did what she wanted because her finger was on the pulse of the family—and family is what it’s all about. She was his anchor. She was his home, Nicolo, and now you’ve thrown your home away.”
Nicolo shrugged his shoulders as if his brother’s words didn’t matter, but they did. Less than two days after his dinner with Adeline, Nicolo had no longer cared that she had manipulated his pride. Actually, he hadn’t even cared from the very beginning. It was his ego being taken down a peg that had made him so upset. He had not thought that his pride was such a blinding part of who he was, but she had taught him that it was himself he could not trust. That had hurt. That had taken time for him to learn how to accept.
“She won’t take my phone calls,” Nicolo finally admitted. “All of this time, it’s her who’s thrown me overboard, not the other way around. She’s done with me.” His throat tightened as his heart skipped beats. He was no longer a whole man without her. She had made a space for herself inside his heart, and with her gone there was an emptiness there. He’d even called her place of work and had asked to be patched through to her, but they had told him she had taken an extended leave of absence.
“It’s not that large of an island, brother. Find her.”
“I will,” Nicolo said, making the promise to himself even if tracking her meant traveling to Spain and searching its every corner.
Their call ended, and Nicolo made his way to Adeline’s home. Bounding up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, he knocked with one hand while holding a large bouquet of yellow sunflowers in the other. He’d chosen sunflowers because they were Adeline’s favorite but also because she was the light of his life. While the sunflowers didn’t shine as bright as she did, they were at least a token gift representing how he felt about her.
There was no answer. So, he surmised, she was either still refusing to speak to him, or she wasn’t at home.
Nicolo leaned forward and held his ear close to the door to see if he could hear movement inside. All was silent. From the floor below, however, he heard the shuffle of feet and then the closing of a door.
Heading back downstairs, Nicolo examined the door options o
f the nearby apartments and chose to knock on the one closest to the building’s entrance. If he wasn’t mistaken, it would be the home of the building’s landlord.
No sooner had he tapped his knuckles against the painted wood than the door opened to reveal an elderly lady with her gray hair pulled into a bun atop her head and glasses worn on the tip of her nose. She took longer looking Nicolo over from head to toe and back up again than she’d taken to open the door. A slow smile lit her face when her gaze came to rest on the bouquet of flowers.
Nicolo looked from the landlady to the flowers and back again. Then, arming himself with his most charming smile, he bent low and presented the elderly lady with the bouquet.
Taking the flowers, she cradled them in her arm like a baby, and her smile grew all the brighter.
“I am looking for Adeline Peluso, signora. Would you know where she is?”
The landlady’s mouth pursed and her eyes drifted up in thought before refocusing on him to answer. “It’s Tuesday.”
Nicolo waited for more of an explanation, but none came. “I’m sorry, signora. What happens on Tuesday?”
“Adeline likes to study on Tuesdays.”
She’s taking classes? Nicolo was beginning to feel as though he hadn’t known her at all. Did I make the entire relationship about me?
“Can you tell me where she studies?”
“Mmm,” the woman answered with a nod. “Concetta’s… in the square. But her study will end soon. Where she goes after that…” The woman shrugged.
“Grazij,” Nicolo said, bending low to kiss her free hand. She waved him off as he ran out the door.
He didn’t bother to get in his car and drive the distance but opted to run instead. He darted down narrow alleyways, up streets that wound uphill, and through an open-air market before reaching the town square. There, tucked away in one corner, pushed back and almost invisible to allow for a street entrance, Nicolo found Concetta’s.
The door chimed as he pushed inside. He was still a little out of breath, but he was catching his wind fast.
The space inside the small shop was cramped, and on every available surface hung every type of lace he could ever imagine. The work was intricate, complex, and beyond exquisite.
“May I help you?” asked a tall, slender woman whose body seemed younger than her crinkled eyes hinted.
“I am looking for Adeline Peluso.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, everything about the woman’s countenance changed. Her mouth tightened, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders went back, she stood taller, and she clasped her hands before her.
“Oh.” She looked him over from head to toe and back up again, just as the landlady had done. “I will ask if she is available to be seen.”
“Wait,” Nicolo said quickly as the woman turned to make her way into the back of the shop. This was his one shot. He could feel it in his gut. If he got turned away without getting to talk to Adeline this time, she would find a way to be gone from his life forever. “Please, give her a message. Tell her that I am…” He swallowed, then blurted. “Tell her that I’m not a fool, but that I’m her fool.”
The woman didn’t move except that her eyes lit and the corners of her smile pulled up ever so slightly. Then, squaring her shoulders again, she said, “No.”
Nicolo wanted to throw his arms down in frustration. Barging into the back would win him no points with Adeline, but he had to see her. He had to tell her how he felt.
“You can tell her yourself,” the woman added, her smile growing.
Leaping over the counter that separated them, Nicolo took the woman’s face in his hands and planted a big kiss on her cheek before rushing through the door that led to the back of the shop.
He wove his way past mountains of supplies and works-in-progress until finally, toward the back, space opened up for a collection of women to sit while they worked. It was at that point that he froze. He didn’t speak. He watched, and he saw.
