Читать книгу Modern Romance July 2015 Books 5-8 - Andie Brock, Louise Fuller - Страница 15

CHAPTER SIX

‘SOPHIE DURANTE.’

Sophie stood as her name was called.

It had taken six long months to get to the trial.

After the arrests she had been released without charge the next morning but her father, Luka and Malvolio had all been charged with various offences.

The last six months she had spent living with Bella and her mother because, even from prison, Malvolio still ruled Bordo Del Cielo. Her father’s house had been signed over to him to pay for Paulo’s lawyer.

Sophie had been allowed a few short, monitored visits with her father.

She would have preferred to have seen Luka.

It was a terrible thing to admit perhaps, but at every visit she had ached for just a glimpse of him and she could no longer look her father in the eye.

‘You will hear many things in the trial,’ Paulo had said. ‘Some of the things will be true, but most are lies...’

Sophie simply didn’t know what to believe.

Trinkets and jewellery had been found in their home. Souvenirs, the police called them, for they had all belonged to victims.

Sophie knew they had not been in her home, she’d cleaned it after all. But she also knew that her father, though perhaps not a killer, had not been entirely innocent either and it hurt like hell to know that.

‘Malvolio would send me to warn people—it doesn’t mean that I hurt them...’ Paulo attempted to explain.

‘You went, though,’ Sophie shot back. ‘You terrified them just by passing on the warnings. Why would you say yes to him?’

‘Sophie, please—’

‘No!’ She would not simply ignore the facts. ‘You chose to say yes to him and, please, never say that you did it for me. He kept us poor.’

‘You have Luka.’

Sophie let out an incredulous laugh. ‘Don’t tell me you said yes to him just for that. I’d have had Luka with or without your help.’

She was confident of that.

Almost.

She couldn’t wait for the trial to be over, to go with him to London...to take up those tentative dreams and to run with them.

Sophie looked at her father. He looked so grey and gaunt and she knew she had to win the battle to forgive him and stand by him, for she was the only family that he had.

‘After the trial you can get away from Bordo Del Cielo and start over again,’ Sophie said.

‘I’m not leaving your mother.’

‘She’s been dead for seventeen years! Father, I am going to be leaving. I’m going to move to London with Luka. I just want to get away from here and all the people who have judged me.’ She ran a nervous tongue over her lips for there was one thing she felt her father ought to hear first from her. ‘You will hear things in court about me too, father. Things that you won’t like. That afternoon, when the raids happened, Luka and I...we were together.’

‘Sophie, you and Luka were practically engaged. You have nothing to be ashamed about. Walk into that court and give your evidence with your head held high.’

How, though?

As her father was led back to the cells Sophie asked, as she always did, if she could visit Luka.

He had no one. His mother had died years ago and his father was locked away.

‘Non ci sono visitatori ammessi.’

Again she was told that no visitors were allowed and then she found out that Luka had been placed in solitary.

‘Malvolio too?’ Sophie challenged. ‘Of course not.’ She answered her own question.

Luka wasn’t a security risk, Luka wouldn’t contaminate the trial, that would be Malvolio.

‘He rules even in here,’ Sophie called out as she left on the eve of the trial.

She took the bus back to Bordo Del Cielo and walked down the street.

Teresa’s café was all boarded up and the locals shunned her. If it weren’t for Bella and her mother. she would have had nowhere to go.

If it weren’t for Luka, she wouldn’t even be here, a still small voice told her.

She was so cross with her father that there was a temptation to simply take the next flight and leave him to his fate, given all he had done.

But Luka...

He was the reason she was here.

Sophie halted at Giovanni’s the jewellers when she saw him at the window, adding a new stand to the wares. ‘Anything?’ she asked when he caught her eye, because she was still hoping against hope that her earring might have been found and handed in.

Giovanni shook his head and disappeared back into the shop, leaving Sophie standing there.

No one wanted to be seen talking with her.

She peered in and looked at the new offerings in the window. There was a huge emerald-cut diamond set on the prettiest rose gold band and she couldn’t help but let her imagination take flight.

