Scandals Of The Ruthless: A Shadow of Guilt

It was a few seconds before he noticed that Valentina had turned and was looking at him, her face pale and stricken. Immediately he was alert, eyes narrowed on her. ‘What is it?’

‘My father has collapsed.’

Gio was moving before she’d even finished speaking and they were outside and in his car a few seconds after that. Valentina rattled off the address. Luckily she didn’t live far from her parents, who had moved into Palermo after her father had retired from working at the Corretti palazzo.

They pulled up outside the modest house and Valentina was out of the car and through the front door when Gio got out of the car. He followed her in, an awful hollow feeling in his belly. If anything happened to her father... Just then he saw the man on the floor, his face white. Valentina’s mother was sobbing over the body and he could see Valentina starting to shake violently.

Gio came in and gently moved Valentina aside and then in cool authoritative tones instructed her to call an ambulance. While she was on the phone he knelt down beside Emilio Ferranti and listened for a heartbeat and heard nothing.

Expertly Gio opened the man’s shirt and started CPR. He felt someone pulling his arm and saw Valentina’s face, white with worry and shock. ‘What are you doing?’

Gio shrugged her off gently but firmly. ‘I’m giving him CPR.’ And then he bent to his task and didn’t look up until the paramedics arrived and pulled him to one side. He was breathing fast and sweating as he watched them hook Emilio up to various things. Then they put him on a gurney and wheeled him into the ambulance, with Valentina’s mother getting into the back. One of the paramedics was talking to Valentina, and then they were gone with the ambulance lights flashing and the siren wailing intermittently.

Gio went up to Valentina. She looked at him, dazed. His heart turned over in his chest. ‘Come on, I’ll take you to the hospital.’

He led her to the car and put her in, fastening the safety belt around her when she made no move to do so.

When they were on the road with the lights of the ambulance just visible in the far distance he felt her turn to him. ‘The paramedic told me you probably saved his life. I...I didn’t know what you were doing.’

Gio shrugged minutely. ‘Don’t worry about it, it can look scary.’

‘Where did you learn to do that?’

A bleakness entered Gio and he didn’t say, I learnt how to do it after Mario died, when I couldn’t save him, or help him. Instead he just said lightly, ‘I run a business—I insist that all my staff have basic first aid training, including myself.’ Gio’s experience was a bit more than just in first aid, he’d actually done a paramedic training course. The way he’d felt so helpless next to Mario’s inert body had forged within him a strong desire never to feel that helpless again. The awful thing was that Mario had been alive for a while, but Gio hadn’t known how to keep him alive. And he’d died in Gio’s arms before the medics had arrived.

‘I...thank you.’

Gio winced. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

The rest of the journey was made in silence and when they got to the hospital Gio pushed down the awful sense of déjà vu. The night of Mario’s accident, he’d hoped against hope that somehow miraculously they’d brought Mario back to life but when he’d got there he’d seen the small huddle of Valentina with her parents, crying. Valentina had rushed at him with her fists flying. ‘I knew something would happen. You shouldn’t have taken him out. He wouldn’t have gone if you’d not asked him....’

The memory faded, to be replaced now by the frantic chaos of the emergency room. Valentina went and asked at the desk and then, with a quick glance at Gio, who just nodded at her, she disappeared with a nurse.

Gio made a phone call like an automaton to one of his staff to come and switch his impractical sports car for something more practical. It was shortly after that had been delivered when he saw the bowed figure of Valentina’s mother, with Valentina all but holding her up. Please God, he prayed silently.

But when they got close Valentina looked at him and smiled tiredly. ‘He’s stable. It was a massive heart attack and the doctor said if he hadn’t been given CPR he wouldn’t have made it.’

Gio felt uncomfortable and just said, ‘I have a car outside, let me take you home.’

Valentina’s mother acknowledged Gio but to his relief she didn’t seem too upset to see him there, or surprised. He solicitously helped them into the jeep that had been delivered and then Valentina said, ‘You can take us to my mother’s. I’ll stay with her tonight.’

When Gio pulled up outside the house again he jumped out to help Valentina’s mother. At the door she stopped and looked up at him. ‘Thank you, Gio.’

