THOR (13 page)

The train slowed as it approached Florence’s Santa Maria Novella Train Station. She slumped on the seat, closed her eyes, telling herself it was going to be all right. After all, it was only money. The wounds would heal. The man had his hands on her but hadn’t really hurt her as badly as he could have. As the train drew closer to the station Cora told her herself over and over that it could have been much worse. The brakes shrieked as they entered the train yard. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with trembling hands as the train strained to stop.

Things like this happened, she assured herself. It was no more than a problem to be fixed. No one was dead. It was solvable. He’d taken her money, but she still had her bus ticket to Siena. Her roommate Emily, back in Austin, had a boyfriend – Giancarlo. He had family here in Italy. Cora would just call Texas, talk to Giancarlo and explain that she needed a loan.

That she needed a loan might have seemed humorous if her head wasn’t pounding. Usually she was the one bailing friends out. It was how she’d met Giancarlo. Emily’s boyfriend had racked up four hundred dollars in parking tickets with the University of Texas Police Department. He hadn’t realized it was illegal to park a motorcycle on the sidewalk. His brother Roberto refused to help him with so ridiculous an expense.

Roberto – Cora certainly hoped she wouldn’t run into that ogre.

She buttoned her jacket, wincing at the pain. Stiffly she shouldered her backpack. Dawn was breaking and the interior of the train was cast in rosy light. She wondered if her assailant was nearby. Surely he wouldn’t dare approach her again. If he did, she’d hit him harder. Knock his teeth loose. Scratch his eyes. Hurt him. The idea made her feel a little better.

Cora stumbled from the train and crossed to the bus station where she found a bus about to leave for Siena. It was almost full, but she found an empty seat near the back. She watched, wondering if the man from the train might board the bus. What would she do then? But no one else got on. The bus departed without incident. The trip took about an hour and when she arrived, Cora asked for directions to a phone booth so she could make a collect call to Texas. Crossing her fingers she prayed Emily would be home, hoped she hadn’t already left on her summer vacation with Giancarlo. A few seconds later her call was connected and she heard Emily’s voice. Cora thought she might cry from relief.

“Yes, I accept the charges,” Emily yelled. “What the hell is going on?”

Cora slumped against the phone booth. “Is Giancarlo with you?” she whispered.

“Why are you calling collect? What happened? Are you okay?”

She could hear sounds of scuffling and then a deep voice reached Cora’s ear. “Cora, my love, what’s wrong? What is the matter?”

Cora began to cry. She couldn’t help it. There was something wrong with the way Giancarlo’s voice affected her. Giancarlo was kind, a man who treated every woman he knew like they were special and precious. He always called her ‘
my love
’. He called everyone that, from the lady at the corner bakery to coffee shop baristas.

Barely coherent, Cora managed to explain that her money had been stolen. She hoped he wouldn’t chastise her for exchanging all of her cash into Euros already, or remind her that she should have taken a debit card, and a cell phone that would work in Europe.

He did none of those things. He simply kept talking to her in his soothing voice. “Okay, no problem, Cora. Go see Roberto. I will call and tell him you are on your way.”

Cora gritted her teeth. Roberto, the ogre. He was the last person she wanted to talk to. “Is there anyone else at the hotel? What about your brother Marco? I’d rather talk to the nice brother. It’s been a rough morning.”

“No, only Roberto is there right now.”

Cora sniffed. “Can you just ask if he could leave a little money at the front desk for me? I don’t really want to see him. I can pay him the minute I get back to Texas.”

“No, go see him, Cora. He will be fine.”

“I really, really don’t want to see Roberto this morning.”

The phone buzzed, crackled and the connection went dead.

