The Rich Shall Inherit Read Free Page B

clinch major art deals. He owned a lavish turn-of-the-century villa in the hills above Portofino, a vast town house on the Via Michelangelo Buonarroti in Milan, and an ancient but beautifully restored palazzo in Venice. He also had a house in Belgrave Square, London, and kept a permanent suite at the Pierre Hotel in New York. Each abode contained a fortune in paintings, sculpture, and other art treasures and each was kept fully staffed and in immaculate order.
    But there was another house, one that no one knew about—a large, shuttered villa near Naples that he visited once a month without fail. He always stayed exactly two days and two nights, and then he returned to his normal life in Milan.
    Carraldo was not a partygoing man, but he was seen at the important international social functions, particularly those involving the worlds of art or music. He was involved in the Spoleto Festival and the Venice Biennale, and four or five times ayear he entertained lavishly at his homes—a masked ball in Venice for the Lenten carnival; a congenial summer house party in Portofino; a gathering of eminent operagoers at dinner in Milan. Apart from these occasions his private life was exactly that—private. But it was also whispered about in the bars and cafes of half a dozen international cities.
    They whispered that Antony Carraldo’s smooth facade covered a thousand secrets, that his money was not earned only from his knowledgeable trading in art, that there were other, more sinister ways he added millions each year to his Swiss bank accounts. And despite his urbane appearance, they said that Carraldo’s sexual appetite was insatiable.
    It was rumored that Carraldo was a man of steel whose nightlong sessions left him still in control and his partners exhausted—and that he liked his sex rough. “Orgies,” the gossip said, “week-long debauches with every vice and peversion imaginable …” But Carraldo, suave and with a faint smile, was impervious to gossip, and
no one
ever refused an invitation to his parties.
    The only man in whom he had ever confided was his great friend Paolo Rinardi, but Paolo had died tragically fourteen years ago, and now there was no one who knew exactly how Antony Carraldo had amassed his great fortune, and
who
and
what
he was.
No one who knew the truth.
    As the sleek black plane swooped onto the runway at London’s Heathrow, a pile of newspapers lay crumpled on the floor at Carraldo’s feet. He frowned, pressing his fingers against his brow as the pain fluttered in his chest like a tiny saw-edged knife. Taking a silver box from his pocket, he removed a small pill and placed it under his tongue, lying back in his seat waiting for it to take effect and thinking of the extraordinary advertisement. He was quite sure that if Francesca Rinardi had anything to do with it, she would claim that Aria was the heiress to Poppy Mallory’s fortune, whether she believed it was true or not. But if it was, then he stood to lose the one treasure he prized most in the world. And Carraldo wasn’t a man who lost easily.
    Calling Enrico, he asked to be put through on the radio-phone to the Banco Credito e Maritimo in Zurich, Switzerland. He spoke with Giuseppe Alliere, its president, instructing him to use his contacts to obtain from the offices of the lawyer, Johannes Lieber, a list of the purported claimants to Poppy Mallory’s estate.
    *  *  *
    Claudia Galli decided she loathed Paris today. She hated its ancient tree-lined avenues and its beautiful buildings; she hated its tiled mansard roofs and cobbled courtyards; she hated its cafes and restaurants and its glittering shop windows displaying the most luxurious and beautiful clothes in the world. She hated it all because she was broke, and in her view, to be broke in Paris was a sin.
    A small black cat ran between her feet, almost tripping her as she sauntered from the elevator of her elegant apartment building near the Avenue Foch. She aimed an angry kick with