Bloodline. Сидни Шелдон

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       Chapter Three

       Rome Monday, September 7 6 p.m.

      Ivo Palazzi stood in the middle of his bedroom, the blood streaming down his face. ‘Mamma mia! Mi hai rovinato!’

      ‘I haven’t begun to ruin you, you miserable figlio di putana!’ Donatella screamed at him.

      They were both naked in the large bedroom of their apartment in Via Montemignaio. Donatella had the most sensuous, exciting body Ivo Palazzi had ever seen, and even now, as his life’s blood poured from his face, from the terrible scratches she had inflicted on him, he felt a familiar stirring in his loins. Dio, she was beautiful. There was an innocent decadence about her that drove him wild. She had the face of a leopard, high cheekbones and slant eyes, full ripe lips, that nibbled him and sucked him and – But he must not think of that now. He picked up a white cloth from a chair to staunch the flow of blood, and too late he realized that it was his shirt. Donatella was standing in the middle of their huge double bed, yelling at him. ‘I hope you bleed to death! When I’ve finished with you, you filthy whoremonger, there won’t be enough left for a gattino to shit on!’

      For the hundredth time Ivo Palazzi wondered how he had got himself into this impossible situation. He had always prided himself on being the happiest of men, and all his friends had agreed with him. His friends? Everybody! Because Ivo had no enemies. In his bachelor days he had been a happy-go-lucky Roman without a care in the world, a Don Giovanni who was the envy of half the males in Italy. His philosophy was summed up in the phrase Farst onore con una donna – ‘Honour oneself with a woman.’ It kept Ivo very busy. He was a true romantic. He kept falling in love, and each time he used his new love to help him forget his old love. Ivo adored women, and to him they were all beautiful, from the putane who plied their ancient trade along the Via Appia, to the high-fashion models strutting along the Via Condotti. The only girls Ivo did not care for were the Americans. They were too independent for his tastes. Besides, what could one expect of a nation whose language was so unromantic that they would translate the name of Giuseppe Verdi to Joe Green?

      Ivo always managed to have a dozen girls in various states of preparation. There were five stages. In stage one were the girls he had just met. They received daily phone calls, flowers, slim volumes of erotic poetry. In stage two were those to whom he sent little gifts of Gucci scarves and porcelain boxes filled with Perugina chocolates. Those in stage three received jewellery and clothes and were taken to dinner at El Toula, or Taverna Flavia. Those in stage four shared Ivo’s bed and enjoyed his formidable skills as a lover. An assignation with Ivo was a production. His beautifully decorated little apartment on the Via Margutta would be filled with flowers, garofani or papaveri, the music would be opera, classical or rock, according to the chosen girl’s taste. Ivo was a superb cook, and one of his specialities, appropriately enough, was pollo alla cacciatora, the hunter’s chicken. After dinner, a bottle of chilled champagne to drink in bed … Ah, yes, Ivo loved stage four.

      But stage five was probably the most delicate of them all. It consisted of a heartbreaking farewell speech, a generous parting gift and a tearful arrivederci.

      But all that was in the past. Now Ivo Palazzi took a quick glance at his bleeding, scratched face in the mirror over his bed and was horrified. He looked as though he had been attacked by a mad threshing machine.

      ‘Look at what you’ve done to me!’ he cried. ‘Cara, I know you didn’t mean it.’

      He moved over to the bed to take Donatella in his arms. Her soft arms flew around him and as he started to hug her, she buried her long fingernails in his naked back and clawed him like a wild animal. Ivo yelled with pain.

      ‘Scream!’ Donatella shouted. ‘If I had a knife, I’d cut off your cazzo and ram it down your miserable throat.’

      ‘Please!’ Ivo begged. ‘The children will hear you.’

      ‘Let them!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s time they found out what kind of monster their father is.’

      He took a step towards her. ‘Carissima –’

      ‘Don’t you touch me! I’d give my body to the first drunken syphilitic sailor I met on the streets before I’d ever let you come near me again.’

      Ivo drew himself up, his pride offended. ‘That is not the way I expect the mother of my children to talk to me.’

      ‘You want me to talk nice to you? You want me to stop treating you like the vermin you are?’ Donatella’s voice rose to a scream. ‘Then give me what I want!’

      Ivo looked nervously towards the door. ‘Carissima – I can’t. I don’t have it.’

      ‘Then get it for me!’ she cried. ‘You promised!’

      She was beginning to get hysterical again, and Ivo decided the best thing for him to do was to get out of there quickly before the neighbours called the carabinieri again.

      ‘It will take time to get a million dollars,’ he said soothingly. ‘But I’ll – I’ll find a way.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