The Villa of Mysteries by David Hewson Read Free Book Online

Vatican, by the bridge to the Castel Sant’Angelo. The market of the Campo dei Fiori was no more than a two-minute walk away. Trastevere was maybe a minute more, crossing over the medieval footbridge of the Ponte Sisto. On a fine summer evening Neri used to make that walk regularly, pausing in the middle of the bridge to look along the river towards the vast, sunlit dome of St. Peter’s. He was never much interested in views but this one pleased him somehow. Perhaps that was why he held on to the house, although by now he could afford just about any property in Rome, and was beginning to acquire a portfolio that would include homes in New York, Tuscany, Colombia and two country estates in his native Sicily.
    The walk to Trastevere took him out of himself for a while. The restaurants were good too, which was something Neri could never resist. Until he was fifty he’d been relatively fit, a big, powerful, muscular man who could impose his will by force and brute physical violence if need be. Then the food and the wine took hold. Now he was sixty-five and carrying way too much weight. He looked at himself in the mirror sometimes and wondered whether there was anything to be done. Then he remembered who he was and knew it didn’t matter. He had all the money a man could want. He had a beautiful young wife who did anything he pleased, and was smart enough to look the other way if he felt like the occasional distraction. Maybe he was fat. Maybe he wheezed now and again, and had halitosis so bad he popped mints into his large, grey-lipped mouth the way some of his underlings sucked on cigarettes. Who cared? He was Emilio Neri, a don to be feared in Rome and beyond. He had influence. He had hard cash pouring into his offshore accounts, from prostitution, drug trafficking, money laundering, arms and any number of semilegitimate investments. He didn’t care what he looked like, what he smelt like. That was their problem.
    In all this pampered life there was just one minor sore and, to Neri’s occasional annoyance, it lived downstairs, one floor above the six servants he employed needlessly, just to fill up the space and dust things before they ever got dusty. While he and Adele occupied the top two stories of the house — and had sole use of the vast terrace, with its palm trees and fountains — his only son, Mickey, had, after three fraught years pissing off Neri’s friends in the States, come home to stay. It was a temporary arrangement. Neri wanted to keep an eye on the boy just to make sure he didn’t start messing up with dope again. Once he’d found some kind of even keel, Neri would cut him loose. Maybe find him an apartment somewhere else in the city, or move him on to Sicily where there were relatives who could keep him in check. Neri did this partly out of self-interest — Mickey had grown up inside the organization. He could cause some harm if he started blabbing to the wrong people. But there was a degree of paternal loyalty there too. Mickey was an asshole. Maybe he inherited this from his mother, an over-tanned American bit-part actress Neri had met through a crooked producer he knew when he was pumping hot money into a Fellini movie . . . The marriage had lasted five years, after which Neri knew he either had to divorce the bitch or kill her. She now basked in the permasun of Florida and doubtless bore a close physical resemblance to an iguana, a creature, Neri thought, which could probably out-think her in its sleep.
    Mickey never wanted to be near mamma. Mickey wanted to hang around his old man. He thought he was a don in the making and never missed an opportunity to throw his weight around. He had problems with women too, just couldn’t leave them alone, whether they were married or not. His one saving grace was that he worshipped his father. Everyone else, Adele included, did Neri’s bidding out of fear. Mickey went along with everything his old man decreed for a simpler reason. Most kids idolized their