Adeline sat with her head bent over a pillow in her lap. Atop the pillow was a piece of paper sewn on cloth, and on top of that paper Adeline was stitching the delicate design of a butterfly. The thread was thin and every stitch she made only grew the butterfly by the merest amount, yet her focus remained and she kept working. To him, the work that was left to be done on her butterfly seemed insurmountable, but if it was, that message had not reached her nimble fingers. To Adeline, the impossible was possible and the improbable was an absolute.
She can move mountains… and she can build my world.
One of the ladies lifted a head and saw him, and her work stopped, then another and another. Soon it was only Adeline who worked. Finally she, too, stopped, looked to either side of her and then followed the other women’s gazes to him.
“Nicolo,” she whispered and let her now-still hands rest in her lap.
“I am an idiot. I am a fool,” Nicolo said, stepping into the half-circle created by the women’s chairs. He got down on his knees before Adeline and took one of her hands in his own. “But whatever I am, I am a better man with you in my life.”
“I’m so sorry,” Adeline said, tears welling in her eyes.
“I’m not. I’m stubborn and pigheaded and rarely ever look at life past the end of my nose. If I had sold the Romano del Mare to be destroyed, I would have been haunted by it for the rest of my life. My grandparents poured their entire lives into the resort and I was ready to bulldoze it to the ground just because the going had gotten a little hard. I don’t want to do that now. I want to have more to show for my life than to destroy the legacy left for me. It would have left a hole in my soul that I would have never been able to fill. You saved me from that fate, Adeline. You pushed me into keeping what is dear to me by giving me the chance to give it up. In that moment I realized that I wasn’t ready to see her go.”
Nicolo brushed a tear from Adeline’s cheek. “I’m not ready to see you go either, bedda. You’re a part of me. I know that I’m a foolish man, but will you give me another chance?”
Adeline pushed her lace into the lap of the woman next to her and then threw herself into Nicolo’s arms, knocking him backward. With her on top and him pinned beneath her, she rained kisses down upon his face to mingle with her still-falling tears.
“Shoo! Shoo!” the tall woman from the front of the shop said, clapping her hands at them both as the other women laughed.
“Take me home,” Adeline demanded of Nicolo, following with a big kiss on his lips.
Nicolo didn’t even have to think of where she meant. His mind did not imagine his plane. He saw her and him. Everything else was a blur. The rest didn’t matter.
13
Nicolo
Nicolo looked at his ringing phone and moaned. It was his older brother, Gianpierre. Despite Leonardo's earlier words of support, Nicolo already caught an ear full from him about his decision to fully renovate the Romano del Mare rather than do simple repairs or sell her as a doomed building, and he didn’t want to hear it from Gianpierre, too. The man cared nothing for the resort their grandfather had built. All he cared about was getting elbow deep in medieval architecture, and while the Romano del Mare was the perfect site for him to do just that, the man avoided working in Italy like the plague. But, that was his issue and not something Nicolo was willing to think about at the moment.
Ignoring the call, he allowed it to go to voicemail. Then, picking up the phone, he called Adeline. The restoration of the resort was snowballing, and he needed to know that she had his back. With the development project in India heavy into the design phase, he didn’t have time to oversee every detail of what was Adeline’s passion project. He needed to know that she was willing to step up and take control during the times that he was away—which was most of the time of late.
Adeline’s phone went to voicemail, just as he’d allowed his phone to do when Gianpierre had called him.
Nicolo scowled at his phone. He’d been in India for the last two and a half weeks. He’d thought that he would get to sp
end time with Adeline when he returned to Sicily—but she’d been “busy” every time that he’d reached out to her. While he’d been gone to India, she’d flown to Spain for a meeting with the real estate agency to which she’d applied. Even though she’d made them wait, they still wanted her.
“That’s fine,” he reassured himself. “If she moves to Spain, I’ll go between India and Spain. Nothing changes. She’ll still be my girl.” Those were the words that came out of his mouth, but not even he believed them.
Everything was changing. All three days that he’d been back in Sicily, he’d used nearly every waking hour to address concerns relating to the renovation. He had thought that Adeline would be his feet on the ground, his on-point person to handle the day to day issues that arose, but she was becoming less and less available to oversee the project. He’d been counting on her to be able to handle it so that he could continue his work in India. Without her to fill in the gaps, he’d have to restructure his entire life.
Picking up the phone, he sent Adeline a text. “Dinner tonight?” He watched the phone’s screen for a response. Little bubbles rippled across it to show that Adeline was typing. Then, the little bubbles stopped, then started again. This went on for several minutes, but no message appeared. When Nicolo was almost ready to give up and call her again, a message finally blipped into existence on his screen.
“Sure.”
Nicolo’s stomach cramped. There was more that she wasn’t saying, and there was no way that it could be good.
Pulling up Google, Nicolo calculated the flight hours between India and Spain. It was longer than India to Sicily, but he would have to make it work.
Who would oversee the Romano del Mare? His brothers had both sworn that because he’d made the decision to renovate the resort on his own, it was his responsibility to oversee the project.
“So… India to Sicily, then Sicily to Spain, then back to India.” He worked out the schedule in his head before pulling up a spreadsheet that included a timetable of events for both projects. The work in India would require a minimum of three years to complete, and that timetable would only be achievable under optimal weather conditions. It was possible that the project would extend to as long as five years.
