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Two Drops Of Water
Nicola Rocca
Chantal has had a disastrous year. She's lost her job and her mother, seen her father descend into alcoholism and been cheated on by the love of her life. Down on her luck, opportunity knocks when she starts chatting online to Alfredo, who offers her a job at his B&B in Tuscany.
Chantal falls for Alfredo and thinks she has found happiness again, but when she hears there is a maniac on the loose who preys on the girls who work at the B&B, she is thrust into a living nightmare.
Hundreds of miles from home and gripped with fear, Chantal must decide who to trust amid a tangled web of rumours, lies and a terrible, horrifying secret...
Chantal, or SadChantal as she’s known in online chat rooms, is thirty-three. She’s going through the darkest time of her life; absolutely nothing is going her way. She’s out of work and living on benefits because her Economics degree is totally worthless, her father is in rehab after the death of her mother and the love of her life, Giulio, has left her for a younger woman. She’s down on her luck but made of tough stuff. She can hardly make plans on €400 a month, but when she begins chatting online to Alfredo (AlfreDario74), her luck appears to change. He’s looking for a factotum for the new season at his B&B in Tuscany. Chantal decides to turn her back on her old life and accepts the job. She nearly dies en route and encounters a witch-like old woman when she arrives. On eventually locating the B&B, she discovers it is totally isolated, gloomy and run-down. She wants to turn straight back around and head home, but she can’t face another seven hours in the car. She resolves to go home the next day but changes her mind after meeting Alfredo. He’s well-educated, polite, kind and immediately puts her at ease. What’s more, he’s very, very cute. As Chantal and Alfredo get to work on the B&B, they become close and begin a relationship that gradually moves beyond sex. Chantal has rediscovered herself and her joie de vivre. One day, however, her world is rocked when people in the village tell her that the B&B is cursed. A girl like her is hired every year, and every year the girl disappears. Someone is kidnapping, raping and killing these girls, and some people think it’s Alfredo. Life at the B&B is no longer the same. Chantal lives in fear and keeps a close eye on Alfredo. Are the rumours true? Could the man she has fallen in love with really be a killer? Is he what he seems, or is there a monster behind the mask? Chantal decides she won’t leave until she has all the answers, but it won’t be easy: one false step could be her last. Two Drops of Water is a psychological thriller that plays with emotions, feelings and states of mind. Who can you trust? Who is good and who is evil? Sometimes it’s impossible to tell because the two are separated by the finest of fine lines. So fine as to be imperceptible. Sometimes, evil is within us. Other times, it’s in those to whom we are closest.
NICOLA ROCCA
TWO DROPS OF WATER
ENNEERRE
Facebook:
- Nicola Rocca ‘Pagina Autore’
- Nicola Rocca
enneerreautore@outlook.it (mailto:enneerreautore@outlook.it)
Cover art © Alberto Motta
Cover design © Nicola Rocca and Alberto Motta
Translated by Andrew Fanko
Publisher: Tektime - www.traduzionelibri.it
Any reference to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Literary and artistic property reserved.
All rights reserved.
2016
Summary
PROLOGUE (#u197553b5-a2f4-5a30-b92d-62fbda614d17)
FEBRUARY 2016 (#u5f741e20-10da-52f4-9e3e-cb62cf6ce2c4)
THE DEPARTURE (#u4bbaf6ed-a750-5952-b8e2-e7dc6d1ee95e)
NOVEMBER 2016 (#litres_trial_promo)
MANY YEARS EARLIER (#litres_trial_promo)
THE BITTER TRUTH (#litres_trial_promo)
EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
For Sandra and Davide,
who achieved their
greatest dream.
For all those who,
like me,
exist in limbo,
straddling the finest
of fine lines that separates
two different worlds.
N.R.
"You will learn, to your cost,
that on life's great journey
you will encounter many masks, but few faces."
(Luigi Pirandello – One, No One and One Hundred Thousand)
TWO DROPS OF WATER
PROLOGUE
The room is in semi-darkness,
the pitch black alleviated only by the dirty yellow light of a street lamp filtering through the window.
Aldo Martelli stares up at the ceiling.
It's an ordeal he has endured for years now - in and out of hospital. No particular illness, but he's ninety years old, and there's no cure for old age; it comes for us all, followed sooner or later by its trusty friend, Death.
His throat seems to be closing up, every breath a laborious wheeze.
All he needs to do is reach out and press his emergency button. A nurse would come running and fit his oxygen mask.
Aldo knows there is little point; it would just delay his last breath for a few more hours. He may as well let himself drift off into that deepest of sleeps that he knows so well. A sleep that has been his livelihood for seventy years.
Martelli Funeral Directors. Two shop windows and a preparation room.
Thinking about it still brings a smile to his face.
So much time has passed. It seems like only yesterday, but now his entire life has flown by.
The weight pressing down on his lungs increases. Aldo may never have experienced his own death, but it is all too familiar to him. He can sense it.
Now that his time has come, he's not afraid. Life has been kind; he can have no complaints. He has never lacked for money or affection.
His thoughts turn to Mina, whom he married before either of them had even turned twenty. Gradually, images of their children come into his mind. Then the grandchildren.
Their faces seem so real he can’t help but smile. Such a beautiful family.
As his vision begins to blur from a lack of oxygen, another memory pops into his head. He thinks of the little white coffin and the secret he has kept for over thirty years.
It was so long ago now, but he can remember it as if it were yesterday.
He still can’t explain why he did it. Could have been greed; could have been a million and one other things.
He deceived an entire town.
He opens his mouth wide in an attempt to steal one final breath, and his eyes relax and fall open.
Just a split second more of suffering, and the secret would go with him to his grave.
FEBRUARY 2016
A mia volta mi fido del mondo
non ti dico le botte che prendo
Non c'è modo di starsene fuori
da ciò che lo rende tremendo e stupendo…
(La linea sottile [The Fine Line] - Luciano Ligabue)
CHAPTER 1
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.02
So you're not married and you don’t have a boyfriend?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.02
Nope. Neither of the above.
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.03
How come? Must be your choice, right? There can't be a lack of interest. I’ve seen your photo...you're a stunning girl.
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.04
Girl? I’m not sure I still qualify as a girl at 33 :-(
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.04
You may be 33 but you look about 25. And you're still a girl at 25, trust me!
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.05
If you say so...
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.05
So you still haven’t answered my question. How come a GIRL as hot as you isn’t married or in a relationship?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.06
Ermmm....next question please!
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.06
Ooops...have I touched a nerve?
03/02/2016
