Rising Fire. William W. Johnstone

Чтение книги онлайн.

      CHAPTER 9

      “I never meant for my difficulty to involve you, cara mia,” Giovanni said as he poured wine from a bottle into glasses on the sideboard in his apartment. “A signorina as beautiful as yourself should never have to trouble herself over something as ugly and sordid as gambling debts.”

      “That’s what you owe to this man Tomasi?” Denny asked. “Gambling debts?”

      “Salvatore Tomasi makes a business of buying debts from gambling houses and individuals alike. I had a run of terrible luck.” Giovanni shrugged. “I would have recouped my losses sooner or later, but Tomasi is not a patient man. He demands payment now.”

      “And you don’t have the money,” Denny guessed. It wasn’t really a question.

      “I have experienced . . . financial reverses. Much as it pains me to admit it, I lack the funds to satisfy Tomasi’s demands.”

      “Can’t you get your family in Sicily to advance some money to you?”

      Giovanni laughed, but there was no humor in the sound.

      “I am, what do you call it, the black sheep of the Malatesta family. My family cannot strip me of my title, but neither are they inclined to share their riches with me. I have my own money, of course, but much of it is tied up in investments and is not actually available to me at present.”

      “You could borrow on it,” Denny suggested.

      “A well I have gone to before, on occasion, to live in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed,” Giovanni said with a slight grimace. “Not a viable alternative at the moment, unfortunately.”

      She finally took the glass of wine he held out to her and downed a healthy swallow. “There’s only one thing we can do,” she said. “How much do you need to get Tomasi to leave you alone?”

      “No! Take money from a woman, from my beloved? No, I say, a thousand times no!”

      With anybody else, she might have thought he was being too dramatic. But such flamboyance was just who Giovanni Malatesta was, Denny told herself.

      “There’s nothing wrong with letting someone who cares about you help you out of a problem,” she argued. “My grandparents are wealthy, and my father’s ranch is one of the biggest and most lucrative in Colorado. All I need to do is send a few telegrams, and I can have the money wired to a bank here in Venice. Just give me the details of where it should go and how much you need, and we can take care of this first thing in the morning.”

      Stubbornly, Giovanni shook his head and said, “I cannot do this. Bad enough that I had to hide behind your skirts . . . and your gun . . . when Tomasi’s men cornered us.”

      “They were threatening me, too, you know,” she reminded him. “And I’m sure they’ll continue to do so, now that they know I’m someone important to you. Men like that are no different than the outlaws my father has dealt with back home. They’ll use any leverage they have to get what they want.”

      “This is true,” Giovanni admitted. “Salvatore Tomasi and the men who work for him are ruthless.”

      “So it’s in my interest to help you with this, too,” Denny said. “Please, Giovanni, let me help. Tell me how much you need.”

      For a long moment, he stood there, glaring, then he abruptly lifted his glass and drank down all the wine in it.

      “All right. I don’t like it. This still seems wrong. But I will pay you back, every bit.” He named an amount that sounded enormous to Denny and must have seen the look of surprise on her face, СКАЧАТЬ