Carats and Coconuts (10 page)

I was walking a tightrope here,
without a net.

Roman needed to know enough to be able
to help me stop Stanley and his Brazilian smuggling partners. But
if I told him too much, he’d become a target, just like I
was.

Walking hand-in-hand with my prince,
we silently took in the rows and rows of plate glass table-like
exhibition cases displaying my parent’s meticulously cataloged gem
collections. I pondered what he needed to know…and what he
didn’t.

I hadn’t a clue how I was going to
pull off this operation. But I’d best be thinking of something
halfway intelligent to at least get us started.

I stopped in front of the 15,256-carat
natural beryl crystal from which my family’s 1,000-carat Precious
Aquamarine had been cut. Exceptional for its size and clarity, its
extraordinary shape and few internal flaws meant it could only have
come from the near perfect conditions of our Brazilian
mines.

Aquamarines of this size are rarely
preserved. They’re normally cut into brilliant gems. This hunk of
rough crystal, weighing in at around 7 pounds, had enough of a
Technicolor green glow that it could be used as a dazzling set
piece in The Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City.

“
The beauty of these stones
is that they never diminish with age,” I said, finally summoning
the courage to get this show on the road. “That’s what my mom once
told me, when I was a little girl and she was taking me on my first
tour down here. She said that she and her curator colleagues used
to say that…yesterday, these were kings’ and queens’ stones, today
they could be someone’s cocktail ring, but ten thousand years from
now, the stones themselves will still have this same
sparkle.”

“
Then it sounds like we’ve
got some stones to save,” Roman said, his arm now around my
shoulders as we stared into the case containing the giant
glistening green rock.

“
This is very dangerous,
Roman,” I said, then thought, who was I trying to fool, that wasn’t
exactly the whole of it and so I continued, “not just
dangerous…deadly.”

Roman laughed.

For the life of me, no pun intended, I
couldn’t begin to fathom what was so freakin’ funny about what I’d
just said.

“
I come from an Italian mob
family, who also happens to be Italian royalty. I know a few things
about gems and the smuggling of them.”

Oh. I guess I’d forgotten about that
part of my prince’s past.

So maybe we could handle
this.

There was only one way to know for
sure…

And just like that, we left behind our
Lake Michigan Winter Wonderland and were off on a journey taking us
to the beautiful beaches of Brazil, and nothin’ but carats and
coconuts.

M
y
parents may have been collecting and bequeathing gemstones for the
world’s grandest museums for almost fifty years now, but the
Brazilians have been dealing with ‘em since the early 1700’s.
That’s when the Portuguese colonists who settled Brazil enjoyed
their first “diamond rush”.

Although enjoy isn’t the word either
the indigenous people of Brazil or I would use to describe the rush
to pilfer the natural treasures on which their homes and lives were
built.

I’ve always thought one local Indian
Chief said it best when he told me, “I used to think that money was
good, and that I wanted to be rich, but now I don’t. A little might
be good, but a lot is not. It only brings problems and suffering,
when what we really want is tranquility.”

So much for tranquility,
Chief.

When you’re sitting on top of the
largest untapped source of gem wealth known to exist on Earth, no
one is gonna give you peace.

How do I know this?

‘
Cause my parents have been
trying for decades to bring about that kind of peace through
socially responsible mining. And yeah, “socially responsible
mining” is a total oxymoron.

I clicked through the pages of one of
the Smithsonian’s gem books my parents had co-written. I’d
downloaded it onto my tablet for our flight to Brazil. I couldn’t
help but notice Roman was doing the same.

“
Gems versus jewelry,” Roman
said, perhaps out loud to himself, but I capitalized on
it.

“
That’s nature versus people
and history right there.”

“
Not always the best mix,
right?”

I thought about my parents’
collections of both fine rough and cut gems and gem-quality
crystals. They’d done so much good with their holdings, but I knew
their good-will-based and socially responsible study of mineral
crystals was indeed more rare than the stones they collected,
studied, traded, sold, and bequeathed.

“
You got that right,” I
answered Roman. “In the world we’re about to enter, it’s nothing
but carats in the form of conflict gems, basic survival, civil
wars, genocide and international terrorism.”

“
So much for our honeymoon,”
Roman said, squeezing my hand tight as he looked out the window to
catch a glimpse of the Amazon Rainforests, which we were now flying
over.

My heart ached, effectively blocking
my ability to form the right words to respond.

“
It’s okay. It’s not like
we’re really a couple,” he said.

The pain in his eyes must have been
mirroring mine.

“
I don’t know about that. I
know I’m having an awfully good time as your pretend princess,” I
said, shielding my heart with humor, just like I always did when
the situation called for it.

“
I guess all good
relationships start that way, right?” He asked, with a hint of
insecurity in his voice I wasn’t used to hearing and one that
unsettled me to my core.

“
So I’ve heard.”

As our pilot told us to prepare for
landing, he took my seatbelt and re-buckled it. After fastening
his, he captured my cheeks between his strong hands.

“
You’ve got to trust me down
here. I know this world. You and your family are in a ton of
danger. You’ve got to listen to me, and
my
family, and let us help
you.”

I wondered what all he’d
managed to find out this time. And although I was a wee bit tired
of all his top-secret background searches, I did trust him with all
my heart, and knew he had
our
family’s best interests guiding his
actions.

It still felt funny to consider us all
one big happy family. But, we certainly were starting to act like
one. Sometimes I wondered if there wasn’t actually more to our
public charade than just a simulated relationship for the paparazzi
to capture. And yeah, sometimes I hoped our show would soon become
our reality.

I managed a small gulp
before saying, “
Your
family is already in Brazil?”

“
They’ve been here a few
months now,” he said, taking his turn to swallow what I was sure
was a nervous gulp. “I sent them down here before the
holidays.”

“
But…”

“
I asked you to trust
me.”

And I did trust him, so there wasn’t a
need for any more questions or explanations now.

Besides, we had a good seventeen-hour
drive along the scenic Coconut Highway coming up, and that would be
plenty of time to build our trust.

D
riving along the coastal road of Linha Verde is one of the
most National Geographic photo-perfect routes in Brazil. Lined with
coconut trees the entire way, it’s more than earned its nickname
The Coconut Highway.

Dotted with fishing villages, patches
of rainforest and miles of white sand beaches, it was hard to
imagine we were only passing through and not on our
honeymoon.

I knew the route by heart, but this
time, my heart was a tad bit distracted.

Quartermaster R, who we affectionately
call R, was back on the job and now chauffeured us south, past many
sugarcane plantations, to Porto Galinhas, where we planned to
rest-up for a day, while Roman and R tied-up some loose ends of
their plan.

The translation of Porto Galinhas is
‘chicken harbor.’ For that reason, you see a bunch of chicken
images around the town, along with totally funky-fun and
quirky-to-the-max souvenir shops. Porto Galinhas has its own kind
of unique charm.

Every time I pass through here on my
way to our mines, I think of the rooster ornaments my mother
insists we keep on all of our Christmas trees, one rooster for each
tree. Why? The Legend of the Rooster is all about the triumph of
light over darkness or good over evil. By including one on each
Christmas tree, it’s thought to ensure that goodness will be
victorious in the year ahead.

Let’s hope we have the chicken harbor
- and all its roosters too - on our side.

After seeing to it that we were tucked
safely into our pousada by the beach, Roman had arranged for a
relaxing day of soaking up the sun on our patch of brilliant white
sand. And mind you, my prince does not skimp on the
details.

He’d thought of everything…including a
huge white umbrella with a fancy canopy fit for the royal he was,
plus super-comfy teak chaise lounge chairs with plush white
cushions. A food table underneath a second large canopy was filled
with every luscious tropical treat you could imagine.

He’d even placed on my lounge chair a
gorgeous white floppy sun hat with the most beautiful of
hand-beaded designs circling the stock, along with a pair of
to-die-for Prada sunnies in a daring red color.

I’d just settled into my chair and he
into his, when I heard the roar of an engine that sounded like it
was from some sort of all-terrain vehicle.

I gazed over the top of my new sunnies
toward the sound and then at Roman, who had a “what are you lookin’
at me for?” look on his face, which meant he damn well knew why I
was looking at him. I then turned back to the approaching
vehicle.

Why was I not surprised to see Roman’s
grandparents – The King and Queen of Caserta - riding toward
us?

Seeing them make their way to our
grander-than-grand beach picnic in a dune buggy, however, was a bit
of a surprise.

So much for horse-drawn carriages or
motorcades being the preferred transportation for
royals.

And so much for any chance of getting
some much-needed R&R.

“W
elcome back to Brazil,” Roman’s Granny Veruschka said,
smothering me with larger-than-life Italian kiss-kisses.

But that was Granny V’s style. Nothin’
but larger-than-life everything, which I suppose was second nature
to a woman born into the Russian oligarchy, who became a
world-famous runway model then married an Italian mob boss who also
happened to be the King of Caserta.

Looking at her and then at her King, I
marveled at how I was often more afraid of her than him, even
though he was the mob boss of the family.

That probably had something to do with
the fact it was she who’d, not too long ago, held me at gunpoint
before drugging me and plopping me on a private jet bound for their
Italian kingdom and castle.

But that was then. This was
now.

And it did turn out that she had a
good reason to kidnap me. She needed to use me to save her
grandson. And what can I say? I like the guy…a lot.

Fast forward about a year, and thanks
to the same grandson, the Duke to my Duchess, Granny V and her King
Vitto were up to their necks in my family’s gem world smuggling
fiasco.

How ironic to be welcomed back, by my
in-laws, to a country I could probably consider my second home.
Actually, more like my third home, since these days I’d basically
adopted Italy as a close second.

From the looks of things, my
Granny-in-laws must feel at home here too.

Now, that observation right there…did
scare the hell outta me. They brought their own brand of trouble
every where they went.

“
So are you two lovebirds
enjoying your honeymoon?” Granny V carried on with her all-social,
cover-up conversation.

Too bad her cover was blown by first,
my understanding of the danger that always followed her and her
Godfather, and second, by the fact that I counted six
bodyguard-filled dune buggies strategically stationed around
us.

And to think in my life as a Stylist
to The Stars, my clients freaked out about the paparazzi always
being in sight. I wonder how they’d react to an entourage of their
very own personal hit teams always at the ready to shoot off much
more than their cameras?

“
No honeymoon yet,” Roman
said, while like his grandfather, never losing focus of our
surroundings and the dangers we all knew were somewhere close
by.

“
Why don’t we sit and enjoy
all this beautiful food?” Granny V suggested, practically shoving
Roman and I into chairs around the feast-filled table.

What is it with Italian
mobsters?