We were halfway up an incline when the countess stopped. “You go ahead,” she said, trying to catch her breath.
“Go on,” said Rile. “I’ll stay.”
I nodded and raced ahead with Lucia. When we reached the top, there was a curve, and beyond it, I saw light.
I stopped when I heard footsteps and peered around the corner. When I saw it was Matteo, I eased into view.
“I saw tracks but stayed in the dirt,” he said, pointing to the trail that led from the villa to the cave’s entrance. The parted grasses were high, indicating someone had just come that way.
We crept farther back in the caves. I stopped when I thought I heard a scream.
27
Pia
After we walked into the caves, I saw Georgio waiting. I looked into his eyes and shook my head. When he smirked in response, I wanted to claw his eyes out, just like Mylos had predicted.
In hindsight, I wondered if I’d made a mistake in agreeing to lead Paolo to what he was looking for as long as Lucia didn’t come with us. It never occurred to me that I’d be outnumbered.
“I told you she’d know where it is.”
“Why are you here? I told you to wait in the tunnels,” Paolo spat at Georgio.
“And leave you alone with the diamond? Not a chance.”
Paolo leaned into me so his mouth was near my ear. “If you’re playing me, know that I will kill you.” The gun he’d had trained on me the whole way through the tunnels, pressed into my side.
When he pushed me, I kept walking, hoping I’d be able to find the place where we’d discovered the chest all those years ago.
Once I found that, I could probably locate the place where I’d originally picked up the stone I gave to Mylos.
I’d never heard of the Medici diamond and had no idea why Paolo thought I knew where it was, but the only thing I could think of was that maybe it was buried somewhere near where I’d found the other stone.
“This way,” I said, rounding a familiar-looking corner.
I recognized the wine racks, but I couldn’t see if the chest was still behind them. I stopped and looked around, trying to get my bearings. “There,” I said, motioning with my head to an offshoot about twenty feet from where we stood.
Paolo grabbed my arm and jerked me forward. Once we rounded another corner, he pushed me so hard I fell to my knees. I heard a clicking sound and looked over my shoulder, screaming when I saw Georgio fall to the ground. When he landed, I could see blood trickling down from a bullet hole in his forehead.
“You’re going to kill me too, aren’t you?” I said, looking into Paolo’s eyes.
He knelt on the ground beside me. “This could have been so much easier, amore mio. I gave you so many chances.”
“To what, marry you? Are you saying if I had, you wouldn’t have killed me eventually?”
He shrugged and looked as though he was thinking it over. The fucking lunatic. “Maybe, yes. But, if you had agreed to sell Valentini, then we wouldn’t be in such an ugly predicament.”
“You’re mad.”
He shrugged again and gazed off at nothing. “Perhaps, but I am rich beyond your imagination. The maps I discovered that day so long ago, allowed me to locate many of the Sovereign Order of Malta’s buried riches, but none as great as the Medici diamond. In fact, all those combined are unequal to its value. Once I possess it, I can disappear and never be seen again.” He turned back to me and dug his fingers into my arm. “Time is up—where did you hide it?”
“Hide it?”
“I warned you before not to play with me, Pia. I saw you. You had it in your hand. Of course, I had no idea what it was at the time. When I read the stories of Estancia Valentini and how she paid off the Italian government but kept her fortune in one stone—the Medici diamond—that’s when I realized what you’d found.”
“Paolo, I didn’t find a diamond that day. The stone I found was red, a worthless bauble.”
He looked at me as though he didn’t understand what I was saying, either that or I was very stupid.