Cora drew a deep, sobbing breath. She hung up the receiver and recalled the only time she had ever spoken to Roberto Agnelli. He’d berated her for lending Giancarlo money, meddling in family affairs, and how she in turn told him something rude. Thinking back, Cora was almost certain she had told him to kiss her ass. Pushing the folding door of the phone booth open she considered that there was a slight possibility she had actually told him something worse. She might have said something a little more forceful - his response had been an eruption of fury. He’d said he would come to Texas one day just so she could say the words to his face. And now, as luck would have it, she would have to face him, not to repeat the insult, of course, but to ask for help.

A bus driver stood outside the bus station smoking a cigarette. With her minimal Italian, Cora was able to ask for and understand directions to the hotel. She walked the five blocks quickly and stopped on a bench outside the hotel to rest and catch her breath. Inside she could find a bathroom to check the wound that was giving her the most pain, the one on her side.

A wave of homesickness washed over her and the idea of visiting Italy alone seemed suddenly bold and reckless, part of her plan to start living more fully, to experience more of what life offered instead of living a life of non-stop academics. She had planned each leg of the trip, trying to hit attractions and festivals in the space of three weeks. Giancarlo helped her with the plans, insisting she stop in Siena if even for only one day to see the famous horse race called the Palio.

“But don’t stay overnight, because you might run into my brother,” Giancarlo had joked.

Now Cora couldn’t have cared less about the famous race or anything about Italy. It was funny how the buildings of Siena, the medieval architecture and Roman roads which should have filled her with awe, held no interest for her. If only she could be sitting somewhere on Sixth Street in Austin right now. If anything ever happened to her there, she would have a dozen friends dropping what they were doing to come help her.

It seemed more than just a few short days ago when she’d laughed with Emily and Giancarlo, telling them that she was going to Italy to have a fling with an Italian in addition to all the other activities she’d jammed into her schedule. It was after one too many glasses of red wine when she announced her plans to enjoy the Vatican, the canals of Venice and hot Italian sex, if only just once. Now all she wanted was to go home. She could still feel the way her attacker’s hands felt on her breast. Bile rose in her throat.

She could hardly wait to leave Italy.

Pulling herself to her feet, she summoned her strength and crossed the street to the hotel. She paused in the lobby. Her side throbbed. Compared to the noisy streets, the hotel was an island of tranquility. The white marble floor gleamed. Smooth marble columns reached up to soaring ceilings, and in the lobby hung a chandelier the size of a Fiat.

“Signorina Bishop?” A woman’s voice called her name and Cora looked up to see one of the front desk staff beckoning her.

Cora closed her eyes. Shit! Giancarlo already called his brother. She’d hoped to have some element of surprise in her favor. Now he would have the advantage and had probably been thinking of ways to torment her, to get even for her sass on the phone.

Cora groaned and followed the woman and imagined how Roberto Agnelli would look. She was feeling light-headed, almost delirious and began to picture Roberto as some sort of ancient Roman despot…with some sort of cruel name, Tiberius Roberticus or something like that, wearing a tunic, and a cape eating his food with a knife, surrounded by gladiators who in her addled mind were all wearing sunglasses. Cora laughed, accidentally snorting. The woman turned and raised a brow. “Sorry,” Cora muttered. They passed a sitting area and she gazed longingly to the plush sofa, wondering how it would feel to simply drop her bag, kick off her hiking boots and lie down for a few days right there in the Agnelli hotel lobby.

Money. Food. Sleep. That was what she needed. In that order.

It was clear to Cora that Giancarlo had always been intimidated by his older brother, calling him the family tyrant. Roberto ruled over the family like a feudal lord. He controlled the money and assets and doled them out when he felt benevolent, which wasn’t often.

When she finally saw Roberto Agnelli, he sat at the far end of the restaurant at a table, alone, looking nothing like Cora had imagined. She saw Giancarlo’s chiseled good looks in his brother: a strong jaw, a cleft in his chin, black wavy hair. They certainly favored each other, except that Roberto was broader across the shoulders. Roberto’s eyes were different too. They held none of Giancarlo’s warmth, no comfort. If Giancarlo’s eyes were Italian espresso, Roberto’s were Arctic ice.

