Free Arcadia Awakens by Kai Meyer Page B

was still holding her hand, and sounded thoughtful. “I want to show you something first.”
    Only a day ago she wouldn’t have trusted him an inch. And now here she was letting him take her around this godforsaken island on their own. But that was the point, she thought, I am letting him do it. Everything under control.
    They reached a smaller bay narrowing like a funnel toward the land. A grotto gaped open in the lava rock, black jaws sucking in the sea and spewing it out again. At the edge of the cavern, a few yards above the gurgling surf, there was a tiny plateau with a view of the swirling water below out to the open sea.
    Alessandro stopped as if something was holding him back. But Rosa kept climbing, and now she was the one offering her hand to him.
    “This was my mother’s favorite place,” he said as he climbed up to join her. “She often used to sit here painting.”
    “Was she good?”
    “I wish I had one-tenth of her talent.”
    “You paint, too?”
    “Sometimes.” He waved the subject aside as if he didn’t like to talk about it. “Only for myself.”
    She looked around her on the plateau, and saw steps cut in the rock and leading farther up the lava slope. Suddenly something occurred to her. “ Gaia , the name of the yacht, was that—”
    “My mother’s name, yes. Gaia Carnevare.”
    She went right to the edge of the plateau and looked down at the current. Steep precipices exerted a kind of pull on her, and the feeling was even stronger here than usual. She thought she could understand why Gaia Carnevare had liked this place so much.
    She turned away from the roaring whirlpool and looked Alessandro firmly in the eyes.
    “Right,” she said. “Why are we really here?”
    He hesitated only a moment before answering. “To find out who killed my mother. And why my father let it happen.”

GAIA’S SECRET
    T HEY CLIMBED THE BLACK steps in the rock and worked their way up to the rugged volcanic cone of Isola Luna.
    The villa lay halfway up the mountain, and to Rosa’s surprise there was a broad courtyard in front of it, and a narrow road leading downhill.
    “There’s a second harbor on the north coast of the island,” Alessandro explained. “Even large ships can anchor there to unload vehicles and so on.”
    The villa was an extensive complex of several buildings and annexes. Rosa had expected a comfortable holiday home, a place to spend a few days or weeks. Instead she saw a luxurious building that she could easily imagine in the most expensive neighborhoods of any big city.
    White masonry, a great deal of glass, flat roofs, and a kind of lookout tower that had to have a view over half the island. The sea would be visible from most of the rooms, which had walls that were all windows and glazed doors. Even if you felt shut up anywhere else—or at any other time in your life—here you would be overcome by a huge sense of freedom and space. She began to like Alessandro’s mother without ever having met her.
    “And no one uses all this anymore?” asked Rosa.
    “Not as far as I know.”
    “No curious tourists on their own yachts?”
    He shook his head. “Everyone on Sicily knows who owns Isola Luna. And they all know it’s better not to tangle with us. The same goes for most skippers in the Mediterranean.”
    She was impressed, against her will, to think that a name could be better security than barbed wire and walls. And she began to have an inkling of how much more powerful and influential the Carnevares were than the Alcantaras with their wind turbine empire.
    “Hardly anyone ever came here except my mother,” he said, walking ahead to the barred gate in the wall. She followed him, staying two steps behind and not sure whether she’d be better off watching him or the building.
    Crickets chirped in the midday sun; the lava slopes behind both sides of the villa flickered in the heat haze.
    Alessandro took a bunch of keys out of his jeans pocket. The tall gate swung open,