He looked into her lined and careworn face and couldn’t see anything but tired gratitude. She patted his hand and then went inside the house. When Valentina was about to pass him he stopped her with a hand on her arm. She looked at him and he had to curb his response to her.

‘If you need anything...anything at all, you know where to find me. I mean it, Valentina.’

She started to say, ‘I...’ and then she stopped and said, ‘OK.’ And then she went inside and closed the door.

* * *

A week after he’d left Valentina at her mother’s house, Gio was trying not to think of her and was looking at a picture in the local newspaper. A huge headline was proclaiming: Scandals in the Corretti Family! There was a salacious rumour that the runaway bride had actually run away with his older brother Matteo after the non-wedding. And it had been revealed that his cousin, Rosa, was not actually his cousin but another half-sister, thanks to an affair between his aunt Carmela and his father.

Gio’s mouth twisted in disgust. He wanted nothing to do with the sordid details of these stories. He did feel a twinge of sympathy for Rosa, who had always been quite sweet to him on the rare occasions they’d met. He could imagine that this must be devastating news to deal with....

Gio’s phone rang at that moment and it was a number he didn’t recognise. Unconsciously his insides tensed. He threw down the paper and picked the phone up. ‘Pronto?’

There was nothing for a few seconds and then her voice came down the line. ‘It’s me.’

Gio’s belly tightened. Carefully he said, ‘How is your father?’

Valentina sounded weary. ‘He’s doing OK, still in hospital, but it looks like he needs a major bypass operation.’

There was another long silence and then, ‘Gio...I...’

Gio clutched the phone, suddenly feeling panicky. If she hangs up... ‘Go on, Valentina, what is it?’

He heard her sigh audibly and then she said, ‘I need you to give me a job.’

* * *

‘I don’t have any formal training—I’ll work in the kitchen...I’ll work wherever you want.’

Gio schooled his expression, but his chest tightened at the pride in Valentina’s voice. She’d come to him today, the day after she’d phoned, dressed in black slacks and a white shirt. Hair tied back in a low ponytail. Face pale. Avoiding his eyes. She must hate this.

Something piqued his curiosity. ‘Where did you train?’

Valentina looked at him then and he had to keep an even more rigid control on his control.

‘You remember my nonna?’

Gio nodded. He had a vague memory of their grandmother, a small woman with sparkling brown eyes. She’d been at the grave that day too, a wizened matriarch who should never have had to see her grandson buried before her. Gio fought down the predictable tightness in his chest, and Valentina continued. ‘She was a cook for a local trattoria, and she was my first teacher. From when I was tiny she taught me all the basics and her secrets. When I left school I went to work with her, and then when she passed away, I worked for Marcel Picheron as a commis-chef.’

Her mouth twisted minutely. ‘My parents had pooled all their resources into—’ She stopped abruptly and the name hung silently in the air like an accusation—Mario. Then she looked away for a moment before continuing through the thick tension in the air. ‘They had no more money to send me to college, but I heard about Marcel’s open days when he would audition unknowns so I auditioned and got in.’

Gio remembered well how Mario’s parents had put every cent into his education. And yet Valentina had never shown any signs of being bitter about her own education being neglected. She’d been as proud as they had.

He could only imagine how good Valentina must have been to impress the cantankerous old French chef who had more Michelin stars than any other chef in Italy and who ran the most exclusive restaurant on the island. It had a waiting list of six months.

Valentina glanced at Gio again. ‘I worked my way up to sous-chef but I found that my forte was in devising menus and creating hors d’oeuvres.’

Dryly he remarked now, ‘You probably have had a better training than most people out of a cordon bleu school in Paris.’

Valentina shrugged, her cheeks going pink. ‘I set up my own catering company with two friends a year ago. We come up with menus for events, and then we hire outside chefs to come in and cook. I make all the canapés. In general I supervise everything, and step in to chef if I need to.’

Gio recalled the small part of the reception he’d seen a few weeks ago. He could remember the intricately delicate canapés, how appetising and original they’d looked even though he’d had no appetite for them, his gut too churned up to be there in the first place.

He got up from behind his desk and stood at the huge window with hands in his pockets, observing but not really seeing the hive of activity out on the racecourse. He turned back to face Valentina, who was sitting in a chair. She looked as delicate and brittle as spun glass.