She wanted that ring on her finger.

Or rather she wanted the engagement that had never taken place.

Walking back to Bella’s, she tasted the salty sea air and thought of Luka alone and locked away.

He had no one.

Well, he did, he had her, but there was no way to let him know, apart from to do as her father said and to walk into the trial with her head held high. She would not be ashamed about what had taken place between her and Luka that afternoon.

She was here only for him.

* * *

Sophie tried.

Throughout the trial, as a witness she had not been admitted to the courtroom, but today she was being called to give evidence and, though dreading it, though embarrassed at the thought of some of the salacious details of that day being examined, though scared for her father, what had sustained her was that today she would see Luka.

And she did.

Walking into the courtroom to take the stand, finally she saw him. Those navy eyes met hers and he gave her a small encouraging smile. He looked thinner, leaner and sharper. The scar above his eye had had little medical attention for it had healed badly and even from the witness stand she could see it purple and raised. His hair was cut far too short and Sophie could see the anger that simmered beneath the surface, though not towards her, for his eyes were kind when they met hers.

She awaited the barrage of questions and let out a breath of relief when the rather embarrassing moments of the police raid were skimmed over.

‘You knew that Teresa was upset with you that day when you went into the deli?’

‘I did?’

‘And you asked your father why she might be upset?’

‘I just mentioned it in passing when I got home.’ Sophie swallowed, her cheeks going a little bit pink as they made it sound as if she had been questioning her father. ‘I thought it was to do with my upcoming engagement, that because Malvolio would be my father-in-law...’

‘Just answer the question.’

Sophie frowned, as she did on many occasions over a very long day of questioning. Malvolio and Luka had the same lawyer, her father had a different one, yet even he wasn’t asking the pertinent questions.

‘The souvenirs that the police say they found in my home...’ Sophie attempted, for when she had been arrested, over and over the police had spoken about trinkets that had belonged to the deceased or come from buildings that had been destroyed. She wanted to explain they had never been in her home. That she had kept the house and would have known if such things were there.

‘We’ll get to that later,’ her father’s lawyer said, yet he did not.

Sophie left the witness stand and now that she had given her evidence she was allowed to watch as the accused were cross-examined.

Malvolio went to the witness stand a sinner but the questions were so gentle and so geared for him that he left the stand looking like a saint and walked away with an arrogant smile.

She sat bewildered as her father took the stand. He seemed weak and confused. Sophie once stood and shouted as his own lawyer misled him but Bella pulled her down.

‘Quiet, or you will be asked to leave.’

‘It’s not fair, though,’ Sophie said.

None of it was fair.

Yes, her father admitted, a second visit from him meant there would be trouble if bills were not paid.

A third visit was the final warning.

‘I had no choice but to do as Malvolio said.’

It was, Sophie knew, a poor defence.

And then it was Luka.

In a dark suit and tie, his skin was pale from months of being locked inside. He wrenched his arm from a guard who led him, still as defiant, still as silent as he had been on the day of his arrest.

He would not lie to save his father.

Luka refused to lie.

It was not in him to lie and he wanted no part of his father’s life so he had decided that he would speak the truth.

The truth could not hurt him.

Or so he thought.

He looked out and nodded to his close friend Matteo, who had been there every day to support him, and then he looked at Sophie. He tried to let her know with his eyes that he had this under control.

But ten minutes into his testimony he started to glimpse his father’s game.

‘Did your concerns about Paulo’s dealings play any part in your decision to not go ahead with your engagement to his daughter Sophie Durante?’

There was a gasp around the courtroom and Sophie stared ahead as Bella took her hand.

‘Sophie and I had decided to make our own arrangements for the future,’ Luka answered in a clear voice.

‘We’ll get back to that but first can you answer the question? Did you have concerns about Paulo’s dealings?’

‘I had never really given Paulo much thought,’ Luka answered, though his voice was not quite so clear as he delivered his response.

