Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian

Wow. She almost laughed. Her unwelcome guest, her father’s onerous hope of salvation, sounded as she’d expected him to sound, as if he were entering a Disney World building.

“This is quite a structure. Which Medici built it?”

She stopped and looked at him. He stood with his face turned up to the spectacular gold cherubs on the building’s facade.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I know it’s Medici. It has to be. But was this Giovanni’s work? Cosimo’s? Lorenzo’s? Lorenzo, I’d bet. The others were benefactors of the city, too, but he was the one with the soul of an artist. Am I right?”

“You know of the Medicis?”

Nick looked at her. He could read the astonishment on her face.

“Yes,” he said coolly. “I do. Surprised?”

“No. Not at all.”

She was a beautiful liar. He was damned certain she’d expected him to assume this perfect little structure had been put up by Disney.

“And you are correct,” she added briskly. “Lorenzo was its benefactor.”

He nodded. “That figures.”

“But Cosimo is one of our ancestors.”

Had she really said that? Judging by the lift of his eyebrows, she had. It was not an appreciative lift, either; he saw the boast just as much a foolish one as she did. Still, boasting, if more subtly than that, was the reason she’d brought her father’s crime-boss investor to this place.

She would have to keep one thought ahead of him at all times.

A golden cage of an elevator, installed in the mid-1800s, whisked them to the third floor. The meeting room, the one she had carefully chosen, was directly opposite. It was the most glorious chamber of all the glorious chambers in the small, elegant palace.

“After you,” the man she was trying to intimidate said politely, and she led him inside.

There was no “wow” this time but she could hear the intake of his breath as he took in the surroundings: the marble-topped table, the gilded vases filled with flowers, the thick silk carpet that was almost as old as the building itself, the Michelangelos and Raphaels and Donatellos hanging on the walls.

Orsini was impressed. And, she was certain, most assuredly aware that he was out of place. The thought gave her another guilty twinge but she dismissed it.

She might have to eat her pride by ferrying this man around as if he were not who he was, but it would surely be worth it.

The five men seated at the marble-topped table rose to greet him. Oh, yes, he was in over his head today. Her father’s attorney. Her father’s accountant. The vineyard manager. The viniculturist and the vintner.

Alessia watched Nicolo shake hands with each of them.

Then she sat back, ready to watch him eat crow. An American expression, and an excellent one.

What could a gangster possibly know of the law, of finance or of vino?

Five minutes later, she knew she had made a terrible error in judgment.

“Ah,” he told the attorney, “what a pleasure to meet the man who won Palmieri versus Shott in Venice last year.” Alessia watched the lawyer sit up straighter.

“You know of that case, signore?” he said, and Orsini replied that yes, of course he did, it had made headlines everywhere.

The accountant turned brick-red with delight when Nicolo said he was delighted to meet t

he man responsible for such an outstanding article in a prior month’s international finance journal.

He made no pretence at knowing anything at all about wine.