Chapter 17: Five Weeks

The yacht was moored at the Genoa quay with every light burning.

Two men marched me up the gangway with my split lip washed and my hair brushed by a maid, so that I would look like a guest.

They put me in a chair at the end of a long table.

Eleven members of the Grimaldi board sat along it in dinner clothes, with their glasses already filled.

I knew them all.

They had stood at my mother's funeral, and they looked at me now with the faces of men who wished they were somewhere else.

Ilaria sat at Dario's right hand in a pale gold dress.

She smiled at me across the silver.

"Poor Viola," she said. "You look dreadful."

"Gentlemen," Dario said, and rose with a glass in his hand. "I thank you for coming on such short notice."

"My wife's sister survived a terrible accident this week. She has not been herself since."

"She believes that people are trying to kill her. She has accused her own family in public."

Heads turned.

A thin man in a grey suit at the foot of the table opened a black bag.

"This is a doctor," Dario said gently. "He only wants to help her."

He slid a paper across the cloth to me.

It named him my guardian and gave him my father's vote and mine.

"Sign it, Viola," said Ilaria. "Then you can rest."

I put the paper down without reading further.

"If I sign it, you have two votes and a majority," I said. "If I don't, the doctor writes that I am mad."

"Don't be difficult, amore."

"I am not the one who is difficult tonight."

I turned my head slowly and looked at my sister's hand.

"Ilaria, why don't you tell the board your news?"

She laughed lightly and glanced at Dario.

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