Chapter 224

• Leandro Filametti be damned. She deserved a little comfort if he expected her to tackle this lot.
• Twenty minutes later Zoe had settled on one of the more modest bedrooms on the second floor. Painted in a faded lemony yellow, it was a smaller room, whose shuttered windows afforded a stunning view of Lake Como. After locating a dented bucket and an old mop in one of the kitchen’s many cupboards, Zoe spent most of the afternoon cleaning her own bedroom, airing the mattress and scrubbing and dusting what looked like a dozen years’ worth of dust and dirt.
• Why was this villa such a mess? she wondered more than once. It was a prime piece of property, yet it looked as if it had been empty for years.