Loyalty


 
 
 
 ALSO BY LISA SCOTTOLINE
 FICTION
 
 What Happened to the Bennetts
 Eternal
 Someone Knows
 After Anna
 One Perfect Lie
 Most Wanted
 Every Fifteen Minutes
 Keep Quiet
 Don’t Go
 Come Home
 Save Me
 Look Again
 Daddy’s Girl
 Dirty Blonde
 Devil’s Corner
 Running from the Law
 Final Appeal
 
 ROSATO & DINUNZIO SERIES
 
 Feared
 Exposed
 Damaged
 Corrupted
 Betrayed
 Accused
 
 ROSATO & ASSOCIATES SERIES
 
 Think Twice
 Lady Killer
 Killer Smile
 Dead Ringer
 Courting Trouble
 The Vendetta Defense
 Moment of Truth
 Mistaken Identity
 Rough Justice
 Legal Tender
 Everywhere That Mary Went
 
 NONFICTION (WITH FRANCESCA SERRITELLA)
 
 I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses
 I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool
 I’ve Got Sand in All the Wrong Places
 Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?
 Have a Nice Guilt Trip
 Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim
 Best Friends, Occasional Enemies
 My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space
 Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 Copyright © 2023 by Smart Blonde, LLC
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Scottoline, Lisa, author.
 Title: Loyalty / Lisa Scottoline.
 Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2023]
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022055464 (print) | LCCN 2022055465 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525539803 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525539810 (ebook)
 Classification: LCC PS3569.C725 L69 2023 (print) | LCC PS3569.C725 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022055464
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022055465
 Cover design: Anthony Ramondo
 Cover image: Pilat666 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
 Book design by Lorie Pagnozzi, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 pid_prh_6.0_142978087_c0_r1
 
 
 For my amazing daughter, Francesca, with all my love
 
 
 
 
 To have seen Italy without seeing Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything.
 —GOETHE, ITALIAN JOURNEY
 
 
 
 
 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONAE
 
 Dante, a boy kidnapped from Palermo
 Renzo Gentili, a guard in the Ospizio di Santa Teresa, a madhouse
 Teresa, Gentili’s wife
 Dottor Vergenti, administrator of the madhouse
 Baron Pietro Pisani, administrator of the Real Casa dei Matti di Palermo and the real-life founder of “moral therapy” in Sicily
 Franco Fiorvanti, the manager of a lemon grove outside Palermo
 Roberto Fiorvanti, his twin brother
 Sebastiano, a farmhand
 Ezio, another farmhand
 Baron Zito, the wealthy baron who owns the lemon grove
 Gaetano Catalano, a lawyer from Palermo
 Maria, his wife
 Carmine Prizzi, his friend
 Mafalda Pancari, a mother from the village of Porticello, outside Palermo
 Salvatore “Turi,” her husband
 Lucia, their daughter
 Alfredo D’Antonio, a cheesemaker from the mountain town of Mussomeli, in central Sicily
 Bella, Flora, Valentina, and Ginevra, his daughters
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PART ONE
 
 They know how to read and write—that’s the trouble.
 —giovanni verga, “the gentry,” little novels of sicily (d. h. lawrence translation)
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER ONE
 
 PALERMO, SICILY
 1810
 It was the final night of the Festival of Saint Rosalia, and hundreds of people lined Via Toledo, cheering, praying, and singing hymns. Priests led the procession, holding tapers that glowed like halos in the darkness. Spectators looked up the street, craning their necks to see the ornate silver reliquary of the patron saint. The carabinieri faced that way, too, their plumed hats in a line, their horses shifting on polished hooves.
 Only a bearded man looked away, down the street. Nobody noticed him in the shadows behind the crowd. He kept his eye on the wealthy families privileged to stand on the Quattro Canti, or Four Corners, which was the intersection of Palermo’s two most important streets: Via Toledo, extending to the harbor, and Via Maqueda, bisecting the capital.
 The procession moved down the street, and the crowd’s fervor intensified, anticipating the reliquary. People kissed pictures of the young saint, held roses up to her, and cheered Viva Palermo e viva Santa Rosalia! Among the privileged on the Quattro Canti, the husbands surged forward to see better and the wives remained behind with the children.
 The bearded man threaded his way to a little boy standing with his mother at the back of the Quattro Canti. He snuck up behind the boy and waited for the moment to pounce.
 The saint’s reliquary popped into view, and the crowd erupted in shouting, cheering, and weeping. The boy’s mother burst into pious tears, and the bearded man made his move. He pulled a marionette from under his cloak and showed it to the boy. The boy reached for the marionette, and in one cruel motion, the man grabbed the boy and flung his cloak over him. The clamor of the crowd devoured the boy’s startled cry. The marionette dropped to the cobblestones.
 The man ran away with the boy. The mother looked around for her son. She called him but didn’t see him anywhere. She whirled around, beginning to panic, then screamed. It was as if he had been swallowed by the crowd. She would remember this moment for all of her days.
 The man jumped onto a bay mare and rode off with the boy. He galloped from the