Betrayal by Christina Dodd Page B

was necessary to send him into exile.” Noah had grown out of the last softness of youth. He was all man now, and he smiled the kind of menacing, toothy smile she had never imagined on his face.
    All right. She supposed he had the right to defend his grandmother with every resource available to him. She knew Nonna had raised him. But… “It doesn’t make sense. Why did Joseph Bianchin decide to resort to violence at this stage?”
    “We figured that one out almost too late—and by we, I mean Eli and his new wife, Chloë. She’s an author; she writes suspense. Eli, too, did his part.” Noah shook his head in wonder. “Who knew he had it in him to defend himself against a crooked FBI agent?”
    “Eli?” Penelope remembered him as a large, quiet man, intent on wines and wary of people in general.
    “Former FBI, but it took Eli and Chloë both to defeat him, and they look like they’ve been used as battering rams.” Noah sat on his haunches in front of Penelope and looked right into her eyes. “The whole thing is about diamonds.”
    “Diamonds?”
    “Massimo was stealing diamonds, hiding them in the wine bottles he gave as gifts; then, when the coast was clear, he’d steal the bottle and replace it with one that looked identical but didn’t have the contraband.”
    Penelope realized her mouth was hanging open. She snapped it shut and asked, “He was doing this during Prohibition?”
    “Apparently Nonna’s mother always said he was a gangster. Apparently Nonna’s mother was right.”
    “Whoa. How did Joseph Bianchin find out?”
    “Bottles of Massimo’s wine are still around; Bianchin’s been a collector for years, pathetically trying to be my grandfather, I guess.” Noah’s eyes flashed with irritation. “We think he opened a bottle, poured it, and found jewels in the bottom.”
    “Jewels Massimo hadn’t collected?”
    “Jewels he hadn’t collected because he disappeared not long after giving his last bottle to my grandfather.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “No one knows. Or rather… no one knew until Eli and Chloë found his body in an old water tower. He’d been tortured. Up there beside the body, Eli found a small diamond—and not just any diamond. It was a pink diamond, so Chloë looked up jewel robberies for that year before my grandfather was born.” Noah’s mouthtwisted in distaste. “In Amsterdam, a priceless set of pink diamonds was stolen and never retrieved.”
    The whole story was fascinating, horrifying, unlikely… and all too obviously, everyone in the Di Luca family believed it was true. Penelope breathed in and out, in and out, slow, heavy breaths as she tried to contain her anguish. “Joseph Bianchin figured that out, too, and he wants those diamonds.”
    “I think we can assume that.” Putting one knee on the step beside her, the other on the floor, Noah took her hand again . The light danced on each strand of his short black hair with fevered grace. “Here in Bella Terra, in the last two and a half months, we’ve had three murders, a related death, and as much violence as we’ve had in the last fifty years put together. The resort’s on high alert, and the press is starting to take an interest. We Di Lucas have managed to distract them, but the reporters will catch on eventually. If that happens, every thug and opportunist in the world will arrive on our doorstep looking for that bottle of wine.”
    “You truly don’t know where it is?” Her life would be so much easier if he knew and for some nefarious reason was hiding the truth.
    But it almost seemed that he read her mind and repeated her thoughts back at her. “How much easier it would be for all of us if we knew, and poured it, and found out whether the bottle contained diamonds—or merely sediment.”
    “Yes. I can see that.” She could see it.
    “That’s why Rafe was acting like a jerk, questioning you as if you were a person of suspicion. And that’s why I’d consider it a favor if you’d