The Vendetta (7 page)

Never mind that the experience was still available to her. Waiting for her in Rome.

* * *

The suite door closed behind Lisa with definite snap. Nick took a step in that direction, hesitated, and then turned to the bar.

He didn’t try to stop her. What could he say? What would he confess? That he wanted her to come with him now? That he had inserted himself into affairs that were really none of his business for the price of a painting? For the first time since he was ten years old, he questioned the means he had used to gain revenge for the death of his father.

One finger of whiskey didn’t seem like enough in the cut glass tumbler. He poured himself two and raised his glass in honor of Her Excellency, The Principessa Severino di Giorgio.

When it came to devious plans, he was a mere novice compared to Lisa’s grandmother.

Chapter Five

Standing at the front door of her apartment, Lisa struggled to switch her dry cleaning to one hand so she could dig in her bag with the other. She fished around for a moment more, frustration building. Her keys had taken up residence in the very bottom of a purse that had once seemed a reasonable size but had now expanded into a black hole. After a long day at work, she just wanted to hide inside her room and not think about anything in particular. She especially didn’t want to think about a certain mysterious art collector.

It had been a week since she’d seen Nick, but everything and everyone around her conspired to remind her of their time together. Even now her traitorous body heated at the memory of his hot hands and hotter mouth. The entire experience seemed surreal, like it had happened to someone else—in a dream.

Sogna di me
.

She sighed.

“That nice UPS boy came by with a package for you, Ms. Schumacher.”

Startled, Lisa turned to see her neighbor, Mrs. Sullivan, standing on the landing between their two apartments.

“He did?” Lisa continued to dig in her bag. “I guess he’ll come back by with it now that I’m home.” She put her hand on what felt like a bundle of keys. Nope, false alarm in the form of a pen attached to a string of bobby pins.

“He knocked on my door and asked if I knew you. He wanted to know if I would sign for the package.”

“Oh.” Lisa stopped her search and glanced up. “Well, did you sign for it?”

“I wasn’t sure about doing that. You know my policy about packages.” Mrs. Sullivan patted her smooth gray bob into place. “But I knew you were on your way home, so I made an exception. He said it was just documents.”

“Oh, darn.” Lisa grinned. “I was hoping it was my Victoria’s Secret order.”

Mrs. Sullivan’s hand fluttered up again and then settled firmly at her hip. “Well, I don’t know anything about that, but I did sign for it.”

“I truly appreciate it, Mrs. Sullivan,” said Lisa, astonished that her neighbor had relented her firm rule about packages. The UPS guy must have been unusually persuasive. “I’m sorry he bothered you. Just give me five minutes to get my stuff in the door, and I’ll come over.”

“Well, you’re welcome, but I won’t be making a habit of it,” said Lisa’s neighbor. Mrs. Sullivan turned back to her own apartment. “That UPS boy said it was all the way from Italy.”

Italy?
Nick
.

Lisa returned to her dive for the lost keys, finally resorting to hanging the dry cleaning on the doorknob so she could go at it with both hands. She located them in a hidden pocket and pulled the jangling mass out in triumph. When she turned the key in the deadbolt, the door popped open, and Lisa burst into her tiny foyer, propelled by her dry cleaning and the key-eating purse.

She dropped everything on the floor and made a beeline for her bedroom. She was dying to take off her work clothes. She’d pulled double shifts the past two days, trying to get Ty to ease up on her. He’d been relentless in his inquiries about Nick.

She stripped down to her peach lace panties and pulled on ancient gray sweatpants and a white cotton T-shirt. A pink cashmere cardigan completed her after-work outfit, the softness of the well-worn material a relief to her skin. The doorbell rang just as she slid her feet into beaded slippers.
Jeez, that was a quick five minutes
.

“OK, I’m coming, Mrs. Sullivan.” She passed by the kitchen, flipped on a few lights, and set the ceiling fan turning to clear out some of the tight, overheated air of the apartment. The doorbell rang again, and she beat back a flash of irritation that Mrs. Sullivan couldn’t wait five seconds for her to get comfortable. She hung the dry cleaning in her miniscule hall closet on her way to the door.

