Betrayal by Christina Dodd

for more than a week. We sent her home with a bodyguard and a nurse to ensure her safety and health.”
    Penelope’s dismay subsided, and her anger rose. “Did you catch the mugger?”
    “Eventually we did, but it turned out he was the harbinger of something much larger. It goes back to an old family feud. Over eighty years ago—”
    She didn’t laugh this time, but intently leaned forward.
    “—my grandfather Anthony Di Luca was born, and on the same day across the valley, the Bianchin family also had a son.”
    She knew who. “Joseph.”
    “Yes!” He looked startled. Stared questioningly at her.
    “I’m in town because I’ve got business with him.”
    “Design business?” He shot the question at her. “But he’s not here.”
    “I know that.”
    “Is he coming back soon?”
    “I don’t know. I hope so.”
    “I hope not. He’s the one who initiated the attack on Nonna.”
    Noah’s sharp tone, the harsh words, made her lean back away from him. “What? Why? How do you know that?”
    “Over eighty years ago,” he began again, “there was aman, unmarried and with no family, named Massimo Bruno. He lived in Bella Valley and he made fine wines. World-class wines.”
    “I’m listening.” Although she wished Noah would get to the point.
    “On the occasion of a son’s birth, he would give a bottle of wine to the family, to be opened at the child’s twenty-first birthday. It was tradition, but this was Prohibition, and that year the revenuers found Massimo’s wine cellar. They broke all the casks and spilled the wine into the street. The gutters ran red, and Massimo managed to save enough wine for one bottle only. One bottle. Two sons. Two rival families.”
    “Uh-oh.” She was starting to comprehend.
    “Massimo gave the bottle of wine to the child who had been born first, my grandfather, Anthony Di Luca. To Joseph and the Bianchins, he gave an antique silver rattle.” Noah looked down, heavy lidded with satisfaction. “As it should have been.”
    She wouldn’t dream of disagreeing. “Yes, of course.”
    “The Bianchins swore vengeance.” Noah managed to convey cruelty in the wave of a hand. “For twenty-one years, they brooded on the perceived wrong—we Italians know how to wait, letting the anger fester year by year.”
    Penelope’s heart clutched in anticipation and anguish.
    Had she imagined that she knew this man?
    She did not. Her heritage was Mexican: Mayan, Spanish, and French, and in those American and European heritages she shared the same heated Mediterranean blood as the Di Lucas. But she knew without a doubt that her grandfather’s petty grudges were nothing like this.
    “On my grandfather’s twenty-first birthday, which was also his wedding day, Joseph led the Bianchin familyon the attack. They came with guns and knives. They destroyed the gifts, the food, the wine—and they shot my grandfather.” The grim lines around Noah’s mobile mouth deepened. “He almost died.”
    No. No. It wasn’t true. But she didn’t say a word. She didn’t want Noah to realize how much this meant to her… or why.
    “Unfortunately for them, they attacked too soon. Massimo’s wine had not been opened. The bottle was still hidden. My grandfather survived, but he never forgave them—”
    Please tell me this is not true. Not true. Because if it is…
    “As long as Nonno lived, he would bring out that bottle of wine and show it off to his friends and his family… and put it away again. Because he knew that, across town, Joseph Bianchin would hear about it. He knew Joseph was stewing in his own bile, envying that bottle, coveting it.”
    When Penelope came to Bella Terra to meet with Joseph Bianchin, she had never anticipated anything like this. How could she? To sit here and watch Noah gesture animatedly, to watch his face change from that of an amiable, civilized man into that of a brutal barbarian moved to violence by old vendettas… it was a revelation that both frightened and