Nomad by Matthew Mather Read Free Book Online

business here. This is my sovereign ground. My family has defended this place for a thousand years. Two little police officers are nothing.”
    She couldn’t tell if he was being funny or not. Was this really his sovereign ground? Like his own country? “Still, they were here because of me.”
    “I know.”
    “It’s just, this guy I was—”
    “No need to explain.” Giovanni clicked off his computer. “So, how about that personal tour of the castle?”
    Was this guy for real? Some kind of Italian machismo? Fending off the police, rescuing the damsel in distress? Jess felt a prickling of resentment under her gratitude, but said nothing.
    “Are you ready?” Giovanni stood and came around his desk.
    Jess took a deep breath and smiled, consciously smoothing down the hackles in her mind. “Sure, that would be great.”
     

     
    Giovanni took Jess on a whirlwind exploration of the castle, explaining when each wall and tower had been built, what battles had been fought and won. They stopped in at the kitchens first, where he explained they only had evening staff for three nights a week, usually for the guests. He mostly cooked his own food.
    Then he took her on a quick march around the periphery of the outer walls, through the olive groves, pointing out the vineyards that stretched down the sides of the mountain. Olive oil was still an important family business, he said, as well as the wine that the estate produced. From there they went down below, into the catacombs of the wine cellars, ancient Etruscan caves carved out thousands of years ago. For three thousand years, he said, the caves had withstood every earthquake and disaster Mother Nature threw at them.
    They ended the tour at the southwest corner, the highest point where the top of the castle walls met the peak of the mountain. They climbed up through one of the tunnels to a ledge, then up a ladder to the top. A cable stretched across the small valley to the next property, a much smaller castello on the side of a hill opposite, so that a small cable car could be ferried across. Below, the town of Saline nestled in the foothills. The view to the west was breathtaking, the flat plains of Tuscany stretching into the distance, the Mediterranean visible as a blue line on the horizon forty miles away.
    “Is that your property as well?” Jess asked, squinting down the length of the cable that strung across the valley, looking at the smaller castello on the opposite side.
    “No,” Giovanni replied, then corrected himself. “Well, yes, it is, but much more recent. We’ve only owned it for a hundred years.” He grinned. “A new addition. We built the cable car to connect them.”
    “A new addition?” Jess held one hand over her eyes to shield the sun, taking a closer look at the structure on the other side of the gorge. “What, you bought it?”
    The grin evaporated from Giovanni’s face. “Not exactly, it was…” He looked away, exhaling, then looked back at Jess. “It was a rival family, but they left.”
    Jess glanced at him, noticed a strange look in his eyes. “Like a feud?”
    “Yes, like that.”
    “Huh.” Jess shook her head, not sure what to say. She shifted her gaze down the cliff wall under the cable car shack where they’d come from. It was thirty feet of sheer rock, with a large grassy ledge at least twenty feet across, then a drop of a few hundred feet beyond that. “Great for rock climbing,” she observed.
    “Jessica, I do have another confession.”
    She was still staring down the rock wall, her mind constructing possible routes for climbing up it. “What’s that?”
    “Yesterday, at the museum, I overheard you telling your mother that your boyfriend hit you, that you needed money.”
    Lifting her head up from looking down the cliff face, Jess shielded her eyes again from the setting sun. “Is that why you’re being so nice to me?”
    “Partly.” Giovanni nodded.
    “And the other part?”
    Giovanni looked uncomfortable.