Chapter 71

• THE big ornate clock out in the hallway was striking midnight, the deep, ominous tones sounding clearly up the curving staircase to where Sofia was sitting in the darkness of the bedroom. Slowly she counted the strokes—anything to distract her mind and give herself something else to think about, no matter how briefly.
• ‘Six…seven…’
• It was no good, the distraction didn’t work. Her thoughts would keep drifting off to the rest of the day and the time that had passed since Alessandro had decreed that if she stayed at the villa then she did so as his wife.