‘Did Sophie tell you that she had concerns about her father’s activities?’

His already pale face bleached and he looked into Sophie’s eyes briefly. He had sworn to tell the truth but he could not have Sophie’s own words be the reason for Paulo being put away.

‘No, she did not.’ For her, Luka lied under oath.

‘So what you did discuss that day?’

‘I really can’t remember,’ Luka answered.

‘Because you were busy in the bedroom?’ His lawyer was working more for Malvolio, Luka knew it now. Luka didn’t have anything to hide so the lawyer would work to secure his father’s freedom by throwing Paulo under the bus.

‘I’m confused,’ the lawyer continued. ‘On the afternoon in question you said to your father that you were going to end things with Sophie, yes?’

‘Yes,’ Luka answered. ‘However—’

‘Malvolio was upset,’ the lawyer broke in. ‘In fact, you got into a fight when you spoke poorly about the woman he had chosen with care for you. You said that you did not want to marry a peasant of his choice. Correct?’

Sophie closed her eyes and then forced them open as Luka was forced to admit that, yes, that had been what he had said.

‘I was trying to separate myself from my father—’ He didn’t get to finish.

‘You told your father that you preferred the more glamorous, sophisticated women in London to Sophie. Now do you see the reason for my confusion? Sophie Durante came to your home...’

‘My father sent for Sophie so that he could move the souvenirs to Paulo’s,’ Luka said. He could see what had happened now. Six months locked up, two of them spent in solitary, had given him a lot of time to think. His father hadn’t been hoping to get Sophie and him together, Luka was sure of that now. Malvolio must have been tipped off about the raids and would have wanted the souvenirs out of his home and in Paulo’s.

Only no one wanted to hear his truth.

‘Sophie Durante heard that you were about to renege on your promise to marry her. She turned up at your home on a Sunday afternoon to dissuade you and you ended up in bed that same afternoon, or rather you had sex in the kitchen.’

‘No.’

‘You are saying nothing happened in the kitchen?’ the lawyer checked.

‘As I have said, I had had a fight with my father, Sophie was sorting out the cut above my eye...’

‘Oh, I see—you were bleeding so profusely that she was left with no choice but to take off her dress to stem the bleed...?’ the lawyer asked, and Sophie sat burning with shame, completely humiliated as the courtroom laughed.

‘My father had suggested that Sophie come over before I told him that I did not want to get engaged. He wanted her out of Paulo’s house so that he could move—’

‘Did Sophie Durante want to be out of that house too?’ the lawyer interrupted. ‘Was Sophie concerned that her father was engaged in criminal activity? Did she tell you she wanted to get away from him?’

Luka broke into a cold sweat, he could feel it trickle down his back. He was doing everything he could to stay calm, to somehow give his version of events, but there was no right answer.

His father had a brilliant lawyer, so too did he, and he was, Luka could now see, being used to discredit Paulo.

If he answered yes to the question then he put Paulo away for life.

‘No.’

‘You are under oath,’ the lawyer reminded him.

‘No, she did not say that.’ Luka’s voice was clear as he decided that bedroom talk had no place in the courtroom.

‘You did tell your father, though, that you were not going to go ahead with the engagement?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you told Sophie the same. Yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Luka.’ The lawyer really was the smiling assassin as he looked at his youngest client, whose father was paying the hefty bill. ‘How can you expect the court to believe that there was no conversation—?’

‘We were otherwise engaged.’

‘After you had ended things?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nothing was said about her father?’

Luka did what he had to.

‘There really was little conversation.’

‘It makes no sense.’

The lawyer was about to pounce again but Luka got there first and turned to the judge and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I think that Sophie might have been trying to get me to change my mind about ending things by trying to seduce me so I took what was on offer.’ He looked out towards the jury and then back to the judge as he shamed her. ‘Am I on trial for my libido?’

The laughter that went around the courtroom ended the testimony.

But as Luka left the stand she did not look at him.

Luka knew that he might have saved her father from conviction by his own daughter’s words.

But it might just have killed the two of them.