Page 70 of The Honest Affair

Matthew grinned and started the car. “With pleasure, baby.”

But before we could leave, there was a quick rap on my window. I jumped, and we turned back to find Rosina standing there, gesturing for me to roll it down.

“Hello,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

She looked unsure, harried, as if she had run out without telling Lucrezia.

“There is something more…I think you should know,” she said. “Lucrezia doesn’t want me to say, but she is wrong.”

I frowned. “What is it? You can tell me.”

“My father. Do you know how he died?”

A sharp ripple of something etched up my spine. “I—it was heart failure, wasn’t it?”

Rosina nodded. “That is what the doctors said. I was only eleven, so I only knew from my mother. But when I got older…well, I am in medical school now. I looked at the autopsy report.” She sighed. “And there were significant amounts of poison in his system. Not enough to be an overdose immediately, but later, to mimic a heart failure. No one would have known if my mother had not insisted on the autopsy.”

I pressed a hand to my chest. “I hadn’t known that. My God.”

“My mother, she told me later. There was an investigation. The university said a man visited him in his office. But they never found him. And…there was an alibi for him, I think.”

Beside me, tension radiated off Matthew’s entire body. I could hardly breathe.

“What happened with it?” Matthew asked. “Is the investigation closed?”

The girl shrugged. “Unsolved, they said. My mother said we should move on, that Babbo was maybe just an addict. Maybe she thought one of you gave him this drug. But I never stopped thinking about it. I was young…but I don’t think my father was an addict. I wondered if maybe you knew.”

She looked directly at me, her dark gaze unwavering. The question was clear: Had I known about her father’s drug problem? Was I, the impetuous student with apparently no moral compass, perhaps responsible for it?

I cleared my throat. “I—no, Rosina. I never knew Giuseppe to do any sort of illegal substance.”

She gave me a hard stare for a moment more, then finally stood up, seemingly satisfied.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “And that’s all I know.” Then she glanced over the car, noticing for the first time its expensive make. It’s apparent wealth. “Goodbye, Nina.”

I raised a hand in farewell, startled at the sound of my name issuing from her mouth. Maybe because she looked so much like her father. It felt like Giuseppe himself was the one wishing me farewell.

“Goodbye, Rosina,” I said. “And good luck with the farm.”

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