Behind her, McNamee was explaining, “I’d have had him hauled off except that he insisted you’d given him this yourself with an offer of a job. While you were in Italy, he insists.”
“The name Marco Bergamini does not sound familiar.”
“Then I will promptly—”
“But there’s no denying my card.” Vanderbilt peered down the tapestry gallery at the man, then smiled. “Or the story he tells. The Pensione DiGiacomo. The young Italian who added his own lines to a working sketch of the house, then chased down our cab to give us the drawing he’d thought we’d left by mistake. Extraordinary. That was years ago.”
“Ah. Well. So then he was—”
“Telling the truth. Yes, indeed.”
“I would caution, however, that we know little of him. He has a much younger brother with him. They’ve been in Pennsylvania cutting for stone.”
Madison Grant stepped forward. “As the investigation proceeds into the recent murder at the train station, I would offer that this intruder would appear to be—”
“One of the suspects,” Cabot finished for him. “Although there’s been no more evidence to point this man’s direction than there is for . . . others of us.” His gaze, pointed and hard, jabbed at Grant. “Who might do anything to preserve a reputation.”
John Cabot surely didn’t mean to imply Madison Grant ought to be considered a suspect.
One side of Grant’s mouth lifted, but his eyes narrowed. “Innocent until proven guilty, of course. This sort of . . . brutality could come from most anywhere.”
Cabot winced at the stress on that one word.
“Although,” Grant continued, “let’s not pretend that some categories of people aren’t more prone to criminality than others.”
McNamee cleared his throat. “As to the tragedy, I happen to know that the sheriff took Mr. Bergamini in for questioning early this morning. I can tell you he’s either an excellent actor, which is quite possible, or he was genuinely shocked to learn there was a death at the station. Whether or not the authorities consider him a serious suspect at this point, I couldn’t say.”
The foreigner in the tapestry gallery shifted again.
Calling card or not, Lilli thought, the bandit is about to be sent packing.
Vanderbilt gazed up at the library’s ceiling. “It was the summer I discovered the work of Pellegrini in Venice before making my way farther south. I believe I’d have stayed in Florence forever, surrounded only by art and the River Arno—had I not already found these mountains. My own canvas.”
He remained in that position, hands behind his back, eyes straight overhead on the ceiling’s half-hung masterpiece. “He contributed, you know. Hunt was nonplussed at first by his suggestions. But incorporated several of them in the end.”
Nobody spoke as their host stared upward.
“Mr. McNamee, all of life is a risk.”
“Yes . . . sir.”
Vanderbilt strode into the tapestry gallery. “Welcome, Mr. Bergamini, to Biltmore. You’ve been in Pennsylvania since Florence?”
“My brother and I,” said the man. A pause, as if he were calculating. “For the three years since leaving Italy.”
“Ah. Well, then. Welcome also to the most beautiful mountains in the world. And how, if I may ask, do you think the actual Biltmore House compares with the sketch—that you, if memory serves, helped refine?”
“Spettacolare. Veramente.”
Vanderbilt clapped the man on the shoulder. “Glad to hear you think so. Mr. McNamee here will be finding you a position on the estate, if you’d like. He’ll also help you find housing with some of the other workers.”
“Grazie. Grazie mille,” the man said. From behind him, the dark-haired little boy hobbled forward.
“This is my brother. Carlo.” More hurriedly, he added, “He is eight years. A good, quiet boy when I must leave for the work.”
A pause. “Mr. McNamee, please see if there’s a village school of some sort that would be suitable for Carlo to attend during the day. Mr. Bergamini, forgive me, but I have guests. I am glad, by the way, that you took me at my word all these years later and made your way to Biltmore.”
The bandit shook George Vanderbilt’s hand again, giving Lilli another look at his face. But as he and his brother retreated down the gallery, the scene was darkening before her eyes.
And suddenly, she felt as if she were falling. Back into time. Back into what she’d worked so hard to forget.
Now she was seeing a street lit with the flicker of gas lanterns—and with torches approaching. Iron balconies climbed on top of each other like they were escaping the burning below. Torches flooded the streets like so many rivers on fire.
And now she was seeing a child. Struggling to run after a man who was flailing and fighting and shouting a name as rioters dragged him away. A child and a man who might have been these very two in George Vanderbilt’s tapestry gallery. But surely not. What were the chances?
“Come away from the window, Lilli,” her father had begged that night four years ago.
Instead, she’d stood there and watched.
The child had sobbed as he sat alone on the street as Lilli peered down. Then he was being slung up on the shoulders of a broad, burly man who barked at him to be silent. But the boy sobbed and called out something foreign.
Lilli could still see the child’s eyes—the terror in them—as he was hurled to the cobbles.
Chapter 13
It was Nico’s eyes that haunted Sal in his dreams. Little Nico, exhausted and scared, as he scrambled on tenement stairs, past swirling balustrades of wrought iron in the hours of terror that night.
They’d crouched, Sal’s arms tight around Nico, behind rows of shipping crates in an alley, only a sliver of light edging over the containers. But even in that splintered darkness Sal could see the trust in Nico’s eyes.
“Mi fido di te,” Nico had murmured, his words thick and soft. I trust you.
Nico had believed in his brother’s power to maneuver them both through a mob calling for blood.
The mob swarmed so close to the column of crates where they crouched, Sal could smell the odor of sweat and bourbon. Alone, he might have risked skirting the crowd. Alone, he might have tried running.
But there was no one else to protect his brother.
Shouts now in the dark, the words lost at first in the stomping of feet, the hiss of the torches, the animal grunts of angry men. The crash of metal and glass: what must be the streetlight a few feet away pulled down, destroyed.
And now their stack of crates hurled to the ground. The crack of wood being smashed.
“Grab them!” a voice behind one of the torches ordered.
Sal sprang to his feet. “Nico!” Grasping to keep hold of his brother, he swung his right fist into the dark.
He could see himself clutching Nico as they dragged Sal toward the jail. Kicks to his gut, his groin, his chest. His brother ripped out of his arms.
But Nico’s eyes, the trust still there as he reached for Sal . . .
Mi fido di te.
Sal jumped when a hand on his shoulder interrupted the rhythm of his shoveling, the memory spooling again in his head. He’d been too deep in his thoughts to hear the voice.