A car driving at speed took a bend too fast. ‘Stolto,’ he muttered, and called the driver a fool as he watched him take another bend…and then the car careered from the road.
Bastiano ran in the direction of the smoking wreck but as he approached he was held back and told that it was Gino’s car that had been in the accident.
‘Gino?’ Bastiano checked.
‘No!’ a woman who worked in the bar shouted. ‘I called Maria to say that Gino was on his way home and angry. He had found out about you! She took the car and—’
* * *
Maria’s death and the aftermath had not painted Bastiano in a very flattering light.
Raul returned from Rome and on the eve of the funeral they stood on the hill where once they had sat as boys.
‘You had your pick of the valley!’ Raul could barely contain his fury.
‘I went to check on her—’
But Raul did not want to hear that his mother had been the seducer. ‘And you turned on that fake charm…’ Raul had seen him in action after all. He knew how Bastiano could summon even the shyest woman with his eyes and melt restraint with a smile. ‘I was a fool to trust you,’ Raul said. ‘You as good as killed her.’
Yes, he was the first to be blamed and the last to be forgiven.
‘Stay away from the funeral,’ Raul warned him.
But Bastiano could not.
And the next day things went from bad to worse. After a bloody fight at the graveside, it later transpired that half of Maria’s money had been left to Bastiano.
Raul, once his friend, now accused Bastiano of engineering Maria’s death and swore the rest of his days would be devoted to bringing him down.
‘You’re nothing, Conti,’ Raul told him. ‘You never have been and, even with my mother’s money, you never will be.’
‘Watch me,’ Bastiano warned.
It is said that it takes a village to raise a child.
The Valley of Casta had never really been kind to Bastiano, but when the entire population considered you a cheat, a liar, a seducer, a bastard…that’s what you become.
So, when a drunken Gino came to confront him, instead of taking it on the chin, Bastiano fought back, and when Gino called Maria a whore, Bastiano saw red and did not stay quiet. Instead, he gestured with his hand in the sign of horns and tossed Gino the biggest insult of all.
‘Cornuto!’
Cuckold.
Bastiano, the villagers agreed, was the worst of the worst.