Ring of Fire Read Online Free Page A

her shoulders and concludes, “My daughter’s used to being independent. If she’s all right with it, then it’s perfectly fine with me.”
    “Would you like to see my room, ma’am?” asks Elettra.
    “No, no. Is it very far from mine?”
    “Two flights of stairs.”
    Mistral and her mother exchange an amused smile and then accept the proposal.
    “Very well,” approves Aunt Irene, pleased.
    “Well, it is getting late,” Mr. Wan Ho breaks in, smoothing down his suit. “And we had a long flight. If my son agrees, I accept your proposal, too.”
    Aunt Irene then turns to the two Americans. “That just leaves you, Mr. and Mrs. Miller.”
    The man folds his arms across his chest with total composure. The woman leans over to brush a stray lock of hair from the forehead of her son, who promptly moves away from her. “Is it all right with you, Harvey? If not, we could—”
    “Yeah, it’s fine,” he answers. For a brief instant, he looks up from his shoes and meets Elettra’s eye. Shyly, he whirls around to get the suitcases.
    After a few more awkward pleasantries, the dining room at the Domus Quintilia empties out.
    Irene begins to wheel herself toward the elevator. A little door in the wall behind her opens up just a crack.
    “You can come out now, Lionheart,” she says, speaking to the dark crack in the door. “The coast is clear.”
    Fernando Melodia peeks into the room, makes sure all the guests have left and walks in. In his arms is a stack of clothes, towels and pajamas. “How did you know it was me?”
    “I could sense your guilty conscience in the air.”
    “I …”
    The wheels of the chair creak on the floor.
    Outside the window, the gaunt silhouette of a statue stares at the pale sky.
    “Just be careful with the sofa,” the elderly aunt cackles.
    “I’d rather sleep on the floor.”
    “I think you’d better, given how Linda might react if you don’t.”
    “Darn it.”
    “Darn what?”
    Fernando looks at the stairs he’s just come down. “I left my novel up in my room. Maybe I should go back and get it. Tonight I could—”
    “Leave it there, Fernando,” the old woman sighs. “I don’t think our Chinese friend wants to steal your masterpiece. Why don’t you give me a hand with this chair instead?”
    Fernando puts his pile of clothes down on an armchair and wheels Irene up to the black gate of the elevator. “Was it hard to convince them?” he asks.
    “No more than usual,” she answers sharply.
    The iron doors open up with a metallic groan. Fernando Melodia tilts the rubber wheels up slightly and then, with a gentle push, wheels the chair into the elevator. “It’s snowing,” he sighs. “That hasn’t happened in Rome for a long time.”
    “Let’s go up to the roof, then,” Aunt Irene suggests. “We can’t miss seeing the city mantled in white.”
    The yellow Mini zips through the traffic on the city’s ring road, called the Grande Raccordo Anulare. Its little wipers battle against the snow sticking to the windshield. A graceful symphony is playing on the radio. Swinging from the rearview mirror is a stuffed skull-shaped toy.
    “I’ve heard a lot of stories about you, Mr. Mahler,” says Beatrice, passing a hotel’s white minibus, whose red taillights glimmer through the snowflakes like butterflies.
    “And what were the stories like?”
    “They all ended the same way,” says the young woman with a smile, edging the Mini into a gap between two cars.
    “And did you enjoy them?”
    “Very much.”
    “You like sad stories.”
    “Sometimes sadness can be fascinating.”
    “More often than that, it’s just plain sad.”
    For a few moments the two remain in silence, which is interrupted only by the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers.
    “I don’t think you’ve fully understood the nature of my work,” the man with the violin says.
    “Joe Vinile talks about you like you’re some kind of legend.”
    “I’ve never met Joe Vinile. A legend at