She had intended to ask the way to Castello Carnevare there, but that proved unnecessary. The clan’s fortress rose on a peak above the village, a medieval colossus of yellowish-brown rough-hewn stone walls, looking about as homey from the outside as a collection of monuments. The winding road led up the mountain. On her way, even before she reached the village, she noticed several guards posted. A biker with a motorcycle at the side of the road, pretending to check his exhaust. A man with a pair of binoculars, sitting on the hood of his car in a parking lot making a show of bird-watching. Probably even the teenager taking a dog for a walk near the fork in the mountain road, talking on his cell phone and surreptitiously scrutinizing her car at the same time. There’d certainly been a few others who’d escaped her notice. But no one stopped her. She drove Zoe’s convertible to the gateway of the castle. Close up, the facade looked just as uninviting as it had from down below, but now she saw that the historic walls were deceptive.
