He put his hand to his chest.

“Are you hungry?”

“Perhaps. Yes.”

He smiled then. Only there was something off. It wasn’t a smile, really. More a twitch. The muscles gone rigid in the face. He tried to speak, but something burst inside him. His shoulders tightened, hunching inward, and his arm went up, as if hailing a taxi. He buckled at the knees.

I called for Zanche.

He lay there, eyes open. He wasn’t dead yet, I don’t think. He was still conscious—and what he saw wasn’t the demons of the evening before, come to seek their vengeance. It was me. His eyes locked onto mine. Then his pupils clouded and turned to milk.

“Zanche!”

The house was silent.

I pounded him on the chest, like I have seen done, and put my mouth to his, trying to force the air in, but his lips tasted foul and his breath stank. I pulled away reflexively. At this point Zanche walked in. I sat straddled over my dead husband—hand raised up to my face, as if wiping the taste of him from my lips.

PART FIVE

28.

Orsini’s death lifted a cloud, but it created a dilemma, as well. Once the story broke, we wouldn’t be able to stay long in California. It might raise suspicions to leave so soon after his death, but I knew the nature of Paolo’s enemies—and of his friends—and how they might use the opportunity to move against us.

I called 911, and the paramedics came. They went through the motions, attempting to resuscitate Paolo as I stood out on the deck listening to the surf pound the beach, glancing every now and again at the house on the point.

They declared Orsini dead at the scene.

A massive coronary.

“He was so young,” I said.

“Any history?”

“He’d lost weight, he’d been ill, but the doctors in Rome, they couldn’t find anything.”

“Medications?”

“Some Chinese herbs. For his stomach.”

A police officer arrived after the medics, and he, too, examined the scene. At my brother’s insistence, I’d left the teacup on the floor—and the herbs and bottles in the cabinet. It would have been foolish to do otherwise, Johnny insisted. Everyone in the household knew about Orsini’s regimen and how he followed it religiously, under his own volition. We all knew the stress he’d been under.

The cop took my name without reacting. I didn’t know if that was because this was Malibu and they had been trained in nonchalance, or if in fact the name meant nothing to him.

Maybe I felt a small bit snubbed. But the tabloids, this side of the Atlantic . . .

They had no idea.