The Villa - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nora Roberts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 novels. She is also the author of the bestselling In Death series written under the pen name J. D. Robb. There are more than 500 million copies of her books in print.

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Prologue

On the night he was murdered, Bernardo Baptista dined simply on bread and cheese and a bottle of Chianti. The wine was a bit young, and Bernardo was not. Neither would continue to age.

Like his bread and cheese, Bernardo was a simple man. He had lived in the same little house in the gentle hills north of Venice since his marriage fifty-one years before. His five children had been raised there. His wife had died there.

Now at seventy-three, Bernardo lived alone, with most of his family a stone's throw away, at the edges of the grand Giambelli vineyard where he had worked since his youth.

He had known La Signora since her girlhood, and had been taught to remove his cap whenever she passed by. Even now if Tereza Giambelli traveled from California back to the castello and vineyard, she would stop if she saw him. And they would talk of the old days when her grandfather and his had worked the vines.

Signore Baptista, she called him. Respectfully. He had great appreciation for La Signora, and had been loyal to her and hers the whole of his life.

For more than sixty years he had taken part in the making of Giambelli wine. There had been many changes—some good, in Bernardo's opinion, some not so good. He had seen much.

Some thought, too much.

The vines, lulled into dormancy by winter, would soon be pruned. Arthritis prevented him from doing much of the hard work, as he once had, but still he would go out every morning to watch his sons and grandsons carry on the tradition.

A Baptista had always worked for Giambelli. And in Bernardo's mind, always would.

On this last night of his seventy-three years, he looked out over the vines—his vines, seeing what had been done, what needed to be done, and listened as the December wind whistled through the bones of the grape.

From the window where that wind tried to sneak, he could see the skeletons as they made their steady climb up the rises. They would take on flesh and life with time, and not wither as a man did. Such was the miracle of the grape.

He could see the shadows and shapes of the great castello which ruled those vines, and ruled those who tended them.

It was lonely now, in the night, in the winter, when only servants slept in the castello and the grapes had yet to be born.

He wanted the spring, and the long summer that followed it when the sun would warm his innards and ripen the young fruit. He wanted, as it seemed he always had, one more harvest.

Bernardo ached with the cold, deep in the bones. He considered heating some of the soup his granddaughter had brought to him, but his Annamaria was not the best of cooks. With this in mind, he made due with the cheese and sipped the good, full-bodied wine by his little fire.

He was proud of his life's work, some of which was in the glass that caught the firelight and gleamed deep, deep red. The wine had been a gift—one of many given to him on his retirement. Though everyone knew the retirement was only a technicality. Even with his aching bones and a heart that had grown weak, Bernardo would walk the vineyard, test the grapes, watch the sky and smell the air.

He lived for wine.

He died for it.

He drank, nodding by the fire, with a blanket tucked around his thin legs. Through his mind ran images of sun-washed fields, of his wife laughing, of himself showing his son how to support a young vine, to prune a mature one. Of La Signora standing beside him between the rows their grandfathers had tended.

Signore Baptista, she said to him when their faces were still young, we have been given a world. We must protect it.

And so they had.

The wind whistled at the windows of his little house. The fire died to embers.

And when the pain reached out like a fist, squeezing his heart to death, his killer was six thousand miles away, surrounded by friends and associates, enjoying a perfectly poached salmon, and a fine Pinot Blanc.

Chapter Two

The valley, and the hills that rose from it, wore a thin coat of snow. Vines, arrogant and often temperamental soldiers, climbed up the slopes, their naked branches spearing through the quiet mist that turned the circling mountains to soft shadows.

Under the pearly dawn, the vineyard shivered and slept.

This peaceful scene had helped spawn a fortune, a fortune that would be gambled again, season after season. With nature both partner and foe.

To Sophia, the making of wine was an art, a business, a science. But it was also the biggest game in town.

From her window of her grandmother's villa, she studied the playing field. It was pruning season, and she imagined while she'd been traveling, vines had already been accessed, considered, and those first stages toward next year's harvest begun. She was glad she'd been called back, so that she could see that part of it for herself.

When she was away, the business of the wine occupied all her energies. She rarely thought of the vineyard when she wore her corporate hat. And whenever she came back, like this, she thought of little else.

Still, she couldn't stay long. She had duties in San Francisco. A new advertising campaign to be polished. The Giambelli centennial was just getting off the ground. And with the success of the auction in New York, the next stages would require her attention.

An old wine for a new millennium, she thought. Villa Giombelli: The next century of excellence begins.

But they needed something fresh, something savvy for the younger market. Those who bought their wine on the run—a quick, impulse grab to take to a party.

Well, she'd think of it. It was her job to think of it.

And putting her mind to it would keep it off her father and the scheming Rene.

None of her business, Sophia reminded herself. None of her business at all if her father wanted to hook himself up with a former underwear model with a heart the size and texture of a raisin. He'd made a fool of himself before, and no doubt would again.

She wished she could hate him for it, for his pathetic weakness of character, and his benign neglect of his daughter. But the steady, abiding love just wouldn't shift aside. Which made her, she supposed, as foolish as her mother.

He didn't care for either of them as much as he did the cut of his suit. And didn't give them a thought two minutes after they were out of his sight. He was a bastard, utterly selfish, sporadically affectionate and always careless.

And that, she supposed, was part of his charm.

She wished she hadn't stopped by the night before, wished she wasn't compelled to keep that connection between them no matter what he did or didn't do.

Better, she thought, to keep on the move as she had for the past several years. Traveling, working, filling her time and her life with professional and social obligations.

Two days, she decided. She would give her grandmother two days, spend time with her family, spend time in the vineyard and the winery. Then it was back to work with a vengeance.

The new campaign would be the best in the industry. She would make sure of it.

As she scanned the hills, she saw two figures walking through the mist. The tall gangly man with an old brown cap on his head. The ram-rod straight woman in mannish boots and trousers with hair white as the snow they trod. A border collie plodded along between them. Her grandparents, taking their morning walk with the aging and endlessly faithful Sally.

The sight of them lifted her mood. Whatever changed in her life, whatever adjustments had been made, this was a constant. La Signora and Eli MacMillan. And the vines.

She dashed from the window to grab her coat and join them.

At sixty-seven, Tereza Giombelli was sculpted, razor sharp, body and mind. She had learned the art of the vine at her grandfather's knee. Had traveled with her father to California when she'd been only three to turn...