“Is your father really an ambassador?”
“He is.”
“Is that why you speak so many languages? Because you grew up overseas?”
Alaric nodded. “We used to move every couple of years, and I had to learn to fit in fast. I preferred hanging out with the locals to being just another privileged kid who shuttled back and forth between a residential compound and the international school. My parents never understood it. They both love the lifestyle—parties, prestige, a smattering of politics.”
They reached the terrace, and Alaric set Bethany on her feet again. He didn’t particularly want to. No, he wanted to carry her along the driveway, slide her into the Aston, and get the hell out of there. But then her father would have won.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “I tried hanging out with the locals once. When I was sixteen. I snuck into the pub with some friends from the Pony Club.”
“You got drunk?”
“No, one of my father’s friends saw me there and I got grounded. But I might get drunk tonight. That seems like a good option.”
Tonight, Alaric was driving, so it didn’t matter. “Then let’s get the mud cleaned off your heels and find you a drink.”
“Oh no!” She stared at her feet and gasped. “My poor shoes.”
“Where’s the sink?”
She took his hand and led him towards the house. “This way.”
In the utility room off the kitchen, Alaric lifted Bethany onto the counter beside the sink and removed her shoes. The water wouldn’t do the leather much good, but it was better than being caked in dirt. He picked up a sponge and dabbed gently.
“Bethie?” he asked.
“He’s called me that since I was little, and even then, I couldn’t stand it.”
“How about Beth?”
“Beth’s okay. Do you really own an estate in Italy?”
Did he? It was a good question. “That, dear Beth, is a long story.”
“Well, now that I’m here, I need to stay until the birthday cake comes out.”
Alaric swallowed a sigh. How much of his past did he want Beth to know? Now that she was working for Sirius, she’d find out parts of it at least. He’d never tell her about the really dirty stuff, but too many people knew of his time with Emmy for that to stay a secret.
“Technically, I own part of an estate.”
“Technically?”
“As far as I know, my name’s still on the papers, but I haven’t been there for years.”
Eight years, to be precise. He’d bought it six weeks before the Emerald incident. They’d bought it. Emmy and him. He’d had business in Rome, and she had a job in Milan, only they’d both finished early. The sun was shining, and it was as if fate had dictated they have a dirty weekend. Or as Emmy had put it, “I need a good dicking. Meet you in Tuscany.”
She’d picked him up from the railway station in a Ferrari. He never did find out where she’d got it from, but there was a picnic basket in the trunk and a blanket on the front seat.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Fuck knows. I’ve had the week from hell—again—and I just want to get lost. Okay?”
He ran a hand up her bare leg. “Okay. Ever fucked in a Ferrari?”
“No, but I like a challenge.”
The adventure took them through tiny villages, down quiet country lanes in their quest to find a secluded spot where they wouldn’t get arrested because, face it, the car didn’t exactly fade into the background. Then they happened across the cracked walls and sagging gates of Casa Malizia, a faded Vendesi board screwed to one gatepost.
“Here?” Alaric asked, hard already because Emmy had driven with one hand for most of the way.
“Why not?”
It turned out that getting busy in a Ferrari was technically feasible but not exactly pleasurable, and after Emmy had hit her head on the roof for the third time, she huffed and climbed out.
“Where are you going?” His balls were tightening. So damn close. “I’m nearly there.”
“And I’m nearly concussed. Bring the blanket.”
She vaulted over the wall before he had a chance to argue, and they finished in the grass beside an old olive grove, the twisted trees providing respite from the midday sun. And after lunch, they snuck farther onto the estate, discovering a tumbledown farmhouse, crumbling outbuildings, a small lake, and rows of overgrown grapevines.
“This place was beautiful once,” she said, a hint of sadness in her voice.
“It still is beautiful. A different kind of beauty, like an old black-and-white movie theatre or a retired racehorse.”
Emmy lay back on an old stone bench, staring up at the sky. A single puff of cloud drifted on the breeze, and the only sounds were the rustle of the olive trees and the occasional bird call. Rustic peace, almost eerily so. The calm before the storm, he now knew. But that day, they’d both been happy. Emmy smiled more when she was away from Black. When she wasn’t weighed down by the pressure he put on her.
Alaric sat on the ground, leaning one elbow on the bench as he watched her. “Sounds corny, but I wish we could stay here forever.”
He’d meant stay in that moment, that mindset, but she took him a little too literally.
“Then let’s buy it.”
The moment skittered away. “What?”
“This place. It’s for sale. Let’s buy it. Then we can come back whenever.”
Whenever they weren’t working, which meant roughly once a decade. It was a crazy idea. Insane. They both lived a world away, and Alaric didn’t know a thing about grapevines or olive trees. The house was a wreck. He opened his mouth to say “absolutely not,” but what came out was, “How the hell do we buy an estate?”
In rural Italy, it turned out that you went to the local café and asked who the owner was. By the end of Saturday, they’d agreed on a price with the old man’s heir, and Alaric was the part-owner, in principle at least, of a decrepit vineyard. Emmy put the bulk of the money in, of course, but when the papers arrived from the lawyers two weeks later, his share of the property had grown from ten to fifty percent.
“Wait a second…”
Emmy shoved a pen into his hand. “Just sign it. I don’t have all day.”
“You can’t give me forty percent of a million-dollar property.”
She leaned over to whisper in his ear while the lawyer studiously pretended not to listen. “You can pay me back in orgasms. I’ll get my money’s worth.”
So Alaric had signed. But he hadn’t kept up his end of the bargain, and he had no idea what had happened to Casa Malizia. Probably he should have enquired, but he hated to think of those days. Of what he’d lost. And besides, he’d never ask Emmy to sell the place. She’d loved it, and he figured he owed the hundred grand he’d put in as compensation for running out on her. For fucking everything up.
“Why haven’t you been there for years?” Beth asked.
“I… I bought it with a previous partner.”
Alaric decided to leave out the fact that the partner had been Emmy for now. He got the impression Beth wasn’t exactly fond of his ex.
“I see. But you’re still friends?”