But stage five was probably the most delicate of them all. It consisted of a heartbreaking farewell speech, a generous parting gift and a tearful arrivederci.
But all that was in the past. Now Ivo Palazzi took a quick glance at his bleeding, scratched face in the mirror over his bed and was horrified. He looked as though he had been attacked by a mad threshing machine.
“Look at what you’ve done to me!” he cried. “Cora, I know you didn’t mean it.”
He moved over to the bed to take Donatella in his arms. Her soft arms flew around him and as he started to hug her, she buried her long fingernails in his naked back and clawed him like a wild animal. Ivo yelled with pain.
“Scream!” Donatella shouted. “If I had a knife, I’d cut your cazzo and ram it down your miserable throat”
“Please!” Ivo begged. “The children will hear you.”
“Let them!” she shrieked. “It’s time they found out what kind of monster their father is.”
He took a step toward her. “Carissima—”
“Don’t you touch me! I’d give my body to the first drunken syphilitic sailor I met on the streets before I’d ever let you come near me again.”
Ivo drew himself up, his pride offended. “That is not the way I expected the mother of my children to talk to me.”
“You want me to talk nice to you? You want me to stop treating you like the vermin you are?” Donatella’s voice rose to a scream. “Then give me what I want!”
Ivo looked nervously toward the door. “Carissima—I can’t. I don’t have it.”
“Then get it for me!” she cried. “You promised!”
She was beginning to get hysterical again, and Ivo decided the best thing for him to do was to get out of there quickly before the neighbors called the carabinieri again.
“It will take time to get a million dollars,” he said soothingly. “But I’ll—I’ll find a way.”
He hastily donned his undershorts and pants, and socks and shoes, while Donatella stormed around the room, her magnificent, firm breasts waving in the air, and Ivo thought to himself, My God, what a woman! How I adore her! He reached for his bloodstained shirt. There was no help for it He put it on, feeling the cold stickiness against his back and chest. He took a last look in the mirror. Small pools of blood were still oozing from the deep gashes where Donatella had raked her fingernails across his face.
“Carissima,” Ivo moaned, “how am I ever going to explain this to my wife?”
Ivo Palazzi’s wife was Simonetta Roffe, an heiress of the Italian branch of the Roffe family. Ivo had been a young architect when he had met Simonetta. His firm had sent him to supervise some changes in the Roffe villa at Porto Ercole. The instant Simonetta had set eyes on Ivo, his bachelor days were numbered. Ivo had gotten to the fourth stage with her on the first night, and found himself married to her a short time later. Simonetta was as determined as she was lovely, and she knew what she wanted: she wanted Ivo Palazzi. Thus it was that Ivo found himself transformed from a carefree bachelor to the husband of a beautiful young heiress. He gave up his architectural aspirations with no regrets and joined Roffe and Sons, with a magnificent office in EUR, the section of Rome started with such high hopes by the late, ill-fated Duce.
Ivo was a success with the firm from the beginning. He was intelligent, learned quickly, and everyone adored him. It was impossible not to adore Ivo. He was always smiling, always charming. His friends envied him his wonderful disposition and wondered how he did it. The answer was simple. Ivo kept the dark side of his nature buried. In fact, he was a deeply emotional man, capable of great volatile hatreds, capable of killing.
Ivo’s marriage with Simonetta thrived. At first, he had feared that marriage would prove to be a bondage that would strangle his manhood to death, but his fears proved to be unfounded. He simply put himself on an austerity program, reducing the number of his girl friends, and everything went on as before.