The doorbell rang for the third time, and Lisa cursed under her breath.

She threw open the door, ready to take the offending envelope, but it wasn’t Mrs. Sullivan who’d been leaning on her doorbell. It was the UPS man himself.

“Where do you want it, Ms. Schumacher?”

Confused, the image of a document envelope in her mind, Lisa asked, “Can’t you just hand it to me?”

He frowned and then stepped back with a gesture. Behind him stood a box about half the size of a refrigerator.

“Holy cow, what’s that?” asked Lisa.

“It says it’s from Mountain Galleries. That’s in town, isn’t it? That fancy place up at the big hotel?”

“Yes,” Lisa whispered. Her hand went to her throat, and she cleared it.

“Wonder why they shipped it through us. They could have had it delivered locally.” The guy turned and tilted the box back onto the hand truck.

“I don’t know.” Lisa stepped back into her apartment. “Ah, I guess you can put it here in the living room.”

Where else could it go? The apartment she shared with Kimmi was too small to properly display a near life-size statue. Because, unless she missed her guess, that was what was in the box. Schoolgirl glee that Nick had sent her the statue she’d so admired clashed with frustrated exasperation. The sculpture was completely inappropriate for her miniscule living space, not to mention it was a ridiculously expensive gift from a man she barely knew. Thank God she didn’t have to unwrap it in front of Mrs. Sullivan.

Her prim and proper neighbor waved from the landing as the UPS guy jockeyed the box through Lisa’s doorway.

“Here’s your package,” said Mrs. Sullivan holding out a slim envelope. Lisa took it from her, catching the glitter of curiosity in her neighbor’s wide-eyed look.

“I see you got another one,” said the older woman, craning her neck for a better view of the box that now took up most of Lisa’s living room.

“This?” Lisa shrugged, attempting nonchalance. “Oh, this is just a piece of art I’m keeping temporarily for a friend.” And if she ever saw him again, she would strangle him.

“Art? Like a statue or something?” asked the UPS guy as he stepped back into her tiny foyer.

“Something like that,” said Lisa.

He held out his clipboard for her to sign. After she’d scrawled an illegible signature, he said his good-byes and left. Mrs. Sullivan was harder to get rid of, but fortunately for Lisa’s sanity the older woman heard the phone ring in her apartment and bustled away to answer it, albeit with several backward glances as Lisa went inside.

Lisa leaned her back against the warm wood of the door. She felt the slap of the envelope on her leg and looked down. She had almost forgotten the package her neighbor had signed for. Ignoring the gigantic box now taking up space beside an “antique” end table that had seen better days, she seated herself on the couch and opened the envelope.

She spread the contents on her small coffee table. The envelope contained an article from
Artforum
magazine, an invitation, and a letter addressed to her.
Gran
. She recognized the elegant, old-fashioned handwriting immediately. She glanced at the outside of the document envelope. The return address was badly written and smudged. She could only make out the words Roma and Italia.

She picked up the invitation first. It was ornate, and written entirely in Italian.

Lisa translated the words as she read them out loud. “The Principessa Giovanna Maria Severino di Giorgio cordially extends this invitation to Annalisa Giovanna Schumacher for a private gallery event to be held at the Palazzo Severino.” The date for the party was about one month away.

Lisa understood the words but had trouble processing them. She shook her head. First the delivery of an inappropriate gift from a mysterious billionaire and now an invitation from her long-estranged grandmother—could this day get any more surreal? She flipped the invitation card over but saw nothing on the back.

Next, she picked up the article.
Artforum
’s feature writer had apparently been given unprecedented access for an extensive interview with her grandmother concerning the art collection at Palazzo Severino.

As Lisa read through it, she found herself fascinated all over again by the woman she’d shared a home with for a year during her studies. The grandmother she’d argued with and loved. And ultimately left in anger. Lisa pinched her lips together. They’d always had such absorbing discussions about art. The principessa’s gentle instruction had been the catalyst behind Lisa’s desire to open her own gallery. She perused the article, laughing at one quote in particular.

