Page 67 of The Villa

“I don’t give a fuck about that,” Pierce replies, beginning to shove things into the suitcase, and Mari can’t help the scathing laugh that bursts out of her.

“Of course,youdon’t, but you never do.I’mthe one who has to worry about that kind of thing, right? Suppose you want me to call my father, beg him to help us out somehow.”

Pierce goes still, then turns around, his chest heaving. “I’ve never liked you having to ask your father for money—”

“But not enough to actually make money yourself. And god forbid Pierce Sheldon ever lowered himself to grovel to his own family.”

Pierce points at her, his hand shaking. “You just don’t wanna leave because ofhim.”

His hand moves, finger now jabbing at the floor, toward downstairs, and Mari picks up the nearest thing to hand, one of Pierce’s jackets, flinging it at him.

“Oh, that’s right, the only thing I couldpossiblycare about is some other man and some other cock,” she spits out. She has no idea if he means Johnnie or Noel or both, and, given that the idea she’d want to stay for either of them is absurd, she’s too bloody angry to care. “What other reason could a girl have for not wanting to sprint out across Italy dead broke?Never mind that I’m actuallyhappyhere. Never mind that I’m actuallyworking, not that you’ve even fucking noticed. Or asked. Orcared.”

Pierce just stands there, staring at her, his expression almost comically confused.

He looks like someone just hit him over the head, Mari thinks, and she sort of wishes she had.

“You’re really not leaving,” he says, and Mari folds her arms tight across her chest.

“I’m not. You can, but I won’t.”

Sitting heavily on the side of the bed, Pierce puts his head in his hands, sucking in a breath. When he finally looks back at her, there are tears in his eyes, but he’s trying to smile.

“Then I’ll stay, too,” Pierce proclaims, and somewhere in the universe, a pair of scissors snaps, sealing his fate.

In the end, it was the testimony of Elena Bianchi that doomed John Dorchester. The teenager had been a maid at Villa Rosato for the entire summer and, it turned out, had witnessed far more of the various tensions and dramas that were unfolding between the inhabitants than they realized. On the stand for a total of three days altogether, Elena’s testimony held the court—and the world—riveted. Thanks to her, it was revealed that not only had Noel Gordon impregnated Lara Larchmont, but that Lara had previously had a brief affair with the deceased, Pierce Sheldon. Elena also testified to drunken rages, petty arguments, and, most damning of all, a physical altercation between Johnnie and Pierce that had erupted after Elena saw Johnnie and Mari in a passionate embrace.

This, of course, led to the long-standing belief that everything that happened that summer was really all about sex. The rumors began at the trial, and really never stopped. Mari was having an affair with Johnnie; no, she was actually sleeping with Noel and Johnnie—or, even more scandalous, had Mari discovered that Pierce and Noel were sleeping together?

Perhaps, as Elena darkly implied before the opposing counsel could stop her, it was a more fluid situation, one involving bed swapping, partner swapping—a veritable orgy unfolding just outside the tranquil medieval hill town of Orvieto.

It was ironic that these five people, accustomed to being watched and scrutinized, seemed to have forgotten about the civilian in their midst, who was committing to memory all the private moments that eventually led to a brutal murder.

Elena enjoyed her brief moment of celebrity as well. She was able to parlay it into a brief modeling career and eventually married Giancarlo Ricci, the wealthy son of an Italian record executive before she sadly passed away in the mid-eighties.

It’s a great irony, no doubt, that in being a part of something so horrible, Elena Bianchi’s life was, indisputably, improved.

If she herself ever had any qualms about that, she never expressed them. If anything, she seemed to take the events of July 29, 1974, in her stride.

Interviewed a year after the trial, Elena was asked if she thought the courts got it right. Her answer was typically Italian:Errano tutti pazzi.

“They are all mad.”

—The Rock Star, the Writer, and the Murdered Musician: The Strange Saga of Villa Rosato, A. Burton, longformcrime.net

MARI,1974—ORVIETO

Mari doesn’t know it’s her last night at Villa Rosato on the July evening that she sits down at her desk to finishLilith Rising. There’s no warning, no sense of foreboding in the air.

That last day has actually been one of the nicer ones that she’s spent at the villa. Noel has taken himself off to town, claiming he’s going to throw himself down St. Patrick’s Well. Given that he abandoned any pretense of disguise, Mari suspects he intends to put himself on display and be admired by the locals. Pierce spends most of the day writing in the drawing room downstairs. Lara is in her room, playing, and though Johnnie seems determined to get himself into the most altered state humanly possible, he’s at least peaceful, for once. No more dark glares at Pierce, no further arguments.

It’s a good day, all in all, and Mari will be glad for that, after.

It’s past midnight when the storm begins, and Mari is still at her desk, a candle burning next to her. She hears voices in the hallway, but she ignores them at first, determined to see her story through until the bloody end.

Victoria stared up at the house, and knew. All this time, she had thought it was Colin drawing her to the darkness, but the darkness had always been there, inside her. It’s why she loved the house, and the house loved her. It’s why she was here now: to bring about her own ruin, but also her own salvation.

She stepped forward, the grass—

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