A hand gripped Flavio’s wrist, though he couldn’t make out the face. Then the red fury became Tony’s features. Flavio stared at him, shocked and paralyzed by what he’d done, thinking of the missiles hurled at his papa in the riot. He hadn’t seen it, but had heard the family talking before they sent him away. Violent people had killed his papa. Violence Flavio had always despised. But now . . . He jerked his arm away. “Doesn’t he know better than to sweep when I’m trying to make my shot?”
Lorenzo and Vittorio were staring. Flavio knew what they thought. He’d lost his mind. Reversed himself in the cheapest way. All his ideals, his philosophy, lost in a moment of petty rage. And inside he wasn’t sure he would have stopped until he’d stoned the man to death. Humiliated and terrified by what he had done without thinking, Flavio curled his lip. “Stupid Chinese,” he muttered. “Go back to China, old man!” He brushed off his sleeves, looked once more at the DiGratia brothers, and walked out.
He felt sick, as though something poisoned him. He had betrayed his nature, and still the strain was not relieved. The Chinaman wasn’t the source. The source and target of his rage was Quillan Shepard. He had told Carina he would destroy him. It had been words, bravado, to terrify her, to hurt her for saying she loved the man. But now he trembled. Now he believed he could actually do it. And in that thought, at last, the tearing inside him eased.
Carina stared in surprise as her brothers brought the old Chinese man into Papa’s medical room. They laid him, chattering and cringing, on the table. Tony raised a hand, pressing down against the air so the man would understand what he meant. “Stay here. Lie down.”
Carina saw the blood streaming from the old man’s ear. She couldn’t tell if it was all from the split at the top of it or if some came from inside, indicating injury to the brain and the inner ear. She looked from the Chinaman to her brothers.
Vittorio said, “Go get Papa. I’ll work on him, but I want Papa to have a look.”
Carina hurried out to find her papa. He was in the field, overseeing the removal of the vines. They should have been yanked out in the winter when they were completely dormant. It seemed crueler, somehow, to destroy them when they were making a weak, desperate attempt to grow.
“Papa—” she called—“Papa, Vittorio needs you. He has an injured Chinese.”
Her papa turned, started toward her. In a short time he reached her.
“A Chinese, you say?”
“Yes, Papa. He must have been struck with something.”
Papa shook his head and started for the house. “Where was he hit?”
“In the ear. There’s lots of blood, but I couldn’t see if it came from inside. He’s an old man, Papa. Who would do such a thing?”
“Who wouldn’t?” he said softly. “Was ever a people so despised?”
“They are strange, Papa. People don’t like what they don’t understand.” Papa frowned. “People understand less and less every day.”
They reached the house and went inside. Vittorio had cleaned the blood from the ear and was attempting to stitch the edges of the top together. He had been watching and learning from his papa for years. Now they worked together in both medicine and viticulture.
Carina saw a fresh trickle of fluid from inside the man’s ear. Trauma to the brain. There was swelling, too. She thought of D.C., Cain’s son, who’d been nearly killed by a head blow. But he had been silent and comatose. This old man chattered and shrieked in Chinese without end.
Papa approached him, laid a hand on his chest. The man became still, looking at Papa from his black almond eyes. “A candle, Carina,” was all Papa said.
Vittorio stitched furiously while the man lay still. Carina brought a candle, and Papa moved it across the old man’s vision. Then he handed it back to her and raised the man’s eyelids slightly with his thumb. Carina felt the familiar surge of pride and tenderness, watching her papa work. Only Papa could have eased the man’s terror with a touch.
She stepped back next to Tony. “What happened? Where did you find him?”
Tony glanced from her to their father. “He was sweeping up the lanes. Flavio got angry.”
Her mouth parted as she searched her brother’s face. “Flavio struck him?” Impossible. Flavio would never raise his hand to injure. He hated physical confrontation, scorned it.
“He lost his temper. Threw the ball.”
Her mind couldn’t argue with what Tony had seen with his eyes. Carina looked back at the old man. Flavio could do that? To a helpless old man doing his job? Then he was not the Flavio she knew. What had he become?
Tony took her arm, spoke close beside her head. “It’s not his fault. He’s powder, waiting to explode. You must do something before—”
“Before what?” She stared into his face.
“Before you lose them both.”
She swallowed the surge of fear and hissed, “Quillan is my husband.
What would you have me do?”
Tony shook his head. “I don’t know, Carina. I only know that when Flavio threw the balls, he was not—”Tony spread his hands—“he was not Flavio.”
She looked back at the old man in Papa’s hands.
Lorenzo leaned over, assisting. “He was also hit on his back. You might want to check him there.”
Carina looked back at the Chinaman as Papa eased his shoulder up from the table. She said, “Flavio struck him twice?”
“Before I stopped him.”
Carina chilled at the implication that Flavio might not have stopped himself. She couldn’t fathom it. Yes, Flavio was temperamental, introspective, and emotional, his moods unpredictable. But murder? She had warned Quillan but had not really believed it, not deep inside as she did now. Signore, is it possible? She thought of Flavio as she knew him, as she had loved him, his hypnotic appeal due as much to his unpredictability as to his charm.
But there was no appeal to such lack of control. She thought how hard Quillan had tried to avoid violence, even toward the roughs who had terrorized Crystal. Quillan protected life, though no one had ever protected him. She ached inside for the man she loved.
And then she remembered begging for Flavio’s life. “What if self-defense becomes deadly force?” And she had told him no. But now she saw what Flavio could do. What if Quillan couldn’t defend himself without killing Flavio? Or God forbid, what if he were killed? She pressed her palms to her head. “Tony, what do I do?”
He lowered his eyes, then said, “Annul the marriage.”
It was a hammer to her chest. Annul the marriage that was life to her? And what? Marry Flavio? To ease Papa’s guilt? To save Quillan’s life?
Did she love him enough to release him? For his life’s sake? She gripped a hand to her mouth and rushed outside.
Trembling and weeping, she ran out to the vineyard, stood among the vines ripped from the ground, their roots drying. She could almost hear them weeping with her. Il Padre Eterno! Help me, please. How can I give him up? How can I lose what you have given? Would you strip him from me as you stripped the baby from my womb? Must I lose everything?
She looked at the dying vines. Just so would she wither and die without Quillan. He was her life.