“Good art is always about what you like and how it speaks to you. But I will admit that there is some truly atrocious, mind-numbing art out there. Drab with shoddy technique or overly sentimental subject matter. Dreadful.

“I have developed a keen eye for what I like, and it makes me laugh to know that there have been people who actually have tried to find a pattern in it, to predict it, copy it. To bottle it. There are such people out there. Art consultants. I can see the need for someone to help navigate the way you go about purchasing art if you are not familiar with that process, but to advise someone what they should like? Well, that, to me, is like having sex by proxy. Where’s the fun in that?”

Lisa put the article down, hesitated, and then picked up the envelope. It felt heavy and important, just right for a principessa. She broke the old-fashioned seal and pulled out two sheets of thick paper. Gran’s handwriting sprawled across the smooth pages, and the di Giorgio crest was stamped in gold at the top.

Cara
Lisa,

Granddaughter, after five years I assume you have gotten over your snit about my interference in your relationship with that gold-digging sailor. I regret some of the things I said to you that day, but you deserved some of them as well.

But, know this, I never intended for you to leave the palazzo. My temper, unfortunately, got the better of me. I beg you to forget the words we exchanged in the heat of anger.

More than that, I ask you to forgive an old woman. I am so sorry about your mother, my daughter, Elisabetta. I grieve for her every day.

I would like you to come back to Palazzo Severino. I extend you this invitation, along with the official one enclosed, so that you will come soon. My curator, Peter Van Alstrand, and I are planning a gallery showing of my finest works. I would like you to be involved in that effort. You have such a fine eye for detail.

Please come, Little Lisa. I fear I have little time left for all that must be said and done. And I have missed you, my dear.

Love,

Your Grandmother

La Principessa Giovanna Maria Severino di Giorgio

“Little time left for all that must be said and done.” Lisa read the words aloud.

The last part of the letter rang with the scrupulous honesty that had always characterized her Gran, while the first part was very like the irascible, managing principessa that Lisa knew well, to her personal cost. She had stayed away from her grandmother because she had been deeply hurt by the old woman’s mistrust. But it had been Lisa’s loyalty to her mother that had cemented the estrangement.

She dropped the heavy paper back down on the table and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Gran had gone to extraordinary lengths to contact her. What should she do now?

Lisa had gotten over her snit, as Gran called it. She snorted. Her grandmother would know about snits. She rubbed her forehead, thinking back to her year in Rome and her ultimate disagreement with the formidable principessa.

Growing up as a military child, transient and rootless, she’d always been fascinated by the weight of tradition surrounding the noble Italian side of her family. By the time she entered college, she had worn down her immediate family’s opposition to a closer relationship. Gran and her parents had agreed to let Lisa go to Rome for a year to study art.

It had probably been homesickness, rather than anything more serious, that had led her into a relationship with an American serviceman. Lisa had met Petty Officer Rob Petrakis on a weekend trip to Naples. Their connection had not lasted past his next deployment, but she had made the mistake of flouting Gran’s rules and had brought the young man back to the palazzo.

Lisa’s gaffe had immediately torn open old wounds for Gran.

Thirty years before Lisa had shown up with her boyfriend of the moment, Lisa’s mother—the principessa’s own daughter, Elisabetta—had married American Air Force pilot John Schumacher under a cloud of scandal and rebellion. The staunchly traditional principessa had never been able to forgive her daughter or accept Lisa’s father. And the proud old woman had rarely spoken with Lisa’s mother since the marriage. When Lisa had brought Rob into the palazzo, the principessa had railed at Lisa, they had argued horribly, and then Gran had packed her up and sent her home.

She glanced down at Gran’s letter. Lisa regretted some of her actions too, because her time abroad had ended the day of their argument. She had been impulsive and had pushed Gran too hard to defend a relationship that had not been worth the price she’d paid. But she had also been young and naive. Gran could not claim such an excuse.