"What?"
She propped her elbows on the counter and covered her forehead with her hand. Her chin wobbled. Dropping her hand, she looked at me, her eyes misty with tears. "What he's got will eventually kill him. He knows it, and I know it. And now he's having nightmares about it. What they have to do with you, I'm still trying to figure out."
I put down the box of tea. Now we were getting somewhere. "Does Pietro know?"
She shook her head. "Oh God," she said, taking a juddering breath. She wiped at her eyes.
"Elda, it won't," I said.
She looked up at me. Anguish contorted her features. "It won't what?"
"It won't kill him."
"How do you know that?" she nearly wailed. She lowered her voice and whispered fiercely, "You don't know that."
"I do." I lifted my hands. My palms glowed white hot, my fingertips glowed red. "Because he gave it to me."
Twenty
She gasped and her hand clamped over her mouth. The light of my palms reflected in her face and glowed in her pupils, like the flashbulb of a powerful camera. She looked from my hands to my face and back again. Pulling her hand from her mouth, she whispered in a strangled voice, "When? How?"
"I'll tell you everything," I said. "But you need to talk first. Because you knew about this. Whatever it is, you knew that Isaia had fire inside him. And now I have it. Your son won't die, which is wonderful. But now I have to figure out a way to live with this." I lit a blue flame in my palm. "I can barely control it, and it hurts, Elda." I needed her to understand what it was costing me. "It hurts every minute of every day."
She sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the box on the island. She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes. She said something behind the tissue but it came out in a tight breath of air and I couldn't make it out.
"Pardon?" I lowered my hand and snuffed the flame. The heat traveled up my arms, converged in my spine, and dropped into my belly.
She cleared her throat. "I know," she said. "I know it hurts."
"How do you know?"
"I know because he told me. He explained everything to me, after I got pregnant. And I know because I have watched it torture my son since the day of his birth."
"He?"
"Nicodemo."
I gave a start of surprise. His name, twice in the same night from two different sets of lips. "Why did he have to explain it to you after you got pregnant? Why wasn't Pietro there, too?"
"Because Pietro isn't Isaia's father," she whispered. Her eyes darted down the hallway.
Understanding finally dawned. "Nicodemo is Isaia's father? And Pietro doesn't know?"
"That's right." She balled the tissue up in her hand. "I've never told anyone. I was never intending to tell a soul. But, well…" She waved a hand toward me. "I didn't expect this and neither did you, I'll wager."
I gave a humourless laugh. "You can say that again."
The kettle was boiling. I shut it off and poured two mugs of tea.
Elda came around the island and pulled me into a hug, surprising me. "I'm so sorry, Saxony. I lost my temper with you. I accused you of putting my son in danger. I was so angry and scared, and none of it was your fault. I know that."
She pulled back and looked at me, her eyes shining.
"Thank you. I needed to hear all that," I said softly. I handed her the mug of tea. "I need to know everything, Elda. I know it's your private business, and I'll keep your secret, but it involves me now. I didn't ask for this, but I sure need some help figuring out what to do with it."
An image of pushing the fire into Dante's belly the way Isaia had pushed it into mine came unbidden to my mind. If he wanted it so badly, maybe I could give it to him—although I still didn't know how Isaia had managed to do it without killing me. I shoved the idea away. I needed to know more. Dante had behaved like a real jerk tonight. What would this kind of power do in the wrong hands?
Elda nodded. "Let’s move into the living room."
I followed her to the couch under the window and we set our mugs on the coffee table. I tucked my feet up under me on the couch.
She took a breath and let it out slowly. "Seven years ago, Pietro and I went through a really hard time. I was just starting my business and it was a financial struggle. We had to dig into our savings further than we anticipated, and because of that, Pietro worked even harder than he does now."
I gaped. "I don't even see how that is possible. He works twelve-hour days and flies to London every week. I've barely seen the man since I got here."
She nodded. "Yes, he works a lot now too, but back then it was even worse. Now, Pietro's work is going well, he doesn't have to work this hard. He does it because he wants to do it while he's young so we can retire early. In spite of how it looks to you, it's actually a lot better than it was. Back then, he had a huge client out of Dubai. He was gone for up to six weeks at a time."
"So you were lonely."
"I was, but that is no excuse. And it's more complicated than that. During one of these long stretches where I was alone, Cristiano was kidnapped."
I lost the grip on my tea and splashed hot liquid onto my bare leg. I swore under my breath and put the mug on the coaster. I dried my leg with the corner of the bathrobe. The hot tea should have burned me, but it didn't.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"I'm fine, sorry. You just startled me. Please go on. Cristiano was kidnapped? Um, holy crap."
"Yes, it was terrifying. Someone snatched him from the schoolyard. He wasn't even in school yet; he was too little. He was just playing in the yard. He was taken right out from under my nose. I was there with a bunch of other moms and distracted by all the gossip." She shuddered at the memory. "I was so stupid."
"What did you do?"
"I went to a powerful man for help. A powerful man, but not really a good man."
"Why didn't you go to the police?"
She gave me a look of reproach—a look that said it was naive of me not to know better. "Going to Enzo Barberini is going to the polizia."
"Oh." I chewed my lip. "Did you tell Pietro?"
She shook her head. "Pietro would never have agreed to go to Enzo, but I knew it was my best chance to get Cristiano back. Nothing happens in Venice that Enzo doesn't know about. I went that very same day, immediately, without even thinking about alternatives. In my mind, there weren't any."
"You must have been a basket-case."
She laughed. "Basket-case? It's a kind of slang?"
"I guess." I smiled. "Then what happened?"
"A couple of hours after I got home, there was a knock at my door. It was Nicodemo, and he was carrying Cristiano. Cristiano was unharmed, just asleep. I was so grateful and relieved, all I could do was cry like a baby. Nicodemo wouldn't tell me who took him or how he'd been retrieved, but I do know that the bodies of two men were recovered from a marina in Chioggia the following week, both of them had their throats burned out."
"My God." My stomach churned.
"I didn't associate Nicodemo with those bodies. At the time, I didn't know what he was. I assumed that Nic was just a delivery man. He was gentle and sweet and really good with Cristiano."
"He came back again after that?"
"Yes, he came to check on us. At first, he was just being kind. He knew that Pietro was out of town. I think he knew that I needed someone strong to lean on, and he could fill that need. And then, well, we fell in love."
Silence.
"And you got pregnant?"
She nodded.