“Cora Bishop.” He smiled, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “My brother says that I’m supposed to be nice to you. He told me a bad man took all your money.”

He was toying with her. “It’s true,” Cora said. “Some Italian took all my money. I’m desperate. That’s the only reason I’d end up in your hotel, Mr. Agnelli. Desperation. You must be pleased.”

Cora felt something trickle down her chest and wasn’t sure if it was sweat or blood. The morning could only get better from here she assured herself.

Roberto leaned back and stretched one arm out along the chair beside him. Dressed in a slate-grey pinstriped suit, white shirt open at the collar, he looked like a fashion deity. The god of Armani. The lord of Versace.
Versace
, even the Italian fashion sounded like something you could eat. Maybe with melted sage butter. Her mouth watered.

Roberto made a lazy circle in the air with his index finger. “Turn around,” he said. Cora frowned in confusion and then turned slowly. Roberto tilted his head and watched her.

“What?” she asked, letting her backpack fall to the chair.

Roberto shrugged. “Once you suggested I should kiss your ass, I thought I should at least see what it looks like. It looks pretty good even though I don’t really approve of blue jeans on women.”

Cora pulled her bag up over her shoulder. “Have a nice day, Mr. Agnelli.”

“Sit down.”

“Give me one good reason.”

“I’ll give you two. The first is you look terrible.”

“What’s the other?”

He paused. “I want to feed you.”

Cora blinked. The tone of his voice was softer and for a moment she wondered what he meant. He sounded almost seductive. She shook off the feeling. The man on the train must have given her a concussion. She refocused her thoughts. Food. That was a pretty good reason to sit back down. She hadn’t eaten dinner the night before and now it was past lunch and she was starving.

Dropping her backpack, she slid into a chair across from him. “I can’t pay for breakfast. Remember, I don’t have any money.”

Roberto waved off her concerns and motioned for a waiter. He rattled off an endless stream of Italian and Cora wondered how much food he had ordered.

Roberto appeared to be everything Giancarlo wasn’t. His brother was a light-hearted, sweet man everyone loved. When her friend had started dating him the year before, Giancarlo came over every Friday evening to make dinner for Cora and Emily. Soon other friends at UT found out they could get an authentic Italian meal at Emily and Cora’s on Friday nights, and people began to show up. Before long, they had a regular supper club.

When the waiter left, Roberto turned his disdainful gaze back to Cora.

“Look around, Cora. Right now since it is between lunch and dinner the restaurant is practically empty, but tonight it will be full with a very long wait list. That is because we are in the height of tourist season.”

Like Giancarlo, he spoke perfect English with only the slightest hint of Italian accent. All three Agnelli brothers had studied at a private, New Hampshire boarding school.

Roberto continued. “Giancarlo is expected to return each summer during the tourist season to help me with my work. That is part of the agreement. The family pays for his graduate school and he works here during the summer. Does that make sense to you, Cora?”

Cora folded her hands and nodded. Every part of her body hurt and she feared she would start hallucinating if she didn’t eat something soon, but she didn’t want this condescending man to get to her.

“It’s so kind of you to explain it to me.”

She watched expectantly as a waiter approached with a tray of food but he stopped at a neighboring table to deliver the plates. Cora’s heart sank.

Roberto nodded. “The agreement worked perfectly until he fell in love with Emily who always wanted to go climb mountains in Colorado during the summer. She worked hard convincing him to go, and then you gave him the final push, didn’t you, telling him to, let’s see now… What did you tell them to do?”

“To follow their hearts,” Cora said.

Roberto sighed and tapped his fingers on the linen tablecloth. “What a lovely sentiment. You sound like a flower child. An Austin, Texas frame of mind, as I understand it. Anyway, I’m sure Giancarlo thought your idea was an excellent one. I hope he manages to get a degree in something while he’s following his heart.”

“Maybe your brother was tired of working under you. Maybe he needed a break.”