Veretti’s Dark Vengeance

There was no time to think of Salvatore, even if she’d wanted to. The phone was never silent.

A fashion magazine sent an editor and several minions to Venice with instructions to search out a variety of locations to show off the large collection of clothes that arrived with them. Wearing a variety of bikinis she posed in gondolas and, as this was outside, a few passing tourists managed to take their own pictures, passing them on to the local newspaper, which printed them at once in glorious colour.

‘She is quite shameless,’ the signora observed, thrusting a newspaper out to Salvatore. ‘Just look at her.’

‘I would prefer not to,’ he replied, pushing the paper aside. ‘Her antics don’t interest me.’

‘Perhaps they should, since her name has been linked with yours. How could you have been so incautious as to let that happen?’

‘Since she’s Antonio’s widow, there was no way to avoid it.’

‘A widow! Oh, yes, she looks like a widow, flaunting herself, practically naked. Poor Antonio must be turning in his grave.’

‘Not him,’ Salvatore said with sudden wry humour. ‘He would have loved this. Have you forgotten what he was like?’

‘But he’s dead.’

‘Well, a man doesn’t change his personality because he’s dead.’

‘What did you say?’ she demanded, aghast.

‘Nothing-I don’t know what made me say that.’ He shook his head as though trying to drive off a swarm of bees.

‘I’ve no patience with that kind of fanciful nonsense, and nor did you used to have.’

‘Antonio himself told her that he didn’t want her to go around in widow’s weeds.’

‘You mean that’s what she says he told her. How convenient that he isn’t here to deny it!’

‘He wouldn’t deny it,’ Salvatore said slowly. ‘I can hear him saying it now. He always loved it when people envied the beauties on his arm.’

‘Are you sure you aren’t becoming like him?’ the signora asked coldly.

‘Quite sure,’ Salvatore snapped.

‘Then why have you let yourself be seen in her company? Admit it. You enjoyed flaunting her.’

Without warning he lost control of his thoughts. He was back again on the island, free to be open with her and to feel that she was open with him. Free from prying eyes: alone but not lonely, hidden from the world and glad to be so.

‘People who think they know you, but actually they haven’t the first idea.’

She’d said those words and they had found an echo in his heart, but who else would understand? Not one single person.

‘You’re mistaken,’ he told his grandmother coldly. ‘I had no such thought.’

‘Nonsense, of course you did, but you never stopped to consider, did you? What does it do to this family’s reputation to be connected with a woman who appears naked in public?’

‘She was already connected with the family. And she isn’t naked.’

‘Isn’t she? Look at that!’

The signora thrust the newspaper back under his eyes, so that he couldn’t escape the picture of Helena leaning back in a gondola. She was attired in a small black bikini, the twin of the one she’d worn in the first picture Salvatore had ever seen, the one he’d held in his hand only a few weeks ago, swearing vengeance.

How long ago that seemed now. The first picture had been relatively respectable, a woman on a beach with her husband. The new picture was the reverse of respectable, showing Helena stretched out luxuriously, her arms above her head, her lips softly parted. This woman was wanton, created for profitable sex.

And it was as false and wrong as his first view of her had been. He knew her now, sensitive and vulnerable in ways he’d tried and failed to understand.

In the matter of the figurine he was genuinely innocent. Wrapped up in thoughts of her, he’d overlooked what was happening in his factory, and failed to see the danger until too late. Nor would there have been trouble if some over-clever wit hadn’t attached the title ‘Helen of Troy’ to a piece that was otherwise anonymous.

Her anguished fury had left him stumbling for words and he’d made everything worse. Clumsy oaf that he was, he’d tossed money at her and seen the despair come into her eyes. The memory still made him groan aloud.

His grandmother refused to give up the attack.

‘That bikini covers almost nothing,’ she snapped, jabbing her finger at the picture. ‘Look at her breasts, look at her-’

‘That’s enough!’ Salvatore’s voice crashed across her words, shocking her to silence. He recovered himself quickly and said in a strained voice, ‘I see no need to discuss this further. Please understand that the subject is closed.’

The cold finality in his voice made her wary. After a moment she departed.

He seated himself and began to read a column of figures. Nor did he look up as she swept out of the room, a rare discourtesy that alerted her more than anything he’d said, or failed to say.

When he was safely alone Salvatore took back the newspaper and spread it out on the table before him, running his fingers over the picture as though he could bring back the vibrant living woman. But she was flat, dead. Certainly dead to him.

He began to tear the paper into small pieces and dropped them into the waste bin.

‘Helena, my dear! What a pleasure bumping into you!’

Surprised, Helena looked up to see Salvatore’s grandmother advancing towards her across the little cafe. Without waiting for an invitation she seated herself at Helena’s table.

‘Dear Helena, we’re all absolutely agog to see that you’ve resumed your brilliant career.’

‘I don’t care for the career as such,’ Helena replied. ‘I’m putting the money in Larezzo, which is my life now.’

‘Very wise. Of course, Salvatore is furious about it but that’s all to the good if it shows him that he can’t have his own way all the time. I really must congratulate you for the way you got his measure.’

‘I think he and I sized each other up pretty accurately at the start,’ Helena said carefully.

‘So many women are fooled by him. He seems enchanted by them, but it’s only a way of getting his revenge.’

‘Revenge?’ Helena echoed in disbelief. ‘Don’t tell me he’s grieving for some girl who dumped him years ago. No, I don’t believe that.’

‘Quite right. Salvatore can deal with trivial romantic interludes. I’m talking about his parents.’

Now Helena was genuinely surprised. ‘What about his parents?’

‘His mother was my daughter, Lisetta. Guido, her husband, treated her badly. They were in love at the start, but he got bored easily, and he had a wandering eye. Many wives in that situation cope by finding their own “distractions” but Lisetta couldn’t. She loved him so much and he broke her heart again and again.’

Helena remembered the two pictures of Salvatore’s mother, on her wedding day, when her face had blazed with joy, and then, just a few years later, a woman in despair, her face blank, so great was her agony and the need to hide it.

‘Worst of all,’ the signora continued, ‘Guido used to bring his floozies home, and actually sleep with them there. There was a part of the building where his wife was forbidden to go. He said he wanted his “privacy”.’

Helena flinched. This was a worse tale than she had expected.

‘Lisetta died very suddenly. He married his then-current mistress, a good-time girl who bled him dry and almost brought him to ruin. He died about fifteen years ago, and Salvatore had to spend his whole youth working to repay his father’s debts.

‘Of course, he knew what was going on, even when he was a child, and it has affected his attitude to women. His mother is on a pedestal, but he despises what he calls “a certain kind of woman”, and in his eyes practically all of them fall into that category.

‘He amuses himself with them, but sooner or later they discover what he really thinks of